Highlights: Last two weeks on Philly Tech News (12/19/2011 to 1/1/2012)

I took an end of year look at Exton-based digital signage company Scala and had a conversation with its CEO, Tom Nix.

Boston-based OpenView Venture Partners, which invested heavily in Philly ventures in 2011, has raised another $99 million, and there may be more to come.

Safeguard Scientifics invested in two companies, including West Chester-based Hoopla Software, which makes leader scoreboards for Salesforce.com systems, and a Virginia based "Internet of Things" startup. Safeguard's other Internet of Things portfolio venture, Exton-based ThingWorx, announced a significant staff expansion.

A Federal judge threw out RICO charges against SAP in Marin County's (CA) lawsuit against SAP over
a failed software implementation. Marin County has a separate lawsuit against Deloitte, the consultant on the project.

Oracle's 2nd quarter results released in December fell short of expectations, and shook up the market outlook in the enterprise software business going in to 2012.

An FCC administrative judge ruled against Comcast on the charges it discriminated against the Tennis Channel in package placement; Comcast says it will appeal to the full commission. And Sprint sued Comcast and other cable companies over alleged violations of its VoIP patents, a move some see as a reaction to the recently announced proposed relationship between several cable companies and Verizon Wireless.

And Verizon Wireless quickly dropped a proposed plan to charge some customers $2 for paying their bills online or by phone..