Philly police to begin Segway patrols, please take them seriously

If you hang out on Main Street in Manayunk, you should begin seeing the Segway police patrols.

Officers on South Street, in University City, Center City and Southwest Philadelphia also begin using the new toys this week.

Try not to cringe at how ridiculous the two-wheeled, self-balancing, battery-powered vehicles may seem, because its role in law enforcement has been growing for years and doesn’t appear it will stop. More than 1,000 municipalities are using them for patrolling, according to the company.

Now, after a 10-day trial in April 2008, the Philadelphia Police Department is joining in.

The department announced yesterday that it received a donation of more than $60,000 toward the purchase of ten Segway PTs, according to a press release [PDF]. The funds came from the Philadelphia Police Foundation, a nonprofit that raises funds to purchase technology and other police equipment that are deemed outside the city’s budget. Yes, our police department takes charity.

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Events highlights for the week of June 1 – June 7, 2009

Now that summer is upon us, it’s getting harder to stay tethered to our computers.

Assuming the feeling is mutual, while we’re not expecting you to spend your evenings relaxing in parks or sipping cocktails on sidewalk cafes, we are sayin’ it’s an excuse to get to some local tech events.

There’s something going on every day of this week, if you have an hour (or five) to spare.

On Monday, Refresh Philly is brainstorming up ways to improve Philly with special guests Johnny Goldstein of Envizualize and Livia Labate of IA Design Games to help smooth out the process and explain how they get their ideas out on paper.

Tuesday, talk mobile apps for social change with the Net Tuesday crew, but don’t get too hippie-dippy on us. Web Analytics Wednesday is flying in two speakers from behavioral analytics firm Quantivo to discuss the obvious.

Drexel’s 2009 Entrepreneur Conference happens Thursday, an all-day event with a great lineup of speakers there to talk all things innovation and business.

Finally, on Saturday don’t miss HigherEdCamp, which we covered late last month. After hosting our own BarCamp unconference, we have high expectations for this meetup about all things post-secondary education.

All events listed on the event calendar are free to attend. Be sure to check our complete calendar for more information, or follow us past the jump.
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Friday Tech Links: Our life sciences sector rocks, the Commodore and More

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. See others here.

Our region’s life sciences sector ranked first in the “current impact” category, and second overall (to Boston, bah), in a biotechnology industry study conducted by the Milken Institute, according to a report by the Philadelphia Business Journal’s John George, a proud graduate from Temple University-Ambler. As we earlier suggested, this is really one of the more impactful, meaningful and substantiated stupid lists Philadelphia has been put in during recent years.

That news preceded the announcement of one of the year’s largest life sciences venture capital deals happening here. University City’s Avid Radiopharmaceuticals scored a $34.5 million financing, led by a San Francisco VC firm, but assisted by a couple of local boys, BioAdvance, also a Penn neighbor, and Safeguard Scientifics of Wayne, as also reported by George of PBJ.

California tries to ban violent video games for kids, a (sorta) regional Web site management company makes a big aquisition and a lot of messed up Craigslist stories you should read — in addition to our most trafficked post of the week — after the jump.

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Events highlights for the week of May 18 – May 26, 2009

Ready to take a road trip to a magical city that will give you easy access to multimillionaires, let you hook up with people to start the next great independent gaming studio and allow you to listen to a VP at AT&T talk about mobile media?

Well, save your SEPTA tokens, as Philly provides all of that and more this week.

First up is First Round Capitol’s office hours at the World Cafe Live. The event is an informal gathering to discuss all things startup with one of the region’s most well known venture capital firms and is modeled after a college professor’s office hours. If you are up for a short walk, stroll on over to the Cira Center afterward to PANMA’s Mobile Monday. There, listen to a panel stacked with talent discuss Mobile Marketing and Advertising.

If mobile isn’t your thing, make sure you can knock back a few brews with Phillyrb, the city’s Rails user group. We hear if you buy them a few they’ll talk about regular expression syntax for hours.

Continuing University City’s status as center of the tech event universe this week, PANMA is getting together at the Science Center to talk about SEO in 2009, which, we assume, does not involve the <blink> tag.

And lastly, Philly’s game developers are getting together at the Comcast Center to introduce themselves and talk about the future of the group.

All events listed on the event calendar are free to attend. Be sure to check our complete calendar for more information, or follow us past the jump.
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Events highlights for the week of May 11 – May 17, 2009

Hello, newly sunny Philadelphia, that’s a hell of a farmer’s tan you’ve got there.

Let’s keep that weekend energy going with our region’s active tech community. Half of our highlights are straight outta West Philly. It’s not bias, we swear! But if you just refuse to do anything West of the Schuylkill, our events calendar would be happy to schedule an appointment for you.

On Saturday and Sunday, help University City with some GPS mapping. The folks at Philly OpenStreetMap realized long ago that Google might one day threaten our existence so they’re mapping the world until it happens. How else are you gonna find the way to good Chinese restaurant when the Goog steals your identity and shuts down Maps?

Wednesday, academia will sign-up for Second Life, get harassed by creepy dudes and annoying tweens, and beg for a way to get the heck out of there while still applying some of those virtual concepts to higher education. With Wharton hosting, it might be a little smarter than our summary.

Monday, IndyHall will host a PHP Meetup featuring Sigurd Magnusson of Silverstripe, an open source CMS for the WordPress haters out there. Magnusson will even be taking feature requests, so give him some advice or he’ll ignore your feedback when the next version hits.

Philly Office Geeks are trying to spread the word about social media in the business community on Tuesday. It might be a clever attempt at getting network privileges for Facebook in the office, but we’d bet there’s a little more too it than that.

All events listed on the event calendar are free to attend. Be sure to check our complete calendar for more information, or follow us past the jump.
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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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Technically Not Tech: StealthRowing indoor rowing training

Twenty-four year old Daniel Harbuck agrees that necessity is the mother of invention.

Almost a decade ago, as a young high school rower, the University of Penn Wharton undergrad tried to convince friends to trudge through 10 feet of snow to help him train on Salt Lake in Utah, where he grew up. They wouldn’t.

Instead, he had a friend—”a football player, a big guy”—hold a boat in place in an indoor community pool.

“We were right next to 65-year-old ladies doing water aerobics,” Harbuck says. “It was a nice idea that clearly needed a lot of work.”

It was the first iteration of StealthRowing—a device the business student is developing that enables rowing athletes to experience on-the-water training while indoors.

Essentially, a row boat cockpit is anchored to the edge of a pool, enabling rowers to practice balance and teamwork. The stationary design allows them to be tied down in a pool—but not locked in—to train in any weather.

The technology is the first to offer rowing synchronization and balance training in an indoor setting. During interviews with 1,050 clubs affiliated with USRowing, 82 percent expressed interest in the project and purchase intent, he says.

“Those who know rowing understand the need for this,” he says.

Last week, Harbuck won $5,000 from University of Pennsylvania’s Weiss Tech House for the idea. That’s in addition to $10,000 won with a Wharton Venture Award last year. On Wednesday, he hopes to win $20,000 more in Wharton’s Business Plan Competition.

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Friday Q&A: Chuck Sacco, CEO of PhindMe Mobile

It’s a helluva school project.

While completing MBA degrees at Drexel University in 2006, Chuck Sacco, Doug Bellenger and two others founded PhindMe Mobile, with vague plans on improving the mobile Web-based interaction between businesses and their customers.

Since then, two have bailed and now CEO Sacco and COO Bellenger are leading a small team crafting the future of mobile Web direct-to-consumer advertising.

Sacco, who did his undergraduate work at St. Joseph’s University, has a few technology startups in his past and has learned from them, he said.

“For me, it’s always been about having platforms where you can plug in functions and take them into new markets as the world changes,” he said.

PhindMe, has to be an example of that – one on which Sacco was willing to bet. He and Bellenger put in about $80,000 of their own capital to launch, and last June they borrowed nearly $225,000 more from friends and family, according to the Philadelphia Business Journal. They launched in October, and they say they’ll break even as early as June – helped by the national attention they’ve gotten in advertising communities.

Below see how the South Jersey native – who says he has “always considered Philadelphia as home” – describes PhindMe’s future and for whom the alumnus of St. Joe’s and Drexel cheers in Big Five basketball.

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Friday Tech Links: State of the City, rumors of Comcast eyeing Sprint, and ‘one big diff’

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 Pew Charitable Trusts released its first annual State of the City, with a ton of interesting information. Maybe one of the best things the Inquirer has done for the city in a decade or more was squeezing former national political writer Larry Eichel out in November. He went to Pew and has been making moves since.

Have more link fun after the jump and find out just what the H that photo is of.

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Two regional research projects called among nation’s 10 best

Princeton researchers test their system for speeding Web access with low-cost, low-power laptops being targeted for use in developing regions. The researchers are, from left: Anirudh Badam, Larry Peterson, Vivek Pai and Marc Fiuczynski. Another collaborator, KyoungSoo Park, is not shown. (Photo: Frank Wojciechowski)

Two research projects were listed among the nation’s top 10 emerging innovations by Technology Review magazine.

The 2009 version of the annual list from the MIT-published magazine, considered the oldest technology publication in existence, recognized a technique for improving Web access for people in developing nations and a method for more cheaply and quickly sequencing DNA.

The first was the product of Princeton University researchers and the second by a group from BioNanomatrix, a University City biotech firm.

See more about the projects after the jump.

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