Philly Tech Tidbits 9/20/2010: SCVNGR, IDEA2010, Tedx Philly

The New York Times on Saturday had an indepth article on the psychology of entrepreneurs, focused on SCVNGR founder Seth Priebatsch. SCVNGR started as a project at Princeton, went through Philly's DreamIt Ventures incubator in 20008, before being backed by Highland Capital Partners and eventually, Google Ventures. The company is now based in Cambridge.

IDEA2010 is coming to Philadelphia September 30
through October 2. The annual conference of the Information Architecture Institute, which serves User Interface Design professionals, will be held at the Independence Seaport Museum.

Philly finally gets its own TEDx. TEDx Philly will be held on November 18 at the Kimmel Center.

Philly area entrepreneur Gabriel Weinberg (search engine Duck Duck Go) is part of an informal group of angel investors called Hacker Angels, who describe themselves as hackers "in the good sense." The group's website says "we may provide feedback, advice, mentorship, hacking, investment and/or serve as advisors or independent board members, on an individual basis". Other members include AOL executive Roy Rodenstein, Delicious founder Joshua Schachter, Hotornot's Jim Young, and Punchfork founder Jeff Miller. Four of the five members recently participated in a funding of Boston-based Locately, which provides consumer location analytics using GPS data.

Microsoft Windows Phone 7 is supposedly going to be launched on October 11, and it faces a difficult challenge getting developer mindshare away from Google's Android and Apple. To get things going in Philadelphia, Microsoft has scheduled two events: a Windows Phone 7 Firestarter event this Wednesday the 22nd at Penn's Houston Hall (there is also an evening workshop that night), and a Windows Phone 7 Developer Launch on October 6 at the Park Hyatt Philadelphia.

Chattersource, a new website created by two Wharton students, Amy Cooper and Kristina Anderson, is intended to be a sort of Yelp targeted initially at Philadelphia-area college students. A school email address is required for each account.