Links: Second Lower Merion student sues over webcam, Peco to display digital artists and more

DEFINITE READS

• The Philadelphia Daily News reports that a second Lower Merion student has sued the school district over the webcam controversy.
• KYW reports on a Northern Liberties cell phone-photography art collection.
• ABC News reports on a trend of more websites selling class notes to students, including former DreamIT Ventures participant Notehall.com.

MIGHT BE OF INTEREST

• Washington Post tech columnist Cecilia Kang has a Q&A with University of Pennsylvania Professor Joseph Turow about online privacy.
• Society Hill’s own Science Cheerleader Darlene Cavalier guest blogs for Discover magazine on the origination of the BP oil leak cap.

GIVE A GLANCE

• The Philadelphia Business Journal reports that University City nonprofit biomedical research center Wistar Institute is planning a major new expansion.
• The Business Journal also reports that Peco and the University City Science Center are partnering to showcase digital artists on Peco’s Center City headquarters the first Friday of every month.
• The Business Journal also reports that CoverSports USA, the Kingsessing-based manufacturer of protective covers, has expanded — but is staying in Philadelphia with its 67 employees.

Every Friday morning, we make sure you didn t miss anything with Friday Tech Links.

VC Roundup: DreamIt in Forbes Magazine

Welcome to the VC Round-up, where we’ll parse through venture capital news related to Philadelphia-based private equity firms and the companies they fund. Subscribe to the roundup as an email newsletter. If you have any VC-related news to pass along to us, please drop us a line.

DEFINITE READS

Edit: Kerry Rupp clears up a few facts in the comments below.

DreamIt Ventures gets a feature in this month’s Forbes focusing on managing partners Steven Welch, Kerry Rupp, Michael Levinson and David Book. The story provides a digestible overview for those not familiar with the University City Science Center-based business incubator and provides lots of numbers and personal backstory for those more knowledgeable about the program. The most surprising fact uncovered by Forbes: none of the companies incubated by DreamIt have turned a profit. Look out for our Demo Day preview on Wednesday to get a sneak peak at some of the companies in this year’s class.

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Startup Roundup: American Society of Inventors event tonight, StarCite gets patent, VentureHacks teaches email

Introducing Technically Philly’s Startup Roundup. Here, we’ll parse out the small pieces that make our greater Startup ecosystem thrive. We want to keep you in touch with the innovations that we can’t quite get to covering, but that deserve highlight. Follow along with the Startup Roundup’s dedicated RSS feed. If you’ve got news to share, get in touch.

DEFINITE READS

We’re not sure how we missed this one, but nearly a dozen local well-known groups have come together to host an event with the American Society of Inventors, tonight at the University City Science Center, to talk about how to launch a successful entrepreneurial venture. We’d list all the organizations here, but gosh that’s a lot of text. Trust us, you know about ‘em. And it’s free, people.

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Friday Q&A: Steve Barsh, CEO of Packlate.com

Update: Minor copy edits. Changed logo.

As reported in this week’s Venture Capital Roundup, Steve Barsh has had a busy week.

The DreamIt Ventures managing partner got his tons of national press for his latest startup, Packlate.com, from TechCrunch, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. The company, based in University City (though with plans to move to West Conshohocken) aims to be a last-minute vacation booking service and has received funding from ETF Ventures and First Round Capital.

“It’s not a rocket ship yet, but it is kind of jiggling on the launchpad,” says Barsh.

Barsh says the idea has been brewing for years as he mentored young entrepreneurs at DreamIt while maintaining vacation properties in Utah.

“You know the saying ‘Those who do, do. And those who don’t, teach? I like to do both,” he says.

Currently he says he is still dedicating ten percent of his time to DreamIt but says he wants to focus most of his efforts on his new startup. We spoke with Barsh about Packlate’s future, how DreamIt can survive with preoccupied management and when we’ll be able to book a Jersey Shore vacation with Packlate.

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Startup roundup: P’unk Ave launching Apostrophe 1.0 CMS, Clio possible “household name” backing, Proton saves BP $3.7m

Introducing Technically Philly’s Startup Roundup. Here, we’ll parse out the small pieces that make our greater Startup ecosystem thrive. We want to keep you in touch with the innovations that we can’t quite get to covering, but that deserve highlight. If you’ve got news to share, get in touch.

DEFINITE READS

P’unk Ave will launch the first version of its open-source Apostrophe content management system on Wednesday. The developer says that the CMS has been used for several of its clients, including Duke University, Kiberton Waldorf School and the Environmental Management Assistance Program. We’ve wrote about the CMS in this roundup before, and after talks with co-founder Geoff DiMasi, we think the team is playing its release pretty low-key for the quality of the product. It might be DiMasi’s punk rock roots—ask him about seeing Fugazi back in the day.

Orpheus Media Research, developer of music analysis tool Clio, says in an to Technically Philly that after reaching out to investors with its full business plan, the new company has been “aggressive in reaching out to major industry players,” and is in partnership talks with two large content partners and three “household name” corporations for technology and funding. Additionally, after reducing its funding requirements, it is now seeking private equity partnerships with angel firms as opposed to venture capital. Get on that, investors.

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Friday Q&A: Steve Welch, candidate for Congress

Steve Welch’s business card could be three times the size of a normal person’s.

The Penn State grad founded the Mitos Group, a biotech company that grew to over 40 employees before it was sold to a Fortune 500 company when Welch was 29. Welch then co-founded DreamIt ventures, an early-stage incubator based in the University City Science Center. And, most recently he just fathered his second child.

But 32-year-old Welch, the new-father-entrepreneur-angel investor, is looking to add another job title to his resume: congressman.

Earlier this month, he launched his candidacy for the 7th congressional district of Pennsylvania with a video on his Web site.

Welch will become the Republican challenger to Democratic representative Joe Sestak. Sestak ultimately may not be his opponent, as he is said to be considering a showdown for the Democratic Senate seat against newly-minted Democrat Arlen Specter.

If elected, he would be the second youngest congressman, behind 28-year-old Aaron Schock (R- Minn.).

True to his past, Welch sees small business as the way out of the recession for the country and for Philadelphia. Welch says the level of spending and government impact on the free market is one of the primary reasons he is running. When we spoke, his second child was still on the way, and the thought that he would be born into debt was a motivation to act.

For the past year, Welch was an Eisenhower Fellow, which allowed him to travel the world taking notes on the best tactics for encouraging small business development.

“In my heart of hearts, I love seeing a need in the marketplace and rushing to fill that need. It’s the greatest rush in the world,” says Welch.

One plan he is fond of, he said, was the tactic of the government matching local early stage investments. That way, firms can decide what is the best investment, and the government can increase the flow of early stage capital with little to no additional labor or bureaucracy.

“We want the best in the world to land in Philadelphia,” he says, “that’s the greatest way to ensure long term success in this region.”

We chatted with Welch about small business in Philadelphia, and the effect of organizations like DreamIt and Ben Franklin Technology Partners.

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Quaker Bioventures invests in Rapid Micro Biosystems

Quaker BioVentures, a venture capital firm based in University City’s Cira Center, has been on a roll the past month.

In June, partner David King was named to the board of the University City Science Center and the company was profiled in the Wall Street Journal for shifting some of its resources from biotech to medical devices.

The good news continued yesterday when it was announced that Quaker was one of the Series A investors in Rapid Micro Biosystems, a company that makes technology to detect troublesome microbes that can slow down the drug-making process.

When Technically Philly asked for the exact share Quaker BioVentures invested, the company said it does not disclose amounts.

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Shop Talk: Scribnia out of private alpha, releases my Scribes

A screenshot of Scribnia's my Scribes feature, to be released tomorrow.

The Web runs on opinion.

We Digg, Stumble, rate and recommend everything from books to blogs and, if Scribnia gets its way, you will be able to add writers to the list.

Scribnia is a University City-based Web site that allows readers to rate and recommend authors, writers and bloggers on a one to ten scale. Users can leave comments and rank authors in categories based on their writing topic. For example, a political writer can be rated as more liberal or conservative, or a tech writer can be rated on a scale of whether they write more for the general public or for tech experts.

“Readers are actually starting not to just read one-off articles on sites like Digg, but [they are] finding authors that they care about and want to come back and read,” said co-founder Russell D’Souza.

The result is a growing database of content creators that can provide users with recommendations based on previous rankings. Rate, say, baseball writer Peter Gammons high and you may be recommended other baseball writers that Peter Gammons fans rated highly. Tomorrow, the site will roll out my Scribes, an RSS reader within Scribnia that will provide author recommendations based upon the feed items the users read.

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University City Science Center welcomes three new companies

University City incubator and research park the Science Center includes a series of facilities hugging the Market Street corridor between 34th and 38th streets. Photo courtesy of the Science Center.

Europe’s largest organization for advancing chemical sciences has landed.

The Royal Society of Chemistry, which has a worldwide network of members and an international publishing business, needed to set up an East Coast base to continue its expansion.

So, RSC and two other organizations, including a second foreign group making their first U.S. home in Philadelphia, have moved into the University City Science Center, the historic nonprofit� incubator and research park, according to a press release from the center [PDF].

With RSC, GADORE Center USA, an outpost of a German collaborative focused on renewable energy, is the newest participant in the center’s Global Soft landing program, which aims to help international companies develop a presence in the region’s life sciences and information technology markets. The program is housed at 3711 Market Street.

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