With New Funding And Microsoft Partnership, AboutOne Looks To Help Moms Stay Organized (TechCrunch)
AboutOne is based in Malvern.

Harleysville refutes claim of massive payout to board in Nationwide deal (Philadelphia Business Journal)

Comcast has new wireless strategy in deal with Verizon Wireless; Why its much more than a little spectrum sale

Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Bright House Networks Sell Advanced Wireless Spectrum to Verizon Wireless for $3.6 Billion (PR Newswire)
This apparently is Comcast's new wireless strategy. Knocks off speculation that it might have been interested in Clearwire, T-Mobile. Comcast will receive about $2.3 billion; companies will resell each other's services, and start joint venture to develop new innovations.
More to come.

With Verizon’s $3.6 Billion Spectrum Deal, Cable and Wireless Inch Closer (New York Times: Media Decoder)
Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett: “This is a REALLY big deal. Maybe the most significant deal the industry has ever seen. And that’s a pretty amazing thing to say for a deal where less than $4 billion changes hands.”


Comcast and Verizon Merge, Without Merging (MarketWatch Video)
Interview with All Thing D's Peter Kafka.

Gigaom's Stacey Higginbotham sees the deal as "the end of broadband competition".

Comcast Cable President Neil Smit's blog post on the deal.

CNET reports that Cable's partnership with Clearwire will soon end; turns out that Comcast had only sold Clearwire service to 30,000 of its subs.

Could an additional benefit be a reduction or perhaps eventual elimination of competition between Verizon's FiOS and Cable in some areas? Both companies say this won't happen, but I wonder.

Comcast's Government Relations crew (lobbyists) in DC may have a tough job on their hands selling this deal to the FCC and FTC.

Comcast up close to 4% on the day; Verizon basically flat.



permalink

Daily Links 12/2/2011: Benioff dreams of toppling Microsoft, Oracle and SAP

Investing in Ben Franklin Programs Now Pays Off in Future (Frederick J. Beste III, chairman of the board of Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Northeastern Pennsylvania)

Geek On A Train: Surveying the East Coast Startup Scene by Rail (Baltimore Sun: BaltTech)

Benioff's Dream: Toppling Microsoft, Oracle, And SAP (Information Week)
How many execs give 2 and a half hour keynotes?

Microsoft Predicted To Buy Netflix, LinkedIn In 2012 (Investor's Business Daily: Click)

Plosser: Fed Role Raises Inflation Risk (Bloomberg)
Gives speech in Philadelphia.

NBC faces higher fees as it kicks off football talks (New York Post)


OnScreen Summit 2011: Smit: Comcast's Platforms, Partnerships Drive Innovation
President Says MSO Will Release a New Product Every Quarter (Multichannel News)

Princton-based ALK Technologies Announces Worldwide Enterprise Solutions Group to Enhance Focus on the Global Transportation and Logistics Market (Business Wire)

PANL Under Pressure: Gabelli Says Corning Worries Overblown (Barron's: Tech Trader Daily)

Has Amazon Prime Met Its Match? (Motley Fool)
Some positive and negative remarks about Kynetic's ShopRunner; Google may be poised to enter market.



permalink

Dell Boomi Announces Development of Cloud-Based Master Data Management Solution; Unifying Data Across Applications in the Cloud (Business Wire)

Steve Case Launches $450 Million East Coast Venture Fund (Mashable)

Sprint swoops in with $1.6B deal to save Clearwire (Gigaom)

Clearwire CEO Prusch: We Got Our 'Big Three' In Sprint Deal (Forbes: Tech Musings)

Chicago Workers Sue Comcast
Claim Race Discrimination, Fetid Working Conditions (Multichannel News)

Comcast Hones 2-Pronged Business Attack (Light Reading Cable)

Verizon Told To Pull FiOS '#1 In HD Picture Quality' Ad Claim
Advertising Division of Better Business Bureau Issues Recommendation After Comcast Complaint (Multichannel News)

EDITORIAL: Pennsylvania crackdown on online sales tax sure to backfire (Lehigh Valley Live)

Amazon Executive Asks Congress to Address Online Taxes (Bloomberg)

Daily Links 11/30/2011: Clearwire reported to be reaching funding deal with Sprint

Thursday is D-Day for Clearwire (and Sprint) (Gigaom)

Clearwire seen reaching Sprint funding deal (Reuters via Baltimore Sun)

Netflix Viewing Seen Swelling U.S. Users’ Cable-TV Bills Next Year: Tech (Bloomberg)

You Bet Apple TV Is Coming, Says Apple Guru Gene Munster -- Here Are The Details (Silicon Alley Insider)


Comcast Business Services to hook up San Mateo with faster data (CED Magazine)

Jive Pushes Ahead With IPO, Seeking $117M (Bloomberg)
Jive has also been rumored recently to be a possible acquistion target of SAP.


Complaint: medical "copyright over your comments" contracts are illegal (Ars Technica)


Infragistics Growth Continues in Q3 2011 (PR Newswire)

U.S. Federal Reserve Beige Book: Philadelphia District (Text) (Bloomberg)



permalink

Daily Links 11/29/2011: Live Verizon FiOS TV Coming Very Soon to Xbox

Live Verizon FiOS TV Coming Soon to Xbox, Complete With Kinect Voice and Gesture Controls (PR Newswire)

Analyst: T-Mobile to Comcast, instead of AT&T? (Seattle Times)
Comcast has consistently said it doesn't want to own a major wireless network, a position Vice Chairman Michael Angelakis reiterated earlier this month. I believe they mean what they say, but that doesn't mean they don't have a long term interest in wireless as LTE becomes an important alternative to fixed-wire networks for many applications.

Motorola Mobility's Sanjay Jha & Dan Moloney discuss Moto's
set-top box plans (Video: Light Reading)

NetApp Taking on EMC Puts CommVault in Takeover Sights: Real M&A (Bloomberg)
CommVault is based in Oceanport, NJ.


TE Connectivity in Exclusive Negotiations to Acquire Deutsch (PR Newswire)
TE Connectivity (formerly Tyco Electronics) has its operational headquarters in Berwyn. The acquisition would be valued at about $2 billion.

Oracle, SAP, Infor: Three's a crowd (Computer Business Review)

Is SAP HANA about the “in-memory database”? (Vital BI)

Customer Sues Epicor After ERP Software Project Attempt Ends in 'big Mess' (PC World)

Mint Linux freshens up web searches
We've got our own engine. Swallow that, Google and Microsoft (The Register)
Teams up with Paoli-based DuckDuckGo.

Shop online, try it out in person: Kembrel gives hybrid retail sales the old college try (VentureBeat)
Opens small store location in Philly.

Cyber Monday? It was more like Mobile Monday, according to eBay & PayPal (VentureBeat)
And GSI Commerce.


Business incubator's future in peril as state cuts funding
Ben Franklin Technology Partners in Bethlehem trims payroll, helps fewer clients. (Allentown Morning Call)




permalink

Top Vanguard technology operations exec Michael Moore dies in cycle accident

Mutual Fund Wire is reporting that Mike Moore, a principal at Vanguard Group who recently became head of its technology operations, died on November 9 from injuries sustained in a motorcycle accident on November 6. He was 45.The accident, which occurred at a South Jersey motorsports park, was earlier reported by the Cherry Hill Courier Post.

Mutual Fund Wire says Vanguard spokesperson John Woerth confirmed in an email to them that it was indeed their executive who passed away.

Verizon has 6 months to re-engineer FiOS VOD (CED Magazine)

Comcast Gets Ready for CCAP (Light Reading Cable)

Comcast's metro E service easy as 1, 2, 3 (CED Magazine)

Social TV app BeeTV hits the deadpool (Gigaom)

EHR Adoption To Reach 80% By 2016
IDC cites Horsham-based NextGen Healthcare as a leader.

Highlights: Last week on Philly Tech News (11/21 to 11/27 2011)

I covered (via Webcast) QlikTech's first annual Analyst Day in New York and wrote about it here .

Philly area companies dominated the AlwaysOn 100 Top Mid-Atlantic private companies, which wlll be honored at the IMPACT–Venture Summit Mid-Atlantic this week at the Ritz Carlton Philadelphia.

Comcast CFO Michael Angelakis was named Vice Chairman of the corporation and had his contract extended through 2016, though he does not yet have a seat on the Board of Directors.

The hype campaign around HANA, SAP's in-Memory technology platform, continues, with one consulting firm calling it the biggest thing since the PC and others taking a more cautious, wait and see approach. Speculation is mounting that SAP may acquire an enterprise-oriented social networking platform, with Jive being one name mentioned.

First Round Capital's Josh Kopelman says that from a VC perspective, he thinks 2012 may look more like 2008 than 2011.

Dell Boomi's Bob Moul tweets: "proud to say it's been a great 1st year @Dell. have doubled the size of the @boomi business & next yr looks even better."


eBay reported Thanksgiving results at its eCommerce businesses included a a 345% increase in U.S. mobile sales this Thanksgiving vs. 2010 for GSI Commerce.

Lancaster-based appMobi celebrated Black Friday by open sourcing many of its HTML5 mobile development tools to developers.



permalink

Philly Tech People News 11/27/2011

N.J. Eyes Transformation After Naming New State CIO (Government Technology)

Karen Thomas Promoted to Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer for Main Line Health (Main Line Health Press Release)

SAP appoints Tom Kindermans as Senior VP (India Infoline News Service)

Ardmore Banking Advisors Appoints New Senior VP for Risk Management Consulting and Chief Counsel (PR Newswire)



Arris Taps New BigBand Leader (Light Reading Cable)

Fernando Romero to Head Sales at DailyCandy
Former Gilt City exec, named VP of advertising sales (Broadcasting & Cable)

Josh Kopelman: “I Think 2012 Will Look More Like 2008 Than 2011″ (TechCrunch)

Hitachi & Sony working with Apple on 4-inch iOS device, iPad 4 to see new display technology (Apple Insider)
I guess this means Universal Display's (Ewing, NJ) OLED technology is off the table for now?

Cyber Monday is especially busy workday in Louisville (Louisville Courier-Journal)