Technically Philly is a news site covering technology news in Philadelphia.
Rendell was quite prepared for $2.2 million in federal broadband research and planning funds that we reported Thursday.
A spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development tells Technically Philly that the state is already in negotiations with a yet undisclosed vendor to handle the job.
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A $2.2 million federal grant for broadband data and mapping in Pennsylvania will help the state's broadband vision, outlined in a report here by the Rendell Administration (PDF).
A federal grant will fund research into the digital divide and ways to solve it in Pennsylvania.
The National Telecommunication and Information Administration announced Tuesday that Pennsylvania has been awarded a two-year, $1.7 million grant to collection data about broadband adoption, MuniWireless reports. An additional $500,000 will be used for planning a broadband strategy in the state, bringing the total award to $2.2 million.
A spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development, which will handle the funds, was not immediately available for comment.
The NTIA has awarded $97 million to 51 grantees so far and will likely wrap up the remaining grants this quarter. The grants—which will be awarded to each state, the District of Columbia and five territories— are a part of the Obama administration’s strategy to improve broadband adoption in the U.S.
More than $300 million was set aside in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to collect data to better assist the NTIA in distributing $7.2 billion to improve broadband infrastructure, create public computers centers and promote sustainable broadband adoption.
The City of Philadelphia requested $35 million in the NTIA’s first round of broadband investment, as we reported in September. The NTIA has not yet announced which projects will receive funding.
So you want to open a business in Philadelphia?
A Technically Philly reader recently launched her first venture in the city’s limits and thought the process was agonizing enough and the help non-existent enough to share.
She’s fairly straight-laced, she tells us, so she wanted to open her operation as legitimately and legally as possible. Yes, a good tax-paying business opening up shop in Philadelphia, so I’m sure we all expect the red-carpet treatment from the city.
Except, of course, as you know, the process was laborious and involved so many wrong turns, that we decided to give you all a short hand.
Below, in addition to the 15 steps and more than two months this passionate entrepreneur took to give money to the city, we show you the right way to launch your business in Philadelphia in five (oh my God, we know it won’t actually be easy) steps.
More than 800 computer terminals, 167 printers and 54 fiber broadband connections, which account for 1.3 million annual computer reservations at the Free Library of Philadelphia, could soon be covered in dust.
Red signs threatening the Oct. 2 closure of the regional library system were hard to spot as patrons checked email, printed documents and watched YouTube videos in a computer lab in the east wing of the historic Central Library on Vine Street Tuesday afternoon.
As the city awaits legislators in Harrisburg to pass House Bill 1828—which would allow the city to increase local sales tax and defer pension contributions—threats of severe city-wide budget cuts in Mayor Michael Nutter’s “Plan C” doomsday budget are more real than ever; they’re printed on placards throughout 54 Free Library branches in the city.
City services could see $700 million in cuts, including Philadelphia’s library system, which faces a $29.6 million reduction and the loss of 490 positions.
Free Library Chief Technology Officer and executive staff member Jim Pecora says that a closure could severely affect patrons who need Internet access.
“This city and state budget situation will throw us back to the stone-ages if SB 1828 isn’t passed,” he said in a candid e-mail to Technically Philly.
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THE SUITORS: (L-R) Damon Alberts, Mike Worth and Hardik Bhatt of the Videogame Growth Initiative are trying to talk officials into making Philly worth game developers' while. (Credit: Mark Stehle)
Note: this article appeared in today’s Citypaper and has been republished with permission.
The members of the Videogame Growth Initiative Philadelphia (VGI) are buzzing around a seventh-floor conference room high above Broad Street. The group has two hours to convince representatives of state government that it’s worth creating new incentives to lure video game companies to Philly.
Audio engineer Mike Worth along with local video game executive Damon Alberts, Drexel professor Frank Lee, lawyer Dennis Manning and developer Hardik Bhatt, churn through slides, charts, spreadsheets and game screenshots at a rapid-fire rate as representatives from state government and city economic groups look on.
At first, the guests’ gazes are empty, and energy level low. But the high-octane presentation soon has them interested.
“There’s no reason Philadelphia can’t be the Hollywood for video games,” Bhatt says.
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Congressman Joe Sestak (D-Penn.)
Edit: added Welch’s official statement.
According to our good friends at PA2010.com, Congressman Joe Sestak (D-Penn.) will run against incumbent Sen. Arlen Spector (D-Penn.) in the Democratic primary for Senate.
Sestak’s attempted move to the upper chamber should come as no surprise to those following the race, as Sestak has been telegraphing the move for months.
The lack of a Democrat incumbent in the seventh district makes local entrepreneur and Republican candidate Steve Welch’s quest for the seat much easier. In the previous two elections, the incumbent has won reelection 94 percent of the time.
Welch, who we interviewed two weeks ago, is a co-founder of DreamIt Ventures.
While Sestak hasn’t officially announced his Senate campaign, he has indicated to the press that he will make a “major announcement” this morning at 8:30 a.m on his Web site.
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Ben Franklin Technology Partners is keeping a close eye on the state budget.
For the past five weeks, Pennsylvania has been operating without a budget as state legislators wrestle between a 16 percent income tax increase and cuts in state spending, among other points of contention between the Democratically-controlled House and the Republican-controlled Senate.
As a result, state employees are no longer being paid, and expired unemployment benefits are not receiving an extension (though a tiny no-frills emergency budget may pass soon).
Caught up in the hurricane of the state budget debate is BFTP, a state-funded early stage investment group that could see its budget slashed by up to 60 percent. The organization is now asking its constituents to help push their state legislator to keep the group’s funding levels intact.
Otherwise, a cut to the funding to BFTP could have a dramatic impact on the city and the region.
And if you’re a reader of Technically Philly, that probably means you.
Rob Wonderling is losing his office in the Harrisburg State Capitol complex.
On Aug. 1, the two-term Republican state senator from Delaware County will report to the Avenue of the Arts as the new president and CEO of the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce, as the private, 5,000-member organization announced last month.
By taking the helm of the region’s largest business advocacy organization, he says he’s eager to rebolden the region’s new business community.
“We’ve really lost the language of entrepreneurship [in the region],” Wonderling, 47, says. “Risk taking and capital and job creation are almost scurrilous terms in some political quarters. I feel very passionately that for a free democratic society, we need all of that.”
He has startups on the brain — even if startups aren’t exactly in his past.
Before winning his district in 2002, wunderkid Wonderling served as deputy secretary of transportation to then-Gov. Tom Ridge. He spent the previous decade working for Bentley Systems, an Exton-based software firm whom we’ve profiled and Allentown-based Air Products and Chemicals.
Those gigs are more representative of his gadget trigger. See, Wonderling is something of a tech head, having professed that his Blackberry made him a better legislator.
“If you want to be an effective public servant, you really need to master emerging communication tools and techniques that mirror the way constituents are getting their information,” Wonderling, who was among the first Pennsylvania lawmakers to use a handheld wireless device as a legislative tool, told me last summer. “We’re a more mobile culture. I need to be, too.”
Wonderling’s ascension as the Chamber chief after former Gov. Mark Schweiker — who is taking an executive gig with Center City-based business services company PRWT — ended a six-year term was not without criticism.
There was some speculation after Schweiker announced his impending resignation that the Chamber might hire a female or minority chairman for the first time in its 208-year history, as the Business Journal reported, but still the Wonderling choice seemed to surprise few.
The young legislator could even be positioning himself for a possible gubernatorial run in 2014, as suggested by conservative columnist and Pottstown Mercury city editor Tony Phyrillas, who noted Wonderling signed just a three-year contract. Already there are a host of political ramifications from Wonderling’s departure.
But in an exclusive interview with Technically Philly, Wonderling stays off politics and instead tells us how he’ll use, promote and cultivate technology at the Chamber and throughout the region. He also uses the word “scurrlous” unprompted.
In a restricted budget season, you have to make your case for survival.
Pennsylvania’s Ben Franklin Technology Partners program has earned the state $3.50 for every $1 invested, according to an independent study by the Pennsylvania Economy League for the years between 2002 and 2006, as cited in a Morning Call Op-ed.
In 25 years, the program’s Southeastern Pennsylvania branch — based at the Naval Yard in South Philadelphia – has provided more than $130 million to grow more than 1,600 regional enterprises, but still, lingering in the state Senate is a bill that would cut 60 percent of the body that funds the statewide BFTP program.
“This is an extremely challenging year for the state budget, and difficult decisions must be made,” wrote R. Chadwick Paul Jr., the president and CEO of the Northeastern Pa. arm of BFTP, in the Op-ed in the Call. “But decreasing funding for Ben Franklin would reduce Pennsylvania job creation and job retention, and result in a net revenue loss for the commonwealth.”
Showing Philly's gerrymandered 5th councilmanic district
Updated: 3:51 5/7/09
Here’s a completely uncontroversial statement: the sloppy, meandering legislative districts that are used to keep incumbents in power are an embarrassment to our Republic.
Don’t worry, though, technology is going to solve that, too.
A cool, new version of a free subscription-based district-matching and legislative data API has been released by Avencia, a geographic analysis and software development firm based in the Poplar Callowhill neighborhood west of Northern Liberties.
The new version of CiceroLive, a free sample of the data and mapping tool Cicero API, which pools relevant information about political representatives at all government levels, including the district boundaries for 100 major U.S. cities, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, comes before another likely round of redistricting in 2010, with new Census data arriving then.
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