Novotorium accepts first tenant: Zuppler

Tom Paine

Novotorium , the Langhorne-based business accelerator started by Mike Krupit that launched late last year, today announced it had accepted the first company into its program: Zuppler. Founded by Shiva Srinivasan, Zuppler provides full-service restaurant portals that offer online ordering, table reservations, customized restaurant websites, ratings and other functions. Zuppler also manages the processing of the orders and ensures that the orders are received and confirmed by the restaurant. Its portals also have restaurant listings, events, coupons, menu, reviews etc. Originally started in India as aPlaceToDine.com two years ago, the company migrated to the US as Zuppler and currently services about 100 restaurants located mostly in the Chicago area.

Shiva earned a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Bangalore University and a master’s degree in computer science from Drexel University, and has 15 years of professional experience.

See the announcement from Novotorium's website.



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Daily Links 1/3/2012: RJMetrics raises $1.2 million

A Renewal Of Enterprise Landscapes
How the HANA in-memory technology is helping transform businesses (VISHAL SIKKA, CTO, SAP)

2012: the year of cannibalisation in enterprise land? (Dennis Howlett/ZDNet Blogs)

RJMetrics Raises $1.2M For Hosted Business Intelligence Software Suite (TechCrunch)

Disruptor of the Day: RJMetrics Raises $1.2 Million and Explains the Benefits of Waiting to Raise the Money (Daily Disruption)

Moul, post-Dell Boomi: "I want to do it again" (Philly.com: Philly Deals)


Universal Display in for less revenue from Samsung: analysts (Reuters)

Cablevision Entices Buyers With Low Value (Bloomberg)

Comcast Is Like Sweet Heroin
And I’m back on the junk. (Philadelphia Magazine: The Philly Post)

8 Reasons Why We’re Excited about 2012 (Safeguard Scientifics Blog)

Yell Group Brings In Consultant To Implement Its New Strategy (paidContent)
Yell Group has a major presence in King of Prussia.

Fisker says its problem Karmas are almost all fixed (Gigaom)

Felix Salmon Pinpoints the Problem: ‘Uber Is a Car Service for Computers’ (BetaBeat)

AMETEK Acquires Technical Manufacturing Corporation (PR Newswire)



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Penn-founded Coursekit raises $5 million

Tom Paine


Coursekit, which was founded in 2010 by CEO Joseph Cohen and two others at Penn, just announced it has raised $5 million to continue the rollout of its "social learning management system". Investors in this round include Social+Capital (started by former Facebook executive Chamath Palihapitiya), David Tisch, Joel Spolsky, IA Ventures, and several angel investors. Last year it had raised $1 million in seed funding led by IA Ventures and Founder Collective and moved to New York.

Coursekit joins several other new players in the LMS market, including other venture-backed startups, large education market player Pearson PLC, and open source tools such as Moodle and Sakai. They are taking on entrenched market leader Blackboard (recently acquired by Providence Equity Partners) among others. Coursekit's emphasis is on social collaboration among class participants, and for now seeks course by course adoption rather than institution-wide deployment.

I wrote about Coursekit last month. It started at Penn as a small project to replace paper-based course syllabai.



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The Commodore 64 Is 30 Years Old (TechCrunch)
An iconic piece of Philly Tech history.

TV Rights and the Sports Effect (Zatz Not Funny!)

Watch out Comcast, I’ve Got Choices (Business Insider)

Notes on upcoming Philly Tech Events: Occupy Novotorium , NJ Drupal Camp, Redsnake Philly & more

Novotorium, the newly opened business accelerator in Langhorne, will be holding an open house it is calling "Occupy Novotorium" at its facilities during the week of January 16 to 20. It will hold events each day and startups will be able to work from there on days for which they register. Its free, but space is limited and you must register in advance.

Due to office schedule conflicts at Zivtech, Drupaldelphia's monthy meetups will be moving from the first Thursday
of the month to the third Tuesday, beginning this month. January's meeting will be held on January 17 at Zivtech.

Speaking of Drupal, the first New Jersey Drupal Camp will be held on February 4 in Princeton.

Space at the Redsnake Philly event in February will be limited to 120 people, and the tickets are being split 50/50
between PhillyPUG and Philly.rb. PhillyPUG's allotment will distributed in-person to those who attend its January meeting on January 10.Priority will go to those who have been more regular attendees, says PhillyPUG Organizer Tom Panzarella in an email.


January's Philly Tech Meetup Founders Happy Hour will be held at Venturef0rth, a new incubator/shared workspace on North 8th Street in Philadelphia, on January 11. Its founders are Jesse Kramer, Elliot Menschik and Jay Shah.

This month's Philly Amazon Web Services (AWS). meeting on January 12 will feature a presentation by Monetate's Hunter Blanks on using Elastic MapReduce, spot instances, and Hive. It will be held at Vox Medica offices in the Curtis Building.

And a happy hour introducing Bob Moul as President of Philly Startup Leaders will be held on January 17 at Ladder 15.

You can follow all the major upcoming tech events on the Philly Tech Events Calendar .



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Philly Tech People News 1/1/2012

'Wonder Women' Class of 2012 Named By Multichannel News
Dozen Dynamic Female Execs To Be Honored At March 13 Luncheon In New York (Multichannel News)
Includes three Comcast/NBCU execs.

Dozen 'Women to Watch' Slated By 'MCN'
Will Be Celebrated, With ‘Wonder Women' Class, At March 13 Event (Multichannel News)
Includes execs with Comcast, QVC, Canoe Ventures.

N.J. governor’s chief of staff will return to pharmaceutical industry (Med City News)

N.J. entrepreneur joins Oprah and Richard Branson on CNBC Top 10 List (NewJerseyNewsroom.com)

Leadership shift at Reading Hospital gives doctors more say (BCTV.org)

Synchronoss Appoints Robert Garcia to President and Chief Operating Officer
Company Announces Other Key Management Appointments (Business Wire)

Joe Callan joins PC Scale, Inc. as Chief Financial Officer (Press Release)



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Comcast and NBC launch sports network
The new outlet will boost programming and distribution of the former Versus. Costs could rise. (Philadelphia Inquirer)
Inquirer's Bob Fernandez does an excellent job of explaining the current economics of sports programming.

Speaking of which:

MSG, MSG Plus Now Dark on Time Warner Cable Systems
RSNs, MSO Can't Bridge License Fee Differences as Contract Expires (Multichannel News)

Planalytics To Provide Weather Guidance For The 2012 Bridgestone NHL Winter Classic (PR Web)

Verizon ditches $2 fee after customer uproar (Reuters)

Google Testing New Email Subscription Ad Format (TechCrunch)
Huntingdon Valley-based AWeber among those testing it.

Daily Links 12/30/2011: Verizon Wireless drops $2 "convenience charge" idea; Mark Hurd letter released

Today’s Cable Guy, Upgraded and Better-Dressed (New York Times)

Comcast Unsurprisingly Kills Internet2Go Wireless
On Heels of Massive New Deal With Verizon Wireless (Broadband Reports)

Verizon Kills Planned $2 Convenience Charge Following Uproar (All Things Digital)

Trail Blazers expand viewing options by streaming Comcast games in areas where the network is unavailable (Oregon Live)

“Uncomfortable Dance”: Here’s the Sexual Harassment Letter That Got Mark Hurd Fired (All Things Digital)

Apotheker’s Galling Paycheck Tops Year’s Worst, Says Footnoted (Barron's: Tech Trader Daily)

Liberty Criticizes Harleysville Merger After Its Bid Said to Be Rejected (Bloomberg)

BCBS of Delaware, Highmark deal approved (Philadelphia Business Journal)

COME MEET BOB MOUL THE NEW PSL PRESIDENT! (Philly Startup Leaders)



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Exton-based Scala sees 20% growth in 2011, fine tunes leadership team for future growth

Tom Paine

Exton-based Scala, a leader in digital signage software solutions, closed 2011 with its revenue up about 20% for the year, CEO Tom Nix told me in a phone interview. He declined to give a revenue figure. Nix, who joined Scala in 2010, was named CEO this past September.

Earlier this month Scala announced new leadership appointments which appear to be largely a vote of confidence in the existing management team, although several will take on different roles:

Oscar Elizaga becomes Senior Vice President, Americas. He was previously Vice President, EMEA, India & Latin America for Scala.

Jeff Porter, who formerly led the Experts Group at Scala, becomes President of Scala’s SignChannel division. SignChannel is Scala's entry level, self-service SaaS offering for the small & medium-sized enterprise (SME) segment.

Peter Cherna is now Senior Vice President, Technology. He was previously VP, R&D at Scala. Peter leads development in areas such as predictive analytics, social media, and mobility.

Dave Palermo, who joined Scala earlier this year, is Vice President, Global Marketing. Dave was previously with
SunGard Availability.

Also, Frank Larsen is the new Vice President of EMEA.

These are the first major changes Nix has made since taking over as CEO. In October, Marcy Patzer joined Scala as Senior Director of Retail Strategy. reflecting an increasing emphasis on this segment. Nix expects retail to grow from about 20% of Scala's revenue to 35% over the next few years.

Other priorities for the year include mobile apps: one example is to make it possible for users to interact
dynamically from their smart phones or tablets with larger digital displays. Scala may look to bring in some mobile app development talent this year. Also, Scala plans to introduce its CxO Dashboard offering for the enterprise software market in the Spring. Another important growth area is helping advertisers manage the delivery of their messages via digital signage.

ABI Research shows spending in the global digital signage market, including software and hardware, is expected to grow from $1.3 billion in 2010 to $4.5 billion by 2016. As hardware costs have declined sharply, a major barrier to deployment has eased and leading software providers like Scala are left in a potentially strong position.



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Pair sue Comcast-Spectacor over $2M finder’s fee in 76ers sale, say they brought in buyer (AP via Washington Post)

Verizon’s Worrisome Cable Deals (New York Times Editorial)

Delaware court: Letter accusing former HP CEO Mark Hurd of harassment should be released to public (San Jose Mercury News)

It’s no T-Mo, but AT&T picks up Qualcomm airwaves (Gigaom)

Paging emerging health IT startups: DreamIt Ventures wants (to find) you (Med City News)

The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Selects DBSi for Data Center Expansion (PR Web)