Daily Links 2/13/2012: DOJ, EU approve Google/Motorola Mobility deal

Can Fisker keep its promise?
It started with good feelings and a pledge to bring thousands of jobs to Delaware (Wilmington News Journal)

Comcast's new Xfinity stores aim for an Apple Store experience — and Katy's the first test market (CultureMap Houston)

Comcast intros free text messaging; integrates Twitter, Facebook in Xfinity Connect portal (FierceCable)

Triple play for your 'smart' home
Systems combine security, automation, energy control (Wilmington News Journal)


Cox-to-Time Warner Cable Firms Hit Phone Grip on Hospitals (Bloomberg)

Justice Dept, EU Approve Google’s Motorola Purchase (mocoNews)

Why Oracle May Really Be Doomed This Time (PandoDaily)

Workday’s Financials: Maturing (Ventana Research)

Information is beautiful: Lars Björk of QlikTech (Ernst & Young)

Baltimore files $9M suit against Unisys over tax system (Baltimore Business Journal)

AppMobi Bets on Monetizing the Mobile HTML5 Apps Ecosystem With playMobi (ReadWriteWeb)
AppMobi is based in Lancaster.

DreamIt Ventures Formalizes Focus on Minority-Owned Startups With DreamIt Access NYC (BetaBeat)

ULL, Drexel planning research center (The Advocate of Baton Rouge)

ARI to Implement SAP HANA to Slash Fleet Report Processing Time (Marketwire)



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Philly Tech TidBits 2/13/2011: TicketLeap intros iOS app, GPCC event this week features City CIO Adel Ebeid & more

Tom Paine


CEO Chris Stanchak had indicated that a TicketLeap iOS platform was coming when I interviewed him last fall, and this past week TicketLeap indeed announced the release of "TicketLeap Anywhere for iOS". Designed for event organizers to set up and manage the entire ticketing process from an iOS device, TicketLeap Anywhere also brings enhanced functionality to ticket purchasers accessing TicketLeap through an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. The platform can be used to check-in attendees and scan both paper and paperless tickets by reading QR codes directly off attendees’ smartphones. Another major feature is real-time inventory management, which means online inventory is always in sync across all access points. TicketLeap Anywhere for iOS is available now in the App Store as a free download.
















The next PhillyForce meetup (focusing on Salesforce's Force.com development platform) will feature a presentation by One Planet Associates on its Force.com-based OneMarcellus offering for areas involved with Marcellus Shale gas development. The system features an Outreach component for coordinating community contacts in the event of emergencies, and a Water Management component to help track the movement of water to reduce risks and gain efficiencies. One Planet Associates, founded by Udo Edelmann and Sam Shane, is based in the Philly Suburbs. The event will be held on the evening of February 23 at LiquidHub in Wayne.


The Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce is holding an event, "Innovations in Technology: Changing the Way We Do Business", on this Wednesday morning, the 15th, at the Quorum at University City Science Center. The keynote speaker will be Adel Ebeid, recently appointed Chief Innovation Officer (CIO) of the City of Philadelphia. A panel discussion with some top area technology execs and experts will follow. Tickets are still available for purchase at the time of writing, according to the GPCC website.

Moore College of Art & Design in Philadelphia has announced a new iPad initiative, in partnership with Apple. Each new Bachelor of Fine Arts student beginning in Fall 2012 will be given an Apple iPad 2 with pre-populated apps selected to support the visual art and design education at Moore. “The iPad 2 will be a pivotal learning tool in the new Foundation curriculum where the integration of digital media and tools will be taught and used in tandem with traditional drawing and design media”, said Academic Dean Dona Lantz in a published statement. Details of the partnership with Apple have not been disclosed.



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Philly Tech People News 2/12/2012

Bob Moul Joins appRenaissance as Chairman and CEO
Veteran technology executive and entrepreneur to spearhead growth of mobile solutions innovator (Business Wire)

Beth Arnholt Joins Comcast as Vice President of Integrated Talent Management (Business Wire)

CSC Appoints Mike Lawrie President and Chief Executive Officer (Business Wire)
Lawrie is a Drexel alum and trustee.

Global Regulatory Operations and Technology Expert, Gina L. Schmidt Joins Octagon Research Solutions, Inc. (Business Wire)

Cathy Kiselyak Austin Joins Vertex as General Counsel (Business Wire)

Monetate Promotes Tom Janofsky to VP of Engineering
Top Philadelphia technologist to lead Monetate’s aggressive engineering expansion efforts in 2012. (PR Web)

Govi Rao Named Chairman of the New Jersey Technology Council (PR Newswire)

Airclic Names Dan Saltzman as Vice President of Client Services (PR Web)

Tweetalicious Inc. announces board of advisors
Includes Skype, TheFind.com and Pet360.com Executives (Business Wire)

Symphony Advanced Media Appoints Market Research Veteran to Advisory Board
Appointment of industry leader Dr. Martin Lautman to advisory board strengthens company’s advertising performance measurement services (Business Wire)

Michelle Keefe Named Chief Operating Officer at Publicis Touchpoint Solutions, Inc (WebWire)

Domus welcomes Greg Smore as Senior Account Mgr (Philly Ad Club News)

USA Technologies Adds New Director
Deborah Arnold, Formerly Vice President Global Consumer Products at Visa International, Joins Board (Business Wire)

SCTE announces committee chairs (Communications, Engineering & Design Magazine)
The Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers is headquartered in Exton.



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Daily Links 2/10/2012: Perelman, Blatstein complain about PMN bid process (or lack of); Blatstein threatens to start his own

Report: Perelman complains he's being shut out of PMN bidding (Philadelphia Inquirer)

Blatstein: I'll start my own paper (Philadelphia Daily News)

After Motorola Deal Approval, Can Google Hardware Be Far Behind? (Time Business)

Amazon: No plans to launch a standalone video service soon (Gigaom)

NBC entertainment chief spending big bucks as pink slips loom for marketing department (Claire Atkinson/New York Post)

ShopNBC parent's stock falls hard after bad news on sale (Minneapolis / St. Paul Business Journal)
Comcast/NBC holds a minority stake in ValueVision Media.


Verizon Invested More Than Half a Billion Dollars in Pennsylvania's Wireline Communications, IT Infrastructure in 2011 (PR Newswire)
Says more than 1.5 million homes and businesses in state have access to FiOS services.

Roll up, roll up! Oracle digests Taleo (Oliver Marks/ZDNet Blogs)

Workday Talking to Bankers. The S1 Is Coming. The Revenge Is Almost Complete (PandoDaily)

SAP Cloud Integration: IT, Process and Roadmap Challenges Ahead (ASUG News)

Heart monitoring company CardioNet makes $6 million acquisition (Med City News)



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Larry Ellison - What The Hell Is Cloud Computing? (2008)

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, who's company announced its second large recent Cloud Computing acquisition today, ridicules Cloud Computing in this 2008 talk to analysts.

Daily Links 2/9/2012: Oracle in $1.9 billion deal with Taleo, more on Philadelphia Media Network controversey

Oracle Buys Taleo (Marketwire)
Predicted by many, $1.9 billion deal a countermove to SAP's SuccessFactors acquisition.

Oracle Buying Taleo for $1.9 Billion in Direct Hit at SAP (PC World)

News Analysis: The Implications Of Oracle’s Acquisition Of Taleo (Ray Wang/A Software Insider's Point of View)

Wharton Opens New West Coast Campus in Search of Startup Appeal (Bloomberg)

Inquirer & Daily News owners embarrass themselves, and us (Dave Davies/NewsWorks)

PMN defends pulling blog post (Philly.com)
But reporter David Gambacorta obviously disagrees.

2 Solyndras For The Price Of 1? A123 Hurt By Fisker's Woes (Eric Savitz/Forbes)

Google reportedly working on wireless home entertainment system to be sold under its own brand (Engadget)

DOJ Set To Approve Google's Acquisition Of Motorola Mobility: Report
Agency Also Set to OK Consortium's Purchase of Nortel Patents, According to WSJ (Multichannel News)

SunGard Announces Fourth Quarter and Full-Year 2011 Results (Business Wire)

Publicis Reports 2011 Revenue Grew 7.3% to $7.7 Billion (Ad Age)
Publicis has a significant Philly area presence.

Urban Outfitters cleans up inventories, shares rise (Reuters)
Urban Outfitters' ecommerce segment is now a $500 million per year business.


Heartland Payment Systems Q4 profit tops estimates (Reuters)

BioClinica Reports Record Service Revenue for the Fourth Quarter and Year End 2011 (Business Wire)

Microsoft's plan to bring its ERP users slowly but surely to the cloud ( Mary Jo Foley/ZDNet Blogs)

Cox and CTDI Hold Grand Opening & Ribbon Cutting For New Facility in Chesapeake, VA, on Feb. 8 (PR Newswire)
CTDI is headquartered in West Chester.

Integromics Partners With FPGMX To Develop Low-Cost Methods For Clinical Genomics (Integromics Press Release)
Integromics' US operations are based in Philadelphia.



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EPAM Systems completes IPO after cutting offering price and size

Tom Paine





Newtown-based EPAM Systems, Inc., a provider of outsourced informations system development services, has completed its IPO. It is trading on the NYSE under the symbol EPAM.

EPAM had to cut back sharply on the size of its offering. It sold only 6 million shares at $12 per share; originally it planned to float 7.4 million shares at $16-18 per share. Only 1.5 million of the shares were sold by the company, with the rest being offered by existing shareholders, meaning that proceeds to the company would be about $18 million. EPAM opened at $13.75 and closed at $14.00, up 17% from the original offering price. Its market value is in the $600 million range.

Sometimes referred to as the Cognizant of Eastern Europe, most of EPAM's developers are located in Central and Eastern Europe and Russia. Half of its revenue in the first nine months of 2011 came from North America; clients include several major tech and financial giants such as Google, SAP, Oracle, Barclays Plc and Citigroup. It has over 7,000 employees. Arkadiy Dobkin, EPAM's cofounder, CEO and President, came from Belarus and after migrating to the US worked for Colgate-Palmolive and SAP Labs before starting EPAM. Its services include end-to-end development capabilities, technology consulting, Infrastructure and hosting, QA & testing, and maintenance and support. Revenue for the first nine months 0f 2011 was $239 million, and net income was $32 million.

It is the first significant information technology IPO in the Philadelphia area since Radnor-based QlikTech went public in July of 2010.

(Update 2/13/2012: In response to an email, an EPAM spokesperson tells Phiily Tech News that EPAM has about 150 employees located at its Newtown headquarters.)




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Daily Links 2/8/2012: PMN spokesman has Daily News piece on possible bidder taken down

Spokesman Mark Block says he asked Philly.com to remove sale story from website (Poynter)
Here is an AP story on the same topic as the article that Block asked to be pulled. (Update: The Inquirer now has a story up on the Blatstein group's interest, at least as long as Block will allow it to stay up.)

How Invite Media’s founder is making sure success ‘wasn’t a fluke (Financial Post)
Sounds like Nat Turner is looking towards his next startup.


Amazon Just Made A Deal That Could Crush Netflix (Silicon Alley Insider)

Verizon's Prelude to All-Out War ( Jeff Baumgartner/Light Reading Cable)

TiVo open to takeover bids (Deborah Yao/SNL Kagan)

Cable Companies Have Launched A Massive Attack Against Boxee Over Set-Top Boxes (Silicon Alley Insider)

Enforcement Bureau Recommends Denying Comcast Request to Stay Tennis Channel Decision (Multichannel News)


Epam Systems' shares jump in IPO debut (MarketWatch)
Newtown-based company sharply cut offering price and size before launching.

Fed Delays Vote on Capital One Deal for ING Direct (NY Times: DealBook)

Were Turntable.fm and "Group Listening" Just a Summertime Fad? (Read Write Web)
First Round Capital was an early backer of Turntable.fm, investing originally when it was called Stickybits before pivoting.

Path's Apology Will Save Its Reputation (Forbes)
Problems for another FRC portfolio company.

USA Technologies, Inc. Reports Results for Second Quarter of Fiscal 2012 (Business Wire)



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Penn professor's new book raises questions about digital privacy

Tom Paine




Joseph Turow, a professor and associate dean at Penn's Annenberg School, has a new book out, The Daily You, that is garnering considerable attention (see excerpt from The Atlantic) .

In it, Turow challenges the premise that the Internet would promote individual freedom, and "that the consumer is king in the new media environment", by exploring the extent to which data is being collected about us and how it is being used to target us. Nothing new about that; marketers have been using data to target people for a long time. Historically, though, that was mostly done through loosely grouped demographic data that revealed little about you as an individual. Now, through information collected from individuals' activities on the Web, marketers can discern an intricate pattern of your behaviors and habits and use it to target you (and perhaps manipulate you) in very specific ways.

Turow seems to focus not as much on everyone's favorite punching bags, Google and Facebook, but rather on what he calls the transformation of the media buying function through what might be referred to as the advertising technology revolution. (While largely centered in New York, the ad tech business has some important Philadelphia connections.) Turow writes that "the rise of digital profiling and personalization has spawned a new industrial jargon that reflects potentially grave social divisions and privacy issues".

Turow will give talk on the subject tomorrow evening from 6 to 7:30pm at the Penn Bookstore.



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Daily Links 2/7/2012: ShopRunner buys Shopsanity

ShopRunner Buys Shopsanity to Help Retailers Take on Amazon (PandoDaily)

Oracle demands retrial in SAP slurp spat
Snubs paltry $272m payout, wants full $1.3bn in damages (The Register)

Bill and Jim’s Bright Shiny Penny: Understanding SAP’s Success and the Challenges It Brings (Joshua Greenbaum/Enterprise Applications Consulting)

SAP to Offer Hana Analytic Software to Smaller Companies in 2012 (Bloomberg)

With federal loans blocked, Fisker halts work on Project Nina, lays off 66 workers (Engadget)

Meet Spongecell, a Profitable Ad Tech Company With $10 Million in New Funding from Safeguard Scientifics (All Things Digital)

EPAM downsizes IPO, prices below range-underwriter (Reuters)

InterDigital anticipates Q1 revenue shortfall (Forbes)

Vishay Q4 Revs, Profits Miss Estimates; Shares Stumble (Forbes)

Coinstar Soars on Profit, Buyout of NCR Unit (Bloomberg via San Francisco Chronicle)

Redbox and Verizon Face Key Decisions for DVD-and-Streaming Service (Ad Age)

Customers rate Comcast in first of 4 meetings (Savannah Morning News)

Fed may decide on Cap1-ING merger Wednesday (Delaware Online: Delaware Inc.)

DreamIt Ventures seeks five Israeli start-ups (Globes)


SaaS Changes to Higher Ed ERP Market (Delta Initiative Blog)



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Highlights: Last week on Philly Tech News (1/30/2012 to 2/5/2012)

Reports that surfaced in the New York Post a week ago that Philadelphia Media Network, owner of the Inquirer, Daily News, and Philly.com, was for sale again turned out to be true, with a group led by Ed Rendell and Ed Snider and another led by members of the Perelman family mentioned to be among the candidates to acquire it.

Exton-based SaaS insurance provider iPipeline"s latest funding round, announced in January, turned to be for $71.4 million, according to its SEC filing.

Scrutiny of the proposed spectrum sale and reseller agreement between Verizon Wireless and Comcast and other cable companies intensified, with a Senate committee planning hearings for later this month. Meanwhile, the joint marketing arrangement continued to roll out, expanding into the Bay area.

The closing of SAP AG's $3.4 billion acquisition of SuccessFactors could be delayed for weeks, possibly even months, as the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS) investigates it, for some reason.

Philly-based ad agency Red Tettemer & Partners (Century 21) and local crowdsourcing site Poptent (Dannon) both had ads they produced run during the Super Bowl, which ad people say is two more than Philly's ever had before. And Nielsen said NBC's 2012 Super Bowl broadcast was the most watched program in TV history.

And Comcast may invest, through its partial ownership of the SNY cable network, $40 million to help bail out the New York Mets. Traitors.



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