Daily Links 10/19/2010: Urban Outfitters' social marketing strategy

SAP's In-memory Analytics Boxes Set for November Release (PC World)

SAP Brings Customers More Choices to Benefit From Virtualization and Cloud Infrastructures (PR Newswire)

Why An SAP Press Conference Actually Held My Attention (Read Write Cloud)

Unisys lights up Xeon-based mainframes (Channel Register)

Bentley Systems #BeInspired 2010 Event Opens with Congratulations to “Resilient” Users of Infrastructure Solutions (Directions Magazine: All Points Blog)


Comcast Has Answers for FCC
Responses concerned with distribution agreements, rates, proprietary info (Broadcasting & Cable)

Comcast Campaign Giving Jumps by Half as U.S. Weighs NBC Deal
(Bloomberg)

Lockheed sees contract cuts, delays hurting 2011 (Reuters)

ESPN.com Launches New Shop Experience (GSI Commerce Press Release)
In collaboration with GSI Commerce.



Four Ways to Build Customers Into Your Brand (ClickZ)
Monetate board member Sam Decker on Urban Outfitters' social marketing strategy.

Unvarnished Has More Money and a New Name: Honestly (Gigaom)
First Round Capital's latest investment, San Francisco-based Honestly, has some doubters.


10 things: Handicapping Gartner's top technologies for 2011 (ZDNet Blogs)

Cadient Group Launches REVEALSM at 4th Annual Digital Pharma East on October 18-21, 2010 in Philadelphia (Business Wire)

Novartis Pharmaceuticals AG Selects Veeva CRM for Global Deployments (Business Wire)




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Daily Links 10/18/2010: European software company Quintiq establishes dual HQ in Philly Area

Clearwire Sets Big City 4G Launch Dates (Light Reading Mobile)

Quintiq Announces Dual Headquarters in North America and Europe
International B2B Technology Company Targets American and Canadian Growth in Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) and Supply Chain Planning (SCP) (PR Newswire)

AT&T Recovery Exercise to Simulate Network Disaster in Philadelphia Region (PR Newswire)

My history of (mostly failed) side projects and startups (Gabriel Weinberg's Blog)

Still No Break in Cablevision/Fox Impasse
Dispute Enters Fourth Day (Multichannel News)

What Was Fox’ Hulu Blackout Really All About? (Gigaom: NewTeeVee)
Another complication for the Comcast-NBCU approval process?

Comcast begins DNS security rollout
First in U.S. to protect customers against Kaminsky-style cache poisoning attacks (Network World)


Companies Join to Offer Iris ID, Data Flow System (Government Video)
Sarnoff of Princeton, ePortation of Philadelphia.

Is EMC the Next Step in Oracle’s Journey to $100B? (Gigaom)

Software AG acquires MDM vendor (Network World)

Is the traditional BI market in decline? (IT-Director.com)

Latest First Round Capital Investments: FREEjit, UberCab

First Round Capital has joined lead investors Polaris Venture Partners and True Ventures and others in funding FREEjit, an Orange County, CA, stealth startup-so stealth, in fact, that it has no website and there is very little information out there about it yet. Freejit founder Sean Ellis announced First Round's investment in a tweet on Friday.

This blog post by Polaris Venture Partners' Dave Barrett provides some background on FREEjit. Barrett describes founder Ellis as being "widely-known as one of the thought leaders of the freemium model", and says that FREEjit "will address the exploding opportunity created by freemium and trial offers for consumers, prosumers, internet services, content providers and next-generation software companies alike".

It was also announced late last week that First Round had lead a $1.25 million round in UberCab, a San Francisco startup that provides an iPhone app that helps people locate cabs more quickly.

First Round Capital's portfolio now consists of about 90 companies, according to its website, although that number includes some of its exits. An SEC filing discovered last week indicates that it has just raised a new fund of at least $126.4 million. (Josh Kopelman told PE Hub that they are not commenting yet on the new fund, which probably means its still open.)




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News Corp. Tries Fox.com, Hulu As Pawn In Retrans Battle With Cablevision (paidContent)
Still no Fox on Cablevision, according to recent tweets. Which means many Phillies fans can't see game. I'm not taking sides, just saying it isn't right.

Philly Tech People News 10/17/2010

Reuben Hendell Joins GSI Commerce as CEO of Global Digital Agency Business
Digital marketing leader will also serve as Chief Strategist for Global Marketing Services division (Business Wire)

QlikTech Appoints John Burris To Its Board of Directors (Business Wire)

Thomas A. Corcoran Joins ONPATH Technologies as Chairman of the Board (PR Newswire)

Halfpenny Technologies Continues Focus on Growth by Adding Four Industry Veterans to Executive Team (Business Wire)

SAP Appoints New Head of Global Communications (PR Newswire)

Tiffany Baehman Named Vice President and General Manager of AT&T Mobility & Consumer Markets for Greater Philadelphia Region (PR Newswire)

Ross Thomson Rounds out Roska Healthcare Advertising team
(Med Ad News)

imc2 health & wellness Welcomes Medical Science Director
Linda Kay Brings Over 30 Years of Experience to the Agency (Marketwire)

OnPath Technologies of Marlton raises $3.1 million

OnPath Technologies of Marlton has apparently raised $3.1 million in equity, according to an SEC filing picked up by the website Formds.com.

A 2007 spinoff from Brocade Communications, OnPath provides scalable connectivity and monitoring solutions for high-performance networks. OnPath has also recently announced several senior management changes.




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Daily Links 10/15/2010: First Round Capital raises new $126 million fund

Josh Kopelman’s First Round Capital Quickly Reloads with $126.4M (PE Hub)

NBC’s Soft Spots Will Be Comcast’s Problem Soon (Wall Street Journal: Deal Journal)

Comcast-NBCU merger review expected to go into 2011: analyst (Washington Post: Post Tech)


Cable Guys Buck Up for BNI Video (Light Reading Cable)

icueTV’s t-Commerce Application Selected as a Finalist for CTAM’s “Get Interactive Awards” (Business Wire)
Haven't heard much from Cherry Hill's icueTV in the past year.


Comverse unloads Ulticom to Platinum Equity for $90m
New-Jersey based company has long been on the shelf and is the first of Comverse's subsidiaries to be offloaded. (Haaretz)
Ulticom’s shareholders cash out (Inorganic Growth)

Alphion Finds GPON Success in India (Light Reading Asia)
Alphion is based in Princeton Junction.

10 Lessons Learned from the HP-Oracle-SAP-NY Times Saga (CIO.com)

Herley Industries reports $3 million 4Q net loss (AP via Bloomberg Business Week)


Employees of Email Marketing Company Take Vow Not To Sleep
AWeber Communications Hosts 24-Hour Video Game Marathon to Benefit Local Children's Hospital (PR Web)




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Daily Links 10/14/2010: Verizon stores to begin selling iPad later this month

Clearwire’s Spectrum Is The Best Thing It Has Going For It—So Why Sell? (mocoNews.net)

Verizon Stores, Not To Be Outdone, Will Sell The iPad On October 28 (TechCrunch)

Business Journal’s Philadelphia 100 honored (Philadelphia Business Journal)

FCC Votes to Change CableCARD Rules
Move meant to spur competition in cable digital set-tops (Broadcasting & Cable)

Moody's Revises Cable Sector Outlook
Sluggish Economy, Increased Competition Weigh on Sector (Multichannel News)

Comcast targets Lone Star State, causing big money to flow (Washington Examiner)


Microsoft Aims at Salesforce.com With CRM Offer (PC World)
Also to reveal new plans for linking its Dynamics ERP offering with SAP ERP.

SAP's Strategy For The CRM Battle (Forbes)
Interview with Jujhar Singh, SAP senior vice president of CRM Solution Management.

Mozilla Taps SAP Executive as New Chief (New York Times: Bits)

Oracle: Citi Sees BMC, CERN, MLNX As Potential Deal Targets (Barron's: Tech Trader Daily)

The next evolution of investor 'office hours' (Fortune: The Term Sheet)

Viridity Energy and the University of California San Diego Awarded $1.6 Million to Optimize Solar Deployment on UCSD Campus Microgrid (Business Wire)




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Daily Links 10/13/2010: Lockheed sells Valley Forge consulting unit EIG for $815 million

Lockheed Sells EIG Consulting Unit to Veritas Capital (Bloomberg)
EIG is based in Valley Forge.

Sony’s Google TV-Powered Devices Have Arrived (Mashable)

Clearwire Said to Seek Up to $5 Billion in Spectrum Auction (Bloomberg)

Philly's their game
City places and faces enliven a first-of-its kind app coming from a flourishing indie game community. (Philadelphia Inquirer)

Joe Nocera Pleads Ignorance in Fiancée-Based Conflict of Interest (Gawker: Valleywag)


SAP Workflow use spreading beyond financials to compliance, utilities, HR (SearchSAP.com)

QlikTech : There is a Huge Untapped Opportunity in BI (Channel World)

Almac Successfully Moves its Clinical Technologies Business Unit Into New North American Headquarters (PR Newswire)

Salesforce.com and Veeva Systems Announce Expanded Alliance to Serve the Global Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology Industry (Business Wire)
Though based in California, Veeva has much of its sales and client services functions in Malvern.

NextGate and NextGen Healthcare Form Partnership to Deliver Health Information Exchange Solutions (Business Wire)

Drexel Engineers May Soon Replace E-Z Pass Box with Transparent Antenna (PR Newswire)

Context Capital Partners invests in hedge fund Betzwood Partners, LP

Context Capital Partners is a Bala Cynwyd-based private equity firm that invests in and provides operational and management support to other actively managed investment funds. It manages about $300 million, raised from both individuals and institutions. Founded in 2005, Context had previously invested in three sectors: distressed real estate, small banks, and RV parks. Despite the economic problems that have ocurred since then, the first two sectors have worked out rather well for them, according to Ron Biscardi, Context's managing partner, though the investments in RV parks haven't performed too well because of the effects of the credit crunch on that market.

Now Context is entering a new area; it announced last month it was investing in a hedge fund for the telecommunications, media and technology sectors. The fund, Bala Cynwyd-based Betzwood Partners, LP, was formed in 2009 by David Sung, who had previously run a similarly focused fund at Susquehanna International Group. The size of Context's investment was not disclosed. As a hedge fund, Betzwood is managed to be "market neutral" and to minimize risk by taking both long and short interests. One hypothetical example of what Betzwood might do would be to base an investment decision on a detailed comparative analysis of two stocks like Comcast and Time Warner Cable. It requires strong skills in fundamental financial analysis and a firm grasp in the underlying technologies and market forces that drives these companies.

Sung, who grew up in North Jersey, attended Villanova as an undergrad and also recieved an MBA from NYU's Stern School and is a CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst). Bascardi said Sung had excellent results at Susquehanna, and that Betzwood had also performed well since its founding.




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Daily Links 10/12/2010: Lower Merion Laptop Spying case settled for $610,000

Google to Invest in Mid-Atlantic Wind-Power Project (Bloomberg)

Pa. school district laptop spying case settled for $610,000
Lower Merion school district near Philadelphia accused of spying on students through webcams (Network World)

BNI Video helps cable providers compete with Web TV (VentureBeat)
Backed by Comcast among others.
BNI Video Press Release.

Internet Advertising Hits New Revenue Record (Mashable)

Global CIO: In Oracle Trial, HP Might Pay Higher Price Than SAP (Information Week)

SAP's Sikka: "I am not a donut." True. And he wowed the SAP TechEd crowd (ZDNet Blogs)

SAP's NetWeaver Isn't Dead Yet (PC World)

Ulticom To Be Acquired By Platinum Equity At $8.07 A Share
(Barron's: Tech Trader Daily)
Ulticom Inc. Agrees to Be Acquired by Affiliate of Platinum Equity (Business Wire)
Ulticom is based in Mount Laurel.

Orchestrall and Newtouch Form Strategic Alliance to Help US Businesses Gain Low-Risk China Access (Business Wire)

The Keys To Building Health Care IT Companies (Forbes.com)




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