Best of Philly nods to our community from Philadelphia magazine

The August issue of Philadelphia magazine has its annual and ever-popular Best of Philly awards, edited this year by Michael Callahan. It will come as no surprise that lot’s of familiar faces pop up, including a number from our creative communities of technology and innovation.

Below, we breeze through the names you just might stumble upon at the next community event.

• In the “ENJOY” section, the all-comedy acting company 1812 Productions gets the nod as the city’s best Theatre group. We’ve covered their work for an iPhone app about Abraham Lincoln to promote the Rosenblach Museum.

See seven others from the magazine’s nearly 300 listings after the jump.

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Shop Talk: Daniel Delaney of Vendr.TV

Daniel Delaney is sorry.

He just finished a bit of a rant about how zoning laws that govern where street vendors can do business are putting a stranglehold on Philadelphia’s food cart culture, and seemed startled when I said I assumed he was now based in New York.

“I didn’t mean that as an insult,” he says. “I just look at this stuff a bit scientifically.”

Indeed, Delaney, 23, is taking his food very seriously since launching in February Vendr.TV, a weekly podcast devoted to finding the best-tasting street food in the world. It was just picked up by a network funder, Delaney says, though he can’t yet disclose who.

While the University of the Arts alumnus has made that not uncommon trek up the Jersey Turnpike and his podcast’s stock is on the rise, he might have reason to remember where he first got his taste for food entertainment.

Read what goes into Vendr.TV and how he says our great food city could become a great street food city, too, after the jump.

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Ignite Philly packs Johnny Brendas … again

Ignite Philly 3 packed Johnny Brenda's to near-capacity.

Edit: Added and edited links.

On a beautiful clear night in May, listening to a lecture is the last place many people would want to be.

Tell that to the 250 people crammed into Fishtown bar Johnny Brenda’s for the third Ignite Philly. The kinda-sorta biannual event featured sixteen presenters lecturing on topics ranging from making our power grid smarter to music made by laptops to a camp that teaches young women how to form a rock band. And that’s without mentioning Viddler’s proposed cure for male-pattern baldness.

The Ignite format gives speakers five minute slots where their twenty PowerPoint slides must rotate every fifteen seconds. The result makes it hard for any presenter to belabor a single point, and audience members get a taste of a vast array of topics in a short time span.

After the jump we hand out some awards, give a small hint of the 45,276 pictures we took and tell you how comedian Mitch Hedberg was involved.
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The Neat Company releases NeatDesk for Mac document scanning tools

It’s great to be an Apple user in Philadelphia.

There’s IndyHall Labs‘ selection of Mac apps, iSepta‘s iPhone offering, and of course, independent Apple specialists Bundy Computer and Springboard Media based in Center City and Center City West, respectively.

University City-based software development firm The Neat Company is increasing its presence on that list.

On Monday, the company announced NeatDesk For Mac, its automatic document feed (ADF) scanner with an Apple version of its popular NeatWorks scanning software, according to a press release. Now Apple-heads, too, can scan receipts, business cards and documents using Neat’s faster, yet more expensive, software and scanning system.

“Basically, it can scan any type of document, receipts, business cards, and other documents into a digital format using OCR and patented parsing technology that identifies different types of data on different documents,” Director of Marketing Jeff Vogel said.

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Ignite Philly 3 speakers announced

With the event only four days away, Ignite has published a list of the 16 speakers scheduled to present.

Included are several people who should be familiar to Technically Philly readers, including Andrew Rosenthal of Happier, Ben Kessler of Unbreaded, and Johnny Bilotta & David Martorana of Two Guys on Beer. All of the speakers have five minutes to present their topic of choice, and each presentation will have 20 slides that rotate every 15 seconds. The idea is to get a sampling of all of the great things happening in our fair city.

TP’s Brian James Kirk talked with organizer Geoff DiMasi, earlier this last month.

Ignite Philly starts at 7 p.m. this Saturday at Johnny Brendas. Admission is free.

Technically Not Tech: Unbreaded

Since Philly blog Unbreaded launched its sandwich crusade earlier this year, co-founders Ben Kessler and Jeff Vogel have been getting noticed by foodies all over the city. CityPaper’s MealTicket sought their sandwich sage, and Phoodie.info served them up a cold dish. When we called Kessler Sunday afternoon, we found that their stake (pun unintended but appreciated in hindsight) isn’t ending in Philly.

The co-founders are attracting interest from sandwich aficionados across the country, and have plans to expand to other cities. Unbreaded was featured on Philly’s Thrillist this morning, and the creators have been chatting with a national magazine editor; about what, Kessler won’t let on. But we can guess the conversation wasn’t about with-Whiz or without.

Kessler and Vogel got the idea for Unbreaded from sites like Digg, where user-submitted sandwiches that test the limits of white bread are popular, and Hamburger Today, a vegetarian’s worst nightmare. They liked what they saw – and not because they were hungry. They decided Philly’s sandwich culture needed a voice. And what better timing? As Kessler puts it, “sandwiches are the ultimate recession meal.”

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