CardioNet shares sink on reimbursement rate cut (Reuters)
CardioNet shares down 33% on the day.

Unisys Provides Preliminary Second-Quarter 2009 Financial Results and Announces Price at Which Common Stock Will Be Issued in Private Debt Exchange Offers (Business Wire)

Home Box Office and Comcast to Launch HBO® and Cinemax® on Broadband for the First Time Nationally Through On Demand Online (Business Wire)

WorldGate settles with Mototech
(Philadelphia Business Journal)

Microsoft Steps Up Talks With Potential Razorfish Buyers (PaidContent)

Why Microsoft Isn't Likely to Sell Razorfish (Ad Week)

Study: Brands Must Do Better in Social Media (MediaPost: Online Media Daily)
Razorfish study.

Philadelphia's stake in plans for massive lithium-ion battery factory in Ky. (Philly.com: Philly Inc)

Pipeline Buys 3D Markets for Options (Traders Magazine)
3D Markets was based in New Hope.

iGuard.org Expands Reach of Medication Safety Alerts and Recalls to Microsoft HealthVault Members (Business Wire)

New iPhone Mobile Register App Helps Keep You in the Green (PR.com)

OUT OF THE BLUE Produces New Interactive Patient Videos For Top Pharmaceutical site (PharmaLlive)

Neo-Pangea Teams with Wal-Mart to Launch 3-D Zone (Philly AD Club News)

A New Venture (Bickel Blog)



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Philly Tech Events Calendar

People News 7/12/09

Lori Schultz Joins Yoh as President
Current President, Bill Yoh, Becomes Chairman and Assumes New Role as Chief Customer Officer for Parent Company Day & Zimmermann (Business Wire)

OKI Data Americas Announces Reorganization of Management Team
Reorganization Will Optimize Communications with Tokyo-Based Parent Company OKI Data Corporation (Business Wire)

Core Solutions, Inc. President Selected as SATVA Board Secretary (eMediaWire)

Cable price controls fast disappearing (Philadelphia Inquirer)

Olympics channel hits roadblock
USOC, Comcast raise issue with network IOC sez USOC channel jumped the gun (Variety)

Failure To Lift Off
VOD Posts Solid Growth, But It's No 'Killer App' (Multichannel News)

Verizon: Get off home phone
Union says co. wants to exit land-line business (Boston Herald)

Is Oracle getting ready to kill OpenSolaris? (Computerworld Blogs)

PERSONAL LANDMARK MOMENT: MY FIRST PATENT: ON THE DESIGN OF COMCAST’S FAN PLAYER
(code zen)


Ubuntu's maker: Chrome OS 'no slam dunk' just because Google announces it (Computerworld)

Daily Links 7/10/09: Advanta Lays Off Half Its Workforce; More Gannett Cuts in Jersey

Dentsu To Buy Razorfish? (BD Recruitment)

Today's "Heard on the Street" column in the Wall Street Journal (subscription required) suggests that the trend towards imposing sales taxes on electronic retailers like Amazon that do not have a physical presence in a state may benefit GSI Commerce, which already collects sales taxes for many of its clients that do have a "brick & mortar" presence.

TAGSYS Enhances RFID Infrastructure for Libraries (Business Wire)

Lockheed-Moorestown wins Japan work (Philadelphia Business Journal: Technology Blog)

Comcast Technician Arrested In Oregon Robbery
Check-Cashing Store Employee Hit in Head With Crowbar (Multichannel News)
I should create an entire section called "Weird Comcast News". There is an endless supply.

Starz Joins Comcast OnDemand Online (NewTeeVee)

Advanta to lay off half its employees (Associated Press via Forbes)

Gannett cuts 125 jobs from N.J. papers (Cherry Hill Courier-Post)
Probably more cuts also at the Wilmington News Journal, but haven't heard about them yet.

Geek Weekend: Philadelphia, PA
(CrunchGear)

SEO with Duck-Duck-Go Founder, Gabriel Weinberg (DreamIt Ventures Blog)

Wayne-based website integrates medicine, consumer-directed care (Keystone Edge)



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hhgregg Coming to Philly Area

The demise of Circuit City and Tweeter left the Philadelphia area with a lack of big box competition to consumer electronics retailing giant Best Buy. But new entrants are looking to fill the void.
Sixth Avenue Electronics has already opened a store in Montgomeryville, with another in the works in Wilmington and others to come. And yesterday hhgregg, a rapidly growing Indianapolis-based retailer, announced it will enter the Philadelphia market and other mid-atlantic states beginning in their 2011 Fiscal Year which begins in April 2010. The company plans to open between 40 and 45 new stores during fiscal 2011, with the majority of these new stores located in large and mid-sized metropolitan markets in the Mid-Atlantic region, including Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. It has already executed leases for several of the stores to open in FY 2011.
hhgregg currently operates 112 stores in Indiana, Ohio, and several southeastern states.

Daily Links 7/09/09: The Tug of War For Razorfish; First Round helps fund CoTweet

Inside The Tug Of War For—And Within—Razorfish (paidContent)

Twitter CRM Service, CoTweet, Raises Series A Funding; Launches Public Beta. (TechCrunch)
CoTweet is based in Hershey, and First Round Capital participated in the funding.
(Update: So much for Hershey. CoTweet will be relocating to San Francisco.)

Help me rename "Lifestyle Business" (RedeyeVC)

SAP: Is the worst over? (ZDNet Blogs)

Comcast Finally Launches DNS Redirection
An additional revenue stream thanks to your butterfingers... (Broadband Reports)

DOJ Says Murtha Earmark Money Was Illicitly Distributed (Roll
Call)

Wayne firm a force for change, transparency in money management (Keystone Edge)

Local companies thrive with Apple
Catering to Mac owners proves a viable business (Baltimore Sun)
On MacMedics, which also serves the Philly area.

Crime lab saves energy costs by turning up heat in the data center (IT World)

TiVo Buddies Up With Best Buy
Companies Sign Five-Year Marketing and Product-Development Pact (Multichannel News)



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Video: 15 year old Philadelphia hacker Ari Weinstein (Wall Street Journal)

The Impasse Over Ben Franklin Technology Partners

The negotiations over the Ben Franklin Technology Development Authority's (the umbrella organization for Ben Franklin Technology Partners) budget remain pretty much stalled along with the overall budget impasse, it appears. Governor Rendell has reduced his request from $40 million to $35 million, coming a little closer to the $20 million proposed by the Republicans in the State Legislature. The previous budget allotment for the program was $50.7 million. I asked Terry Singer, Director of Statewide Affairs for BFTP in Harrisburg, to share some historical trends in the program's budget and the breakdown of expenditures.
The amount allocated to the regional BFTPs has been absolutely flat for at least the past six years at $27,611,000. The remaining $23 million or so goes to the state level, and the total pie was divided as follows for FY 2008-2009 (July 1, 2008 – June 30, 2009), though this chart actually represents $60 million since it includes a $10 million carry over from the previous year:



                (Source: Ben Franklin Technology Development Authority)

While I am personally not a big fan of government intrusions into private equity markets, I don't think BFTP is a massive program. It is also professionally managed, considered as a model by other states, and seems protected from most kinds of political interference in its investment decision making processes, as far as I can tell. I know many Philly entrepreneurs have have benefited from and succeeded through the program. And I haven't seen a word recently from anyone in the Legislature being critical of it.
On the other hand I agree with Joe DiStefano's assessment of the impact analysis produced by BFTP as being overblown. And it is only one of a number of programs that Republicans in the State Legislature are targeting to avoid Rendell's proposed 16% income tax hike which is something that would not be good for the State's economy at this time.
Hopefully, they will find a good compromise.

Daily Links 7/08/09: Comcast to Launch Olympic Channel

Google Chrome OS: A Scramble to Say Nothing (GigaOM)

Venture fund raising drops to six-year low in first half of 2009 (WRAL: Local Tech Wire)

U.S. Olympic Committee, Comcast Launching Olympic Cable Network (Bloomberg)

Hasso Plattner Calls for In-Memory OLTP Column Stores (Intelligent Enterprise)

Is there innovation in SAP’s SCM software strategy? (IT Knowledge Exchange: SAP Watch)

As Gannett’s Newspapers Suffer, Digital Side Sees Growth, More Hiring And Acquisitions (paidContent)

Technology's unclear impact on health care (Knowledge@Wharton via Wilmington News Journal)


Motorola sells FTTN family to CTDI (Fierce Telecom)

Devon IT Presents New Thin Client Model
A very... expansive client, one might say (Softpedia)

CenTrak Releases New Temperature Tag for Healthcare (PR Web)

Clearwire Officially Adds Las Vegas to WiMAX Cities. There’s Many More to Go. (MostReviews.com)

Ex-baseball star and entrepreneur Lenny Dykstra files bankruptcy (Reuters)

Fire at Comcast cable junction investigated as possible arson (ABC4)
Fire that destroyed W.Va. cable station ruled arson (Charleston Daily Mail)
These are two entirely different incidences.

Rendell's Office Indicates He Supports Wine Vending Machine Concept (KYW NewsRadio)
I would imagine the selection wouldn't be too great.

Bio-Imaging Technologies, Inc. Shareholders Approve Company’s Name Change to BioClinica, Inc. (Business Wire)




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