Youth and veteran groups protest virtual army centers (ars technica)


Local Planet Completes Seed Round Funding
Philadelphia Start-Up to Help Families Make Better Purchasing and Ownership Decisions (Marketwire)

Waste Management: Dropping SAP Took Toll on Earnings (PC World)

Oracle aims at Microsoft with upgraded Beehive collaboration (IDG via Reuters)

Why Comcast Has To Worry About Hulu (Silicon Alley Insider)

Liberty splits off DirecTV into new larger unit (Reuters)

Technitrol Reports Q109 Results, Board Declares Dividend (Business Wire)

Heartland Payment Systems' PCI Compliance Is Reinstated (Dark Reading)

Rohm and Haas’ Phila. HQ building for sale (Philadelphia Business Journal)

GSI Commerce and Bath & Body Works Extend E-Commerce Agreement to 2015 (PR Newswire)

Agilence to Provide Effective Loss Prevention Solution for Retailers Through Integration with Axis Network Video Products (Business Wire)

Money for health information technology (WHYY)

CenTrak Introduces World's Thinnest Active RFID Tag (PR Web)



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Philly Tech Events

New AGI leader focuses on growth (Daily Local News)

Losses at Unisys run into Q1
Japan stalls mainframe deals (The Register)

Quarterly Shipment Numbers: Q1 2009 (Media Experiences 2 Go)

Flaw found in electronic voting machines
Deleted votes don't register on audit logs and could go uncounted (Allentown Morning Call)

Auditor general raises Rendell's hackles (Philadelphia Inquirer)



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People News 5/3/09

Sujit Banerjee Joins Element Partners
(PE Hub)

David R. King to Receive MAC Alliance Entrepreneurial Award
Raymond Rafferty Entrepreneurial Excellence Award to Be Presented at Annual Awards Luncheon (Business Wire)

ExpertPlan Hires John Farmakis as EVP of Sales, Marketing and Business Development (PR Web)

WorldGate Builds for Growth with Announcement of New Senior Management and New Board Member (Business Wire)

MTI Committed to Maximizing Program Efficiencies
Dora Hauptman Hired as Director, Project Management (Marketwire)

Michael J. Donahue Joins LiquidHub Board of Directors (Business Wire)

LiquidHub Adds to Board of Advisors (Business Wire)

Emtec Hires New Director of Pursuit Management for Systems Division (Business Wire)

Codima Inc. Expands North American Sales Operations – With Executive Appointments and Launch of Regional Offices (Business Wire)

Pennsylvania NanoMaterials Commercialization Center Approves Technical Advisory Chair, Hires Project Manager (PR Newswire)

Rosetta Gyimesi joined QVC as Vice President of Application Services. Previously, she was VP and senior information officer at financial-services firm AIG.



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Study: Philly Lags in Entrepreneurial Spirit?

The Wall Street Journal's Venture Capital Dispatch reports on a Kauffman Foundation study of entrepreneurial activity in the US, that shows Philadelphia lagging way behind among the top 15 metro areas in the country (see Table 11) in terms of the percentage of the adult population starting new businesses.
I'm not sure what this all means; of course, the data includes anything from a home repair business to a one person consulting shop so it is not really a measure of high tech activity. And Seattle and Boston, two areas I would think rank pretty highly, are 14th and tied for 12th respectively in the Kauffman study.

Electronic Jewelry at the Wexler Gallery

An interesting new exhibit, "NEOTERIC MATTER 2", opens at the
Wexler Gallery on North 3rd Street today. The exhibit, curated by Daniella Kerner, Associate Professor at Temple's Tyler School of Art, will focus on works of jewelry employing advanced materials, new media and digital technology.
Among the items to be featured is Universal Display Corporation's (Ewing, NJ) flexible OLED (organic light emitting diode) bracelet. Designed by Emory Krall of Universal Display, the bracelet features a wrap around electronic OLED display using Universal Display’s phosphorescent OLED materials on a flexible metallic substrate.
There will be an opening reception today (May 1) from 5 to 8 at the Wexler as part of First Friday.

Daily Links 5/1/09: SAP opens "green" building in Newtown Square

New Building at SAP North America's Philadelphia-Area Campus Features Energy-Efficient, Sustainable Design (PR Newswire)

Oracle to expand Web-based software offerings: source (Reuters)


Comcast's $1B Bandwidth Plan
(Light Reading: Cable Digital News)

The Problem With Cable Is Television (New York Times: Bits)

InterDigital Announces Changes to Its Board of Directors to Re-Establish NASDAQ Compliance (Business Wire)

Prophetic Victory: NIR Diagnostics Wins Wharton Business Plan Competition Michelson Grand Prize with Device That Can Predict Wound Treatment Complications (Business Wire)

SES Reports Strong First Quarter (Satellite Today)

Intelligroup® Reports Q1 2009 Revenue of $30.9 Million, Operating Income of $1.8 Million and EPS of $0.02 (Business Wire)

Second time’s a charm for I-many? (Inorganic Growth)

Eastern Pa. newspaper cuts 52 jobs (Lancaster Online)
The Reading Eagle.

'Morning Call' of Allentown, Pa., Cuts 70 Jobs (Editor & Publisher))



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Daily Links 4/30/09: Comcast almost doubles Free Cash Flow

Comcast shares rise after solid results (Marketwatch)
Comcast Reports Strong Q1 Cash Flow
Measure Up 95% To $1.4 Billion; Basic-Subscriber Losses Not As High As Projected (Multichannel News)

Comcast viewers could lose NFL Network tonight
(Philadelphia Inquirer)
Update: The Inquirer now reports that Comcast will not pull the plug tonight as negotiations with the NFL continue.

Disney to Acquire 30% Hulu Stake, Full ABC Shows on the Way: Report (Wired Blogs: Epicenter)

Motorola’s Loss Widens as Sales Fall Short on Handset Slump (Bloomberg)
Motorola Cable And Video Group Sales Fall 12% (Multichannel News)

Advanta Reports First Quarter 2009 Results (Business Wire)


Duck Duck Go: Silly Name, Interesting Search Engine (Read Write Web)
Duck DucK Go was founded by Gabriel Weinberg and is located in Valley Forge.

University City Science Center Reaches Out to Entrepreneurs (Business Wire)

Duffield Takes On Oracle, SAP
The PeopleSoft founder's software startup raises $75 million. (Forbes)

A Cloudy Summit for SAP CEO Léo Apotheker (Business Week)

What does SAP have to say about the Oracle-Sun deal? (SAP Watch)

Innovative Solutions & Support, Inc. Announces Fiscal 2009 Second Quarter Financial Results
Revenues Up 53% from Year Ago Quarter, Operating Margin of 13.0% and Earnings Per Share of $0.08 in Second Quarter
(Business Wire)

CardioNet, Inc. Reports First Quarter 2009 Financial Results (Business Wire)

ERT Reports First Quarter 2009 Results (PR Newswire)

CDI Corp posts quarterly loss, sees lower Q2 sales (Reuters)

'Pink slip' party is a sign of the economic times (Montgomery News)

Paragon Technologies Voluntarily Delists and Deregisters Stock (PR Newswire)





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Daily Links 4/29/09: SAP License Revs off 33%

SAP’s First-Quarter License Revenue Misses Estimates (Bloomberg)
SAP Hacks At Costs (Forbes)

SAP Agrees to Delay Full Enterprise Support Price Rise (PC World)

GSI Commerce Reports Fiscal 2009 First Quarter Operating Results (PR Newswire via MSN Money)
Digital River, GSI Commerce Q1 Beats; Outlooks Weak (Barron's: Tech Trader Daily)

Tyco Electronics results beat expectations (Reuters)

Revenue and Profits Plunge at Sun Microsystems (New York Times)

IDS Scheer AG: IDS Scheer doubles EBITA to EUR 8.2 million and earnings margin to 9.1% (Ad Hoc News)
IDS Scheer's North American headquarters are in Berwyn.

Web.com Buys Solid Cactus (PE Hub)

LLR Partners to Acquire I-many (Marketwire)

Time Warner Makes It Official: AOL Spinoff Is Coming (All Things Digital: Media Memo)

Comcast Earnings Preview: I Fear Estimates Will Take Another Leg Down (Seeking Alpha)

Workday lands $75 million in venture funding (ZDNet Blogs)
That's a lot of venture money.

Siemens tops forecasts, cuts outlook
Energy, healthcare divisions help drive growth; more cost reductions planned (Marketwatch)

Wolters Kluwer Health Delivers On-Demand Market Data to the Pharmaceutical Industry, Powered by QlikView
Combination of QlikView and Netezza Data Warehouse Appliance Provides Easy Access to Key Sales Analytics (Business
Wire)

Insatiable APP-etite
Applications for the iPhone seem nearly infinite. Some are invaluable and some - inane. (Philadelphia Inquirer)

AllenPort(R) Announces Strategic Alliance with Microsoft to Include Microsoft Office Applications as Part of the Virtual File Cabinet (PR Newswire)

Integration Featured at SaaS Slam 2009 in Boston (The Boomi Blog)



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Daily Links 4/28/09: Specter Changes Parties

Specter To Switch Parties (New York Times: The Caucus)

Comcast Has Fundraising Plans (TheStreet.com)

Comcast turns down Joost, company still shopping itself (Fierce Online Video)

Vishay Reports Results for First Quarter 2009 (Business Wire)
Revenue falls 39%.

Unisys Announces First-Quarter 2009 Financial Results
Company Makes Progress in Turnaround Program, Reporting Lower Operating Expenses and Improved Cash Flow (Business Wire)
Unisys Q1 Results Light; Expects Debt Restructure Soon (Barron's: Tech Trader Daily)

Kulicke & Soffa Reports Results for Its Second Fiscal Quarter 2009 (Business Wire)

Cablevision Goes for U.S. Broadband Speed Record (New York Times: Bits)

Report: Verizon, Microsoft working on 'Pink' phone (CNET News)

CardioNet Addresses Analyst Report on Reimbursement Speculation (Business Wire)

Phila. cell phone bill now law, could jeapordize state funding (Philadelphia Business Journal)

SAP-Teradata Alliance Goes Beyond the Database (Intelligent Enterprise)

Bio-Imaging Technologies and Phoenix Data Systems Unify Service Offerings as BioClinica™ (Business Wire)

Quality, Value, Convenience…And Profitability In Nine Months (Wall Street Journal: Venture Capital
Dispatch)
The power of QVC.

News Innovation Viewed from Twitter (Poynter
Online)

Electronic Medical Records: Challenges to the President’s Plan to Digitize Healthcare (HealthNewsDigest.com)
Commentary by Dr. James Pierce, chair of the Bioinformatics and Computer Science Department at University of the Sciences.

DCS and NextDocs Partner to Deliver Compliance Without Complexity (Business Wire)



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Belated Wrap: Entrepreneur Expo

I spent the morning and early afternoon of April 2 in the cavernous halls of the Pennsylvania Convention Center attending the AIIM Expo trade show. It is an enormous and rather depersonalizing space; I think they could have played a football game just within the Hewlett-Packard exhibit area. So in the evening I headed over to the Philly Startup Leaders Entrepreneur Expo at the Science Center to find a lot of people packed into a small space, with each of the 50+ exhibitors having a table perhaps four feet long.
My definite preference was for the latter. There was an air of genuine enthusiasm and excitement, both on part of the attendees and the exhibitors. I was probably familiar with about half of the companies that where there, but came across some very promising relative newcomers. One that was particularly interesting to me was RJMetrics, a provider of business intelligence tools for web-oriented businesses .
The two young partners, Jake Stein (a Penn Grad) and Robert J. Moore (Princeton), were working at a major VC firm and began developing the concept for their product after realizing the firm needed a better tool to monitor key performance metrics from their many web-based portfolio companies. After going out on their own, Stein and Moore developed a dashboard display system (see demo) that collects and analyzes data from the database behind a website, and displays it on a series of charts and graphs that customers can dynamically manipulate and edit. Perhaps most significantly, the company also says its "software combs through thousands of analytical dimensions and extracts the key performance indicators that will drive growth in your business". How they do that I'm not quite sure, but I guess that's their secret. RJMetrics, based in Collingswood, NJ, started up last year, obtained its first few customers early this year. and has gotten this far on about $15,000 so far.