Daily Links 3/16/2012: Philly-based Ascentive Agrees To $9.6M 'Scareware' Settlement
SAP aims to become major database software maker (Reuters)
Announcement planned for April 10.
SAP Steps Up Commitment To Predictive Analytics
SAP BusinessObjects Predictive Analysis will integrate with Hana, take on SAS and IBM SPSS modeling and analysis tools. (Information Week)
Analysis: Analysts worry that something's amiss at Oracle (Reuters)
An Update on the Infor – Salesforce Partnership (Michael Fauscette/Enterprise Irregulars)
NJ VENTURE FUND INVESTMENTS OFFER EARLY STAGE TECH COMPANIES (NJTC TechWire)
Invests in Osage and NextStage funds; both PA firms will open New Jersey offices.
Apple Enthusiasts Camp Out For The New iPad (CBS Philly)
RIAA chief: ISPs to start policing copyright by July 1 (CNET News)
Philly-based Ascentive Agrees To $9.6M 'Scareware' Settlement
(MediaPost News)
Verizon offering EBIF-based NCAA bracket app (CED Magazine)
Data, Analysis, Research Power Comcast SportsNet Sales (Broadcasting & Cable)
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Microsoft Technology Centers, Smart Technologies kick off partnership, US rollout of interactive whiteboards in Malvern
Tom Paine
Calgary-based SMART Technologies, Inc., a leader in the interactive whiteboard market, used the Microsoft Technology Center in Malvern to announce yesterday it had become a Global Technology Partner in the Microsoft Technology Center (MTC) Alliances Program, and would be installing its products in all 11 U.S. centers by the end of 2012, beginning with Malvern. It already has installations at several MTC locations internationally.
Each center will have a variety of SMART products, including interactive whiteboards, interactive displays, interactive pen displays, SMART Meeting Pro™ software and Bridgit® conferencing software. Chuck McCann, Director, Worldwide MTC Alliance Program, in a statement cited reduced travel expenses and increased collaboration as being among the benefits gained from using SMART Technologies products.
The event featured a presentation by Bill Emmert, Technical Director/Technology Architect, Microsoft
Technology Center, and John Friscia of SMART Technologies, and a tour of the facilities. During the tour, a SMART spokesperson tells me, Emmert commented that people within the Center fight for the rooms with SMART Boards because they enjoy using the product, it wows customers, and is much more efficient than the regular white erase board because they can save files on a USB and send customers off with it.
SMART says it has the leading share in the interactive whiteboard market in the US. It becomes one of 11 Global Technology Partners in the MTC Alliances Program.
MTC describes its purpose as providing environments and state of the art technology tools to enable world class learning and development experiences. The Malvern, Pennsylvania center opened in March of last year.
SMART Technologies' press release.
Daily Links 3/15/2012: Layoffs expected at Philadelphia Media Network this week, in midst of criticism
Report: Cisco Looking To Buy Interactive TV And Security Specialist NDS In $5B Deal (TechCrunch)
Cisco Bets $5B More on Video With NDS (Light Reading Cable)
Cloud player Appirio looks towards global expansion after $60 million VC round (ZDNet Blogs)
Salesforce Is Up And Running With Rypple Only Six Weeks After Buying It (Silicon Alley Insider: Enterprise)
Salesforce Unveils Human Resources Software Amid Oracle Contest (Bloomberg)
Kohl reveals witness list for Verizon-cable hearing (The Hill)
Comcast's Strategy Chief Calls a Power Play (Light Reading Cable)
March 2012 Business Outlook Survey (Philadelphia Fed)
Continued growth, optimism reported.
Philadelphia-Area Factory Index Increases to an 11-Month High (Bloomberg)
Phorum 2012 National Cloud Conference Announces Full Line-Up (PR Web)
Layoffs at Philadelphia papers to come this week (Poynter)
Updated: Guild letter rips into Osberg.
"Perhaps instead of killing stories he didn’t like about the sale of the company and trying to be seen as some sort of digital visionary by holding press conferences at the Academy of Natural Sciences, giving free rent to start-up companies who play ping pong on the 5th floor at 400 N. Broad, creating a poorly-launched tablet and worrying about apps that make a few dollars, Osberg should be focused on properly staffing the newspapers in a manner that will allow more copies to be sold. The duplication of stories in both papers and the ongoing push to dump more and more content onto Philly.com will not solve any revenue problems."
Verizon Wireless Continues to Aggressively Expand 4G LTE Network In Philadelphia Region (PR Newswire)
The timing of this release is obviously intended to coincide with the iPad 3 release; Verizon Wireless says 4G LTE now available to more than 60% of region's population.
ValueVision (ShopNBC) reports bigger loss, lower revenue in 4Q (St Paul Pioneer Press)
Comcast owns a stake in ValueVision.
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Philly-based business Q&A site Quewey launches in private beta
Tom Paine
Philadelphia-based Quewey, a business-oriented Q&A site, has launched in private beta. Invitations are available to the first 1,000 qualified users who sign up at www.quewey.com
Quewey 's starting point, and a key difference from other Q&A sites, is that it uses the LinkedIn API to ensure the professional standing of its contributors. Queway also recently acquired Zebek, a startup that describes its core competency as "advanced virtual-graph based search and matching". Zebek's technology will be the engine behind Quewey's back-end development, matching the people asking questions to the most relevant experts and providing algorithms ranking trending topics and thought leaders among users. Zebek's co-founder and CTO, Anshu Aggarwal, has joined Quewey as CTO.
Quewey's founder is Matthew Safaii (right), a Wharton MBA who serves as Managing Director at ICG, working mostly on the acquisitions side. Safaii will remain at ICG so he will not be running the company on a day-to-day basis, but will be a "very actively involved non-executive founder", he said in a phone interview with Philly Tech News. Someone else will be brought on as CEO. To be clear, ICG is not an investor in Quewey. The company has raised $300,00 in funding to date, mostly from angel investors, and has an open filing to raise more if it needs to.
Queway's closest competitors who come to mind are Quora and Joel Spolsky's Stack Exchange , which started out being programming-specific but has since expanded to covering numerous subjects. Quewey is different, though, in significant ways. One will be the ability of community members to monetize their expertise by offering one-on-one advice as followups when answer-seekers want more details, through a per minute charge. Safaii envisions Quewey's service as being much more acessable and affordable than a site like Gearson Lehman. Quewey says its Personal Consulting Platform will manage the entire consulting work flow, from lead generation and scheduling, to call logistics, payment processing and client review.
Quora was reported last month to be looking for a valuation in excess of $300 million in its next round. Fortune had a good recent article profiling major players in the Q & A market. And other new entrants are emerging.
Quewey has offices in the Rittenhouse Square area.
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Daily Links 3/14/2012: Report: Exton-based iPipeline in talks to acquire UK's Assureweb
American firm (Exton-based iPipeline) in talks to acquire Assureweb (Money Marketing)
International Battery owes Pennsylvania millions
Company defaulted on assistance when it abruptly closed. (Allentown Morning Call)
IBM Cognos Insight: Data Visualization For Less
Bringing its TM1 technology to the desktop, IBM Cognos answers QlikTech and Tableau with a low-cost data-exploration tool (Information Week)
Taking false cloud comfort from multi-tenancy ( Phil Wainewright/ZDNet Blogs)
I’m joining SAP AG. (Sameer Patel/Enterprise Irregulars)
Devon IT Announces SafeBook Thin Client Program for Dell (Business Wire)
Maven Communications adds Comcast, Fisher & Phillips, Futura Mobility and ProPoint Graphics (Philly Ad Club News)
Maiden Media Selected as Digital Agency for La Yogurt Probiotic (PR Newswire)
Aereo Wait-Lists New Yorkers On Internet TV Service
Micro-Antenna Startup Faces Copyright-Infringement Suits from Broadcasters (Multichannel News)
Op-Ed : Comcast's commitment to Martha's Vineyard is stronger than ever (Martha's Vineyard Times)
Always important to keep people on Martha's Vineyard and in Vail happy.
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Daily Links 3/13/2012: Intel wants to get into Cable biz?
Intel Seeking Media Rights to Start Online Pay-TV System (Bloomberg)
Join the party.
Intel's Plan To Become A Cable Company Is One Of The Dumbest Ideas Ever (Henry Blodget/Silicon Alley Insider)
Did NBC miss the boat on 'Downton Abbey'? (Philadelphia Inquirer)
S&T, icueTV Demo Political-Donation ITV App
Vendors Demo "Click to Text" EBIF Application at CableLabs Winter Conference (Multichannel News)
icueTV is based in Cherry Hill. CableLabs' Winter Conference is being held in Philadelphia.
SAP: Bernstein Ups to Buy on ‘Hana’ Prospects (Barron's: Tech Trader Daily)
SAP ports HANA database to financial planning app
Latest move by SAP to seed HANA throughout its product portfolio. (Computerworld)
Sameer Patel joins SAP and why it matters (Dennis Howlett/ZDNet Blogs)
Dell Steels Software Biz With SonicWall (Wired Enterprise)
$1.2 billion deal, WSJ reports.
Apple to spend $11bn on Samsung parts in 2012 claims exec (SlashGear)
OLED might be in the plans, which if true could be good news for Universal Display.
SalesCrunch makes $1 bid for Cisco's WebEx (Reuters)
SalesCrunch is a First Round Capital portfolio company.
Turntable.FM Signs Licensing Deals With All Four Major Labels (Hollywood Reporter)
Another FRC portfolio company.
Urban Outfitters’ Margins Sink, 4Q EPS Misses Mark (Barron's Blogs)
Fisker electric Karma was pushed to market before it was ready (Gigaom)
According to one former employee, anyway.
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Highlights: Last week on Philly Tech News (3/5/2012 to 3/11/2012)
I reported on Bentley Systems' 2nd annual corporate update conference call; growth seems to be picking up again and the main message I took away from the call was the emphasis on China.
I wrote about Philly & New York-based Solve Media's effort to expand its CAPTCHA branding business to pre-roll advertisements for online videos.
Netflix is looking for cable operators to partner with, but Comcast quickly said it wasn't going to play that game.
The FCC signaled that it wasn't going to give Verizon Wireless and several cable operators a quick pass on their proposed spectrum sale and marketing joint venture, requesting more (unredacted) information from all parties involved.
Fortune Magazine profiled Comcast's strategy for its NBC Sports Group to double down on sports.
The New York Post broke a story that Google was looking to unload Motorola Mobility's Horsham-based set-top box business even before the acquisition was completed. Although there has been no confirmation, many industry observers would not be surprised if it were true.
PE Hub reported on SAP Ventures' plans for its next fund. SAP Co-CEO Jim Hagemann Snabe said in an interview at CeBIT that collaboration software would be the company's next product category to expand in; that doesn't necessarily require an acquisition but nonetheless his comments got the rumor mills going again. SAP also rolled out at CeBIT what it referred to as a multitenant Cloud version of its Business One ERP suite for smaller enterprises, although some analysts questioned whether it was a true multitenancy architecture.
Exton-based Scala introduced several new offerings at Digital Signage Expo 2012, including what it calls CxO Board, a digital display scoreboard that enterprise managers can use to monitor key performance metrics.
Fisker, with its plans to produce autos in Delaware delayed, had a Karma it delivered to Consumer Reports break down almost immediately on the testing grounds.
And a somewhat altered group now said to be headed by Lewis Katz and Gerry Lenfest apparently has exclusive rights to bargain for Philadelphia Media Network; Ed Rendell's position in the group is not clear at this time.
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Daily Links 3/12/2012: Oracle gets a downgrade due to growing competition from SAP
Dell working on cloudy analytics apps
Survey says SMBs want one SaaS throat to choke (The Register)
Oracle: SAP Draws Blood; Jefferies Downgrades To Hold (Eric Savitz/Forbes)
Why Workday has Oracle and SAP worried (Fortune Tech)
A couple interesting tidbits came out of a blogger SAP HCM briefing call (Jonathan Reed)
Top VC Sees More Business Software Deal-Making (Forbes)
Passport Health Acquires STAT Technologies, Gains Market-Leading Enterprise Scheduling Capabilities (PR Newswire)
Tennessee-based Passport Health's Healthworks division is located in King of Prussia. STAT Technologies is based in Hazlet, NJ. "Passport executives did say they anticipate additional M&A activity this year as the company responds to increasing market demand for its products and services, and carries out plans for continued aggressive growth", according to its press release.
Parts of healthcare are moving to the cloud (O'Reilly Radar)
AppMobi Releases First Public Version of jqMobi HTML5 Framework (ReadWriteMobile)
AppMobi is based in Lancaster.
AT&T accelerating LTE rollout, targeting 11 new cities (Gigaom)
Philly apparently not one of them.
Wawa Searches for Right Mix of Technology vs. Customer Service (Convenience Store News)
Aereo files countersuit against broadcasters (Reuters)
First Round Capital was an early backer of Aereo.
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Leading Payroll Provider Acquires Online Employee Scheduling Solution To Expand Service Offering (PR Web)
PrimePay of West Chester acquires startup ReadySetWork (also based in West Chester), which is scheduled to participate in the
Phorum 2012 Cloud Computing Conference demo pit.
Datatel+SunGard Banner Customers Better Buckle Up (The Higher Ed CIO)
Philly Tech News People News 3/12/2012
Todd Park, new national Chief Technology Officer, worked at HHS, founded medical billing company (Washington Post: Post Tech)
Washington lawyer Lanny Davis joins Dilworth Paxson (Philadelphia Inquirer)
AGI CEO Paul Graziani Wins Workforce Honors at Aviation Week and Space Technology Laureate Awards (Marketwire)
Marketing Communications Veteran Joins Beyond.com (Business Wire)
Arkieva Appoints Three New Directors in Move to Better Address Customer Needs and New Opportunities (Business Wire)
New Greater Philadelphia Media head looks forward to new opportunities (phillyBurbs.com)
WCAU Philly Names Eric Lerner President-GM (TVNewsCheck.com)
TelVue Corporation Promotes Denise Rolfe to National Sales Director, Community Broadcasting (Marketwire)
SIP Forum Names Vijey Jenkal of Comcast to Board of Directors, Re-Elects Chairman Richard Shockey and Director Alan Johnston to New Terms (PR Web)
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