Last November, the trains that normally shot South in regular intervals on the Broad Street Line were at a standstill.

But as SEPTA’s transit workers—at strike over wage and pension issues—were busy on the picket lines, nothing was going to stop Eric Harper, bound to a wheelchair, from making it to class. Harper, living in North Philadelphia, trekked more than 40 blocks to Drexel University.

Harper is one of ten students that graced the stage at Drexel’s Mitchell Auditorium Tuesday morning to receive his diploma for ITWorks, an Information Technology job-training program for disadvantaged young adults. Harper is a member of the first graduating ITWorks class, a program put together by NPower PA, a nonprofit that does IT work for other local nonprofits.

Through a collaboration with the United Way of Southeastern Pennsylvania, NPower helped identify a need for a cost-free training program to help young high school or equivalency graduates that were neither employed or seeking post-secondary education, whom were getting by on part-time work. It was as much an opportunity to to support the community and it was to support NPower’s partner organizations, who were seeking more hands in their IT departments.

“Sometimes it’s hard to make the connection between what we’re doing on the IT side and the direct impact on the community. Here’s a program that we can point to and say that we’re having a direct impact on the lives of these individuals,” says NPower Director of Fundraising and Communications Anthony Pisapia.

Drexel's Goodwin College

Students of ITWorks spent 8 hours per day, five days a week for the last 12 weeks at the Goodwin College of Professional Studies, Drexel’s adult learning center. An additional five weeks were spent at internships throughout the region, at organizations like PriceWaterhouseCoopers, the Philadelphia Horticultural Society and Reed Technology and Information Services, among others.

The free program had little technology skill requirements. Applicants needed only know the basics, like how start a computer, use the Internet, and compose in Microsoft Word.

“This program is about how we can train individuals in the types of things we do at a basic level,” Pisapia says. “This is the first time that some of the individuals have ever been in an office setting. Many of them often go into retail or food service right out of high school.”

The students were offered workshops on professionalism, communication and other soft skills to cover what they lacked. The program also helped students with interview and resume writing workshops.

Horsham-based Reed Technology, which manipulates data for clients like the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and a growing list of pharmacuetical clients, was one of the organizations that worked with an ITWorks intern.

Reed Vice President, Operations and Technology Services David Ballai says that the company offered the intern a base salary and that she learned basic IT, like wiping and rebuilding systems, and some basic networking training. The intern has even tested for her Microsoft Certification, Ballai says.

Still, in this tough job market, Pisapia says that many company executives that are perhaps considering hiring participating students are still very much in a “wait and see” battle with the economy.

Lila Santos, a graduate of ITWorks, offered her thoughts on the program. Santos, a single mother, called the program a “last hope,” in a letter to organizers.

“I wanted to be a role model for my son and didn’t know where or how to begin. Coming in as a person with little knowledge of configuring software or hardware, I not find myself wanting to learn more and more about technology,” she wrote.

“ITWorks gave me hope when I thought there was no more chances.”

Every Wednesday, Shop Talk shows you what goes into a tech product, organization or business in the Philadelphia region. See others here.

The iPhone application news has to be getting a little tiresome, no?

Google says the mobile application collection is a fleeting concept. The iPhone store is completely flooded with more than 36,000 and few are making money or much worth the time.

Still, they keep coming. We reported that Comcast has its own new iPhone and iPod touch mobile app. Educational software company Blackboard and freakin’ Harry Potter have apps. Newspapers on occasion have them, but big ones like the Wall Street Journal and USA Today are trying to figure out how to charge.

Philly has many apps made by Philadelphians, like one about old Abe Lincoln and a righteous one for Philly concerts, but they are hardly comprehensive.

So why doesn’t Philadelphia, rife with culture and on the cusp (and perhaps in need of a bit) of a technology renaissance, have more of their own?

That profit problem, of course. Because, really, with rare exception no real money is being made, so it isn’t likely that a crush of Philadelphia-specific iPhone apps are going to be made anytime soon. But it sure is fun to indulge.

So, after the jump, find the 10 Philadelphia iPhone (or Windows mobile) apps that should exist, but don’t and probably never will.

Our 10 best:

1. SEPTA Everywhere — OK, they got in cahoots with Google, which was, uhm, five years behind, but they opened their data up to third party developers. So, let’s think big. Nearest bus, trolley, regional rail and train routes, stops, directions, schedules and plan your route features. With all mass transit ensnared with GPS, the realtime location of the next bus is easy to find. How about being able to swipe your iPhone in place of cumbersome tokens or flimsy passes? One of these bus stops would be just around the corner. Who should make this happen? SEPTA, of course. Can we get one of the nine SEPTA blogs to work on this, too?
2. Parking Wars parking spot finder – We’ve heard this before, even in our comments, but it makes it no less a good idea. Digitize the city’s parking meters with weight sensitive monitors. Make money by being able to dispatch the Parking Authority to unpaid meters and announce open spots using GPS to users. Cuts down on traffic and keeps the authority moving. Add a traffic news and prediction element, by using collected data about traffic, create an algorithm to predict when and where traffic might happen. Give users the likelihood of traffic at certain places in the city and give directions around those problem areas when folks are looking for parking. Who should make this happen? A partnership between A&E, the channel that produces the controversial reality TV show Parking Wars, and the Philadelphia Parking Authority, which is the show’s focus. Consider it the show’s promotion and could include the show’s hours and upcoming episode schedule.
3. The Fumo Files — It’s a government transparency application that lets you scroll through miles and miles of open-source databases, documents and information. You can create your own graphs, tables, PDFs and more. It lets you save, highlight, promote via social media and cruise hundreds of years of this information that Allan Frank digitized himself, unencumbered by a suddenly larger staff. Who should make this happen? The Committee of Seventy or whoever steps up and replaces Hallwatch. Or, hey, a partnership between the city government and the Inquirer once every Philadelphian dutifully signs up for a subscription. OK, or host an awesome competition like the 67th ward did.
   
4. iSteak — We take the best 50 or so cheesteak and roast pork joints in the city and geomap them. So, when you’re on the 66 crusing Frankford Avenue and you get that hankering, you can immediately find the nearest best place to grab the city’s most famous grub. Photos, prices, hours, aggregated ratings from other sites are all there. Who should make this happen? Dudes at Unbreaded or Caroline Wyman‘s promotions team.
   
5. Insult My Team — Let’s be real. A little part of you never wants, expects or looks forward to winning anything. The 700 level crew from the Vet wouldn’t have been anything if the Eagles ever won a freakin’ Super Bowl. And, Hell, things are starting to seem a little too cheery after the Phillies victory, even Charlie Manuel agrees. So next time Chase Utley grounds out, and you can’t help but want to hug him anyway, type in player and game, and the app — which aggregates in real time Philly pro sports teams’ standings and in-game statistics — gives you an insightful and witty insult for your own team, beacuse that’s what we do best. “Utley, in the sixth inning with runners in scoring position, you go left more often than Arlen Specter in federal funding votes.” Who should make this happen? Our boys from the 700 level blog with some funding from 610 WIP.
   
6. Philly to English Translator and Dictionary — This goes two ways. Philly accents and slang are decoded and more traditional verbiage can be brought into the local tongue. Finally, “Yo, can youse toss me that lager jawn, nahmean?” will be as easy to say for you as it is for Vinnie in Pennsport. Hey, and we’ll give a bonus if it can translate Philly to English to other useful foreign languages, like Russian for Bell’s Corner, Italian and Spanish for Ninth Street, Mandarin for Chinatown, French for the Sansom strip, various African languages for West Philly pockets and others. Who should make this happen? The Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance.
   
7. Oral History — This isn’t yet a city overrun by artists and writers and filmmakers. While we have plenty, we remain a city whose stories and secrets are largely untold and unshared. They remain on the streets and in the minds of the people who live here or visit here. Dig this: starting with requested submissions from hundreds of Philadelphians of all stripes, 30-second stories or memories of a given location are geotagged throughout the city. On a map you can see where they are and GPS can lead you there, but you can’t hear the audio until you’re actually at that spot. Registered users can submit their own, all of which will be ranked — the better the ranking the larger and easier to find the geotag. Who should make this happen? The Greater Philadelphia Tourism and Marketing Corporation.
   
Philly iPhone games
• Chase Utley’s WFC Dog Catcher — How many stray dogs can Chase bring to safety before Mr. Met gobbles them up? Look for a sponsorship deal from P.A.W.S.
• Frogger on the Boulevard — If you thought crossing the street with that little frog was hard in the iconic arcade game, try maneuvering that sucker around the 1993 Buick LeSabre barreling down Roosevelt Boulevard toward Red Lion Road at 5:15 p.m. in this sure-fire classic mobile game.
• Scrapple for You — An interactive Choose Your Own Adventure-style game in which you make choice how to convince hungry tourists to eat the (really) most Philadelphian food there is. Example: “Mr. Delaware suburbs says no. Do you (A) lower your prices, (B) mock his masculinity in front of his wife and children or (C) Make an equal parts lame, vague and threatening allusion to your “friends in South Philly.”
8. My Philly ‘Hood — I’m tired of arguing with my girlfriend and bartenders and my postman. This app has the final say on the street by street neighborhood lines on an interactive map with important landmarks included within the region of the city. No, South Philly ain’t good enough anymore. With Wiki-style editing, it stays accurate and includes aggregated news, events and updates by tags from big media, new media and locals. It includes suggested news, places to go, eat and drink and more. And, yes, you can toggle between how those neighborhood lines have changed through every five or 10 years; so, you’ll see just when Northern Liberties was birthed from generic North Philadelphia and what parish you’d be living in if the Archdiocese had any freakin’ sway anymore.
9. Our Corners — We’re the most historically significant city in this country (suck it, Chester), and that history extends far beyond Old City. This app would let users peruse historical photos, building histories and historical Inquirer headlines from any location within city limits. Who should make this happen? A partnership between the city’s Historical Commission, PhillyHistory.org and the National Park Service.
   
10. The ‘They Ain’t Closed Yet’ Library application — This app lets you search for and reserve books at any Free Library branch. A calendar of events and hours for all the branches are available, in addition to branch and library history, information and contact information. You can also pay late fees, get directions, chat with libraries and download free ebooks. Perhaps a partnership with the School District, the city’s universities and research institutions could add their private collections to the list for scholars or their own members. Who should make this happen? The Free Library (just use the cash for the expansion of the still stalled central branch).

I mean, dudes, we could do this forever. Zipcar has an app, so why doesn’t Philly Car Share let you find, purchase and open cars using your iPhone? I’d pay for an ‘I didn’t say that’ application in which entirely falsified quotations are attributed to the city’s elite (Philly Turkey, are you on that?) Every time I’m in Fairmount Park or Pennypack or FDR, I want the elusive bug app that can tell me the details of any insect I snag a photo of.

But we figured this was a good start. OK, who is going to get any of these done? What ones did we miss? What is the best of our ideas? And, can we be clear that if you make any of these and earn some scratch, we totally deserve a cut? We’ll keep reporting the news if you do.

…We won’t hold our breath.

-30-

Skyline photo credit: Emy111, stock photo c/o Apple, Illustration by Brian James Kirk

This is a semi-regular department we may or may not call Top Ten Tuesdays. There’s no judging in brainstorming. See others here.

SEPTA passengers and city programmers alike have reason to celebrate.

The region’s transportation organization announced today that it has integrated its trip planning services with Google Transit and that it will give third-party developers access to location and scheduling data, as reported earlier.

The first phase of SEPTA’s Google Transit offering provides route planning automated by Google for its Regional Rail, Market Frankford El, trolley routes and Norristown high-speed services. Users can enter a start point and a destination and are quickly returned directions that utilize Philadelphia’s public transportation system.

“Google Transit will help us introduce SEPTA and the convenience of using public transit when visiting our destinations in the city and the region,” SEPTA General Manager Joe Casey told members of the press on the Mezzanine level of SEPTA headquarters on East Market Street earlier today.

SEPTA plans to integrate the city’s sprawling bus lines in a second phase launch later this year, after it geo-maps 15,000 route locations. It hopes to become the first U.S. transit agency to make all of its methods of transportation available on Transit.

The developer specifications, formatted in Google’s open location and scheduling standard Google Transit Feed Specification, are already available at http://septa.org/developer.

SEPTA spokesman Brian Anderson told Technically Philly that for now, only a download is available.

“We don’t have the resources to create a developer community,” he said. An RSS feed on the developer site will keep coders up-to-date with new offerings, including the second phase bus data.

In addition to the Google Transit service, SEPTA will unveil real-time travel advisory alerts powered by Twitter later this week, and a real-time schedule building tool for Regional Rail riders in “several weeks.” That service, called “Next to Arrive,” will allow users to enter a train station and see the next four scheduled trains and their real-time travel status.

Google Transit integration was completed free of cost with the collaboration of Google and will work in conjunction with SEPTA’s current Trip Planner offering.

City Councilman Bill Green demonstrated the new service on his black iPhone 3G in front of onlookers at the media event. “It tells me what buses to take to what trains to what trolleys. I just follow those directions and I get there quickly and efficiently,” he said.

Green said this is only the beginning of city initiatives that are part of an effort to attract broadband stimulus grants that will make government data available to developers to create applications.

“SEPTA is getting there first,” he quipped.

A screenshot of SEPTA's new integration with Google Maps

Let’s face it — SEPTA isn’t exactly quick on adapting new technologies.

It took a group of determined Web developers and some HTML scraping to make the delightfully useful iSEPTA iPhone application, SEPTA has repeatedly delayed the implementation of smart cards and many stations (*cough* Tioga *cough*) still do not sell tokens or make change.

But for all of its feet-dragging and delaying, the area’s transit system has finally accomplished its long-requested integration with one of the Web’s most used tools for travel planning.

SEPTA Watch is reporting that SEPTA will announce its transit schedules will be made available via Google Transit and Google Maps. Google Maps would previously disregard the option to take public transit. So if you were to, say, punch in a trip from 30th Street Station to Fishtown, it would tell you to stretch your legs and get walking as the Market-Frankford line travels along your route under your feet.

Google will now factor in SEPTA buses, subways and Regional Rails in its directions, making our fair city much more navigable for tourists and new residents. The new functionality translates to the “Maps” application the iPhone as well.

SEPTA had taken its sweet time handing over the data to Google, as the it acknowledged the lack of Google Transit support in an October 2008 survey on its Web site where availability on Google Transit was tied for the most requested new feature among regular riders.

Though maybe the reason for the delay was because the new feature on Google Maps easily makes SEPTA’s “Trip Planner” more obsolete that it already was. Google Maps carries the same functionality while displaying the data in well-designed map that most Internet users are already familiar with using.

As a SEPTA Watch reader points out, the partnership is not without its huccups. Google Maps mistakenly refers to trollies as “light rails.”

Also, in other news, the El is now referred to as “the love train.”

Much like the state’s stimulus accountability Web site announced in March, the city will identify projects and initiatives that it is potentially eligible for, keep citizens informed with news and publicly post how money is being spent.

“We are committed to making all recovery information available on this Web site so that you can follow exactly how we are using every dollar of this unprecedented investment,” Mayor Michael Nutter said in an embedded YouTube video.

Watch Mayor Nutter’s announcement and learn about some of the 29 federal funding opportunities being planned by the city – including CIO Allan Frank’s $100 million Digital Philadelphia broadband initiative after the jump.

Though content on the site is so far sparse, the site lists in PDF format 29 federal funding opportunities in areas including economic development, energy, health and social services, public safety, transportation and infrastructure.

Many of the “shovel-ready” projects are detailed in our original coverage of Philadelphia’s bailout tech proposals as submitted to the U.S. Conference of Mayors in February.

It shouldn’t be a surprise to our regular readers to see broadband expansion plans on the list Technically Philly broke the news of the city’s $100 million Digital Philadelphia plan, detailed by city CIO Allan Frank last week. The Department of Technology is currently assembling a stakeholder coalition and is awaiting application details from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration in June before it organizes priorities for the project.

The administration is moving forward on several other projects detailed in the “shovel-ready” report.

The purchase of 40 hybrid SEPTA buses and the installation of LED lamps in signalized intersections are still planned proposals. While the city is planning to apply for $13.5 million for a “real-time crime center,” and other projects in public safety, it is not known whether or not it plans to apply for upgrades to digital public radio systems.

Electronic health records across prison and linked health systems, a $15 million project, and $115 million in upgrades and expansion to the Central Library, both included in the original proposal, are absent from the city’s current federal funding plans. [Hat tip to Phillyist]

In which we link out to the tech news from Philly and elsewhere (when it matters) that slips through the cracks and make it way fun.

Because that’s what we do best.

• The Bulletin, no seriously, the Bulletin reports on why it would make a lot more sense if the hub of the country’s technology community was Philadelphia, not the Silicon Valley.

• NBC10 reports that the Great Wall of China is as much as 1,000 miles longer than originally thought. The Four Corners landmark, which long offered tourists the chance to be in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah all at the same time was some 2.5 miles off. In both cases, technology proved time-trusted cartography techniques were off, which makes us think maybe Northeast Philadelphia never needed to secede; the maps got it wrong, it was never part of the city.
• The Philly Ad Club reports a Delaware company is helping Wawa brand its best-known items on Facebook. If you send me a hoagie that I can’t eat, I’m pissed. Now that’s a convenience store on its tech — they recently got AT&T on all its IT.
• Bloomberg News reports that Oracle will buy Sun for $7.4 billion. That may not sound like local news, but try to follow this: The Oracle move was seen as chance to garner control over Java, and considering that’s at the heart of its enterprise software products, it means bad news for IBM and SAP, which has Newton Square, Delaware County offices. Rumors are a-blustering that IBM and SAP could hook up, which would, yes, make BI MAPS, cartography for the curious.
• Metro reports that SEPTA is planning on adding its train schedules to Google transit. File that in better late than never.
• The Philadelphia Business Journal reports that Lawrenceville, N.J.-based Edison Venture Fund has sent $5.6 million in follow-on venture financing to Health Market Science, a King of Prussia company that keeps a database of health care provider information. That makes $17 million of total funding that has exchanged hands.
• AdExchanger.com has a Q&A with InviteMedia CEO Nathanial Turner, and no, they were not on fire this time.
• The Inquirer reports that Center City ain’t getting beaten down as badly as the rest of the country. It might help that the Center City district is following through with a host of projects, as the Philadelphia Business Journal reports. Inqy Business columnist Mike Armstrong was all over Economy League reports on how Philly citywide is faring in the recession.

Our Most Trafficked Story of the Week: Shop Talk: Philly’s Venture Capital market with PWC and DreamIT

Every Friday morning we make sure you didn’t miss anything if you spent the week with tweeted:

SEPTA was going to put out requests for proposals on a smart fare card system — in December 2007. Then, last June, the delays came again.

One more time, Philadelphia.

Plans to accept a proposal for a system are once again being pushed back, due to unclear expectations.

This comes on the heels of a flurry of exciting news for a transit agency, including that SEPTA’s spending of its share of the federal stimulus could create more than 5,000 jobs in the region.

Also, according to the Federal Highway Administration, January’s average driving mileage declined – both nationally and locally – marking the first time in 27 years that such travel dropped in consecutive Januarys.

Some because of a rise in unemployment, but the opportunity to increase transit ridership cannot be ignored.

From the Inquirer:

The deadline, which had been Tuesday, has been extended to May, SEPTA revenue and ridership chief John McGee said yesterday. That means a contract is not likely to be awarded until at least September, he said.

The “smart card” system will replace the tokens, tickets, and magnetic-stripe cards that passengers now use on buses, subways, trains, and trolleys. Passengers will be able to wave a card at a sensor on a turnstile or fare box and be on their way.

SEPTA wants a system that will allow passengers to use credit cards, prepaid SEPTA cards, and even cell phones to pay for their trips. [Source]

Read more, including details on the delay, motivated by a slew of vendors uncertain of what SEPTA wanted.

As Technically Philly reported, the sustainable movement is continuing, which seems like a prime time for SEPTA to garner an ever increasing market share. More than 30 companies have signed on as charter members of the Greater Philadelphia Green Business Program, launched by the Pennsylvania Environmental Council, and businesses throughout the region are going nutty with green.

Whether SEPTA will be able to capture their hearts and minds is yet unknown.

Image courtesy of SEPTA Watch.

Yuriy Yakimenko isn’t from Philadelphia but the graduate student at Rutgers University has joined a growing class of tech heads in the region who have launched products they say make using SEPTA easier.

There was SEPTA Made Better, then the widely trumpeted iSEPTA, and now Hamilton, N.J.-based TrainLogic.net is celebrating the one-year anniversary of TrainSchedule, an application that can plan train trips on SEPTA and other mass transit agencies on your mobile device.

While SEPTA schedules came online last spring, the Philly version has matured and represents well the site’s mission of hastening the transition of transit to a friendlier, paperless world. Not bad for a student from New Jersey.

“I did all this in my free time, mostly during the winter and summer breaks,” Yakimenko said.

See a gnarly simulation of SEPTA train-use during the course of an average day.

“TrainSchedule is capable of planning trips involving up to two connections. It also does not require adevice to be connected to the Internet all the time,” Yakimenko, 36, said. “Also, it’s probably the only mobile app that aggregates data from Septa, PATCO, NJT, PATH, LIRR, Metro North and others into a single network, so it’s possible to plan trips that involve multiple railroads.”

TrainLogic.net offers six-month memberships for $6.95. Below hear Yakimenko explain how TrainSchedule works.

While the application can’t work on iPhones, which don’t support Java, Yakimenko said, TrainSchedule does work on any BlackBerry, Nokia or Sony Ericsson, among many others.

Yakimenko is primarily a New Jersey Transit rider, using its NEC line, so he launched his site with N.J.T schedules one year ago, but he said SEPTA was a natural second choice in May 2008: it was a major urban-based transit agency and, turns out, simple to integrate.

“SEPTA has schedules online that are fairly easy, compared to many others, to scrape, and it’s geographically close to NJT,” he said. A mission of his was to connect the multiple transit agencies from Philly to New York.

“I know about SEPTA not being very cooperative with independent developers,” Yakimenko said. “Frankly, I never expect the government-sponsored agencies to be very cooperative at all. The only way to make them do something has to come from the top, the state government.”

He does take issue with Google’s recent attempts to play the middle-man between transit and rider.

“I can say I don’t understand why Google gets many agencies to provide their schedules in GTFS format, often on an exclusive basis,” he said. “Employees in these agencies are paid by our tax dollars, yet they often provide the information to Google, a private company, and no one else. Other developers are left out and often cannot access this information in a timely matter, even though it exists and does not contain any sensitive information.”

Dealing with those large bureaucratic transit agencies with complex route systems led to some nifty innovation for his algorithm construction.

“For example, the ‘shortest path’ algorithm used to calculate the optimal route between two points for GPS navigation does not apply to transit schedules. I had to invent an entirely different approach how to do this,” he said.

Yakimenko worked nearly a decade with Alk.com, a Princeton, N.J.-based company that makes transportation and GPS navigation software. He is a one-man operation, set aside a Web editor and a friend who volunteers to test the application on various train routes.

“The idea to make this application came to me when I started commuting by train to the university campus in Newark in fall 2007,” Yakimenko said. “I am using my application myself almost on a daily basis.”

Edit: SEPTA gave us a call to clear up some details

Continuing their subterranean domination of the city, AT&T and SEPTA have recently announced that AT&T customers will be able to receive cell phone signal while riding the Broad Street Line. The service is available between the Walnut-Locust and Fairmount Erie stops.

If I were SEPTA czar, first I would worship my Barack Obama poster for all of the recent stimulus money that came my way. But then I would use the new service to encourage advertisers to include text messaging in their promotions. Or maybe send out text alerts when trains are running late.

Last year AT&T and SEPTA announced a similar deal that rolled out coverage on the entire Market-Frankford line. According to spokesman Felipe Suarez, the idea to give cell phone service to riders on the subway lines originated when AT&T approached SEPTA. SEPTA never put the contract up for bid to other networks.

While we’ll stay out of the debate on whether having more opportunity to yak on a cell phone is a good thing or not (the R5 even has a quiet car), kudos to SEPTA for thinking of ways to improve their service.