Daily Links 4/5/2012: Comcast battles little Boxee; Trib, DirecTV reach deal

SAP North America Chief Robert Courteau Resigns After 15 Months (Bloomberg)
A little more detail on Courteau here.

Oracle's Mark Hurd Spells out Analytics Vision (PC World)

SAP's VC unit scours Silicon Valley for startups (Bloomberg & the San Francisco Chronicle)


Norcross' new role as newspaper owner has some worried (Philadelphia Inquirer)

Why digital-native media will (almost) always win (Gigaom)

Big Media Tussles With Tiny Boxee Over the Future of TV (Bloomberg)

Tribune, DirecTV Hammer Out A Deal
23 Stations in 19 Markets Go Live in Time For MLB's Opening Day (Multichannel News)
WPHL should be back on DirecTV.

Comcast, TWC Still Bullish On Interactive TV
Two Biggest Operators See New Opportunities for EBIF Platform (Multichannel News)

Mistras Group, Inc. Strong 3rd Quarter Results Demonstrate Continued Growth in Revenues and Profits
Revenue Increases 31%, Adjusted EBITDA* Increases 28% (Globe Newswire)
Mistras Group is based in Princeton Junction.

Dataram Leverages Intellectual Property Through Sale of Patent Assets (Business Wire)

AdvantEdge Healthcare Solutions Acquires COMPUDATA
AHS expands its comprehensive medical billing services to clients in Ohio and Pennsylvania (Business Wire)
AdvantEdge Healthcare Solutions is a Safeguard Scientifics portfolio company.

Longview Positioned in 'Visionaries' Quadrant for Corporate Performance Management Suites by Leading Analyst Firm (Marketwire)
Longview's US headquarters are in Radnor.

TelVue Announces the Launch of TelVue CloudCast (Marketwire)
TelVue is based in Mt Laurel.

Pennsylvania University (LaSalle) Rolls Out Remote IT Support Platform (Campus Technology)

Announcing the world's first Healthcare Startup Weekend, to take place in Philadelphia on June 1 (Flying Kite Media)

New Belgium plans $175 million brewery in N.C. (Denver Post)
Philadelphia was the other east coast location said to have been in the running.



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Quepasa (myYearbook parent) to become MeetMe

Tom Paine

Quepasa, the New Hope, PA-based parent of popular social media website myYearbook, held a conference call yesterday to introduce new branding for its website properties. myYearbook will become MeetMe by July, and the conversion will also occur on its Quepasa site (popular mostly in Latin America) later in the year. MeetMe.com is up, though right now it just contains some of the slides from yesterday's presentation. Also, Quepasa reportedly paid $450,000 to acquire the Meet.me domain.

Quepasa acquired myYearbook last year for $100 million, primarily in stock. myYearbook was the bigger fish, however, and the acquisition was probably structured the way it was (rather than the other way around) because Quepasa offered a pre-existing publicly traded vehicle (NYSEAMEX:QPSA). Quepasa also provided a platform for expanding internationally as well as into other languages (Spanish & Portuguese right now). Quepasa today claims 78 milion registered users, about half with myYearbook and half with Quepasa, though myYearbook generates about three quarters of the revenue. The company will also change its ticker symbol to MEET over the summer.

Though Quepasa's top management is very capable, I thought they overreached somewhat in comparing themselves to three companies: Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. While competitive with two of these in page views, they lag considerably in terms of unique monthly visitors and monetization. I doubt Twitter's page view stats are directly comparable since you don't navigate through Twitter page by page. While Facebook is said to be valued at $100 billion, LinkedIn at $10 biilion according to its current stock price and Twitter reportedly worth several billion, Quepasa's present market cap is less than $150 million. I get the point that management is talking about potential rather than the present, but I still find it to be a bit of a stretch. My impression of Quepasa is that it has a relatively small (about 4 million uniques per month) core of very heavy users who generate a lot of page views, but the key is to grow that base. Quepasa positions itself relative to these megaplatforms as being the one you go to for meeting new people, as opposed to Facebook (connecting with people you already know), LinkedIn (people you know profesionally), and Twitter (exchanging information).

Quepasa emphasized two trends: mobility and globalization. Its says its mobile usage is exploding, and they are just in the early stages of monetizing it, though it says it already has the "top-grossing social app on Android". The company believes the new brand name, as well as having a single unified platform, will be much better suited to the global market. Why throw away a great, well recognized brand name? The company didn't quite address that. Obviously Yearbook is more of an American term, and may not carry well into other parts of the world. The other big issue that wasn't really discussed was demographics in terms of age. myYearbook, as the name implies, was definitely geared to high school age kids. I'm sure Quepasa wants to keep these users as they get older, in addition to attracting other older users, but the company didn't really address this issue. Originally, myYearbook was intended to provide a somewhat protected environment for teens to socialze in.

Quepasa also discussed increasing non-advertising revenue, particularly through its virtual currency. Advertising now accounts for 85% of revenue, and Management sees virtual currency providing an increasing contribution. Quepasa also said yesterday that it expects to achieve positive EBITDA by the end of 2012. Plans for adding additional languages and expanding to other regions were mentioned, though no specifics were given.

myYearbook was founded in 2005 by three Cook siblings: Catherine and Dave, who were high school students at the time, and Geoff, who now serves as Quepasa COO. First Round Capital was an early investor.



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Daily Links 4/4/2012: Penn to lead $10 million project on computer-assisted programming

Google And Invite Media: One Year Later, DSP Looks To Global Expansion (paidContent)
Don't know if article is correct in saying Invite Media is based in Philly, although it certainly still has an office here.

Is Philadelphia in Decline? New Report Shows a City With Marked Challenges (Daily Beast)

Penn to lead $10 million project on computer-assisted programming (Physorg.com)

Unleashing Your IT Department's Strengths to Create New Business (Forbes)
By Deirdre Woods, Associate Dean and CIO of Wharton Computing and Information Technology.

New owners bring Bill Marimow back to The Philadelphia Inquirer (Poynter)
Two years ago, Osberg sacked him. Marimow will serve as Editor of the Inquirer.


Comcast Sizes Up All-IP Set-Top (Light Reading Cable)

Reed Hastings Will Get His HBO Go as Comcast Nears Deal on Xbox (New York Times: Media Decoder)

DirecTV files FCC complaint against Tribune (LA Times: Company Town)
No Phillies games via WPHL on DirecTV until this is worked out.

At Large : Hogwash and the straight dope – Comcast and Edgartown (Martha's Vineyard Times)
Love keeping up with the ongoing saga of Comcast versus Martha's Vineyard, which after all is Mr. Roberts' neighborhood.

Fisker Atlantic EVer unveiled in New York, we go eyes-on (Engadget)
But will it ever really be produced in Delaware? More on that from Philly Deals.

SAP and the Data Analytics Speed Race (New York Times: Bits)

SAP: Nomura Not Worried About Americas Prez Departure (Barron's: Tech Trader Daily)
Robert Courteau was based out of Newtown Square.

Oracle Makes Its Big Play For Analytics Leadership (Information Week)

BI, Performance Management Software Market Surpassed $12B (eWeek)

More on SAP Business One's "Multitenancy" (Jonathan Reed)

Philadelphia newspaper adds augmented reality via iPad app
Video showcases new features of its iPad-enhanced newspaper (IT World)



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Daily Links 4/3/2012: Sungard wants to sell you Hadoop as a service

New owners discuss details of the sale (Philadelphia Inquirer)

Sungard wants to sell you Hadoop as a service (Gigaom)

Quepasa And MyYearbook Rebrand As MeetMe (TechCrunch)

Introducing our New Head of Talent at First Round Capital, Jack Leidlein (Redeye VC)

Dell acquires Clerity as shopping spree continues (ZDNet Blogs)
Sounds like it might be a pretty good fit with what Boomi does.

SAP Jumps On Predictive Analytics Bandwagon
SAP supports R statistical programming language, following in the footsteps of rivals. So what's new about this predictive software? (Information Week)

Netflix: Rising Competition a Big Concern, Barclays Says (Wall Street Journal: MarketBeat)

The End of the World[Gate] ( Jeff Baumgartner/Light Reading Cable)

From Google to Comcast, Tech Giants Are Shaping Your Home's Smart Future (ReadWriteWeb)

FirstBest Growth Financing Round Reflects Insurer Interest in Front-Office Solutions (Insurance & Technology)
NewSpring Capital (also investor in iPipeline) among leaders in $10 million round for Massachusetts startup.

Highlights: Last week on Philly Tech News (3/26/2012 to 4/1/2012)

The first annual PACT Phorum event: 2012 Cloud Computing Conference was held on Wednesday at World Cafe Live and drew a packed house, energizing the Cloud community in Philadelphia.

Another round of cuts loom at Philadelphia Media Network, and the sale to a new ownership group for $55 million was announced today, as had been reported last week. I couldn't resist the opportunity to get my own digs in at the soap opera that's been going on at PMN in this April Fool's piece. And Technically Philly included me in one of their spoofs about unionizing Philly tech journalists.

The company formed through the merger of SunGard Higher Education and Datatel has a new name: Ellucian, whatever that means. (I thought SunGard Higher Ed was a bit more to the point.)

Fortune Magazine did a feature on what it called SAP's Radical Makover.

Comcast's unit thePlatform teamed up with Conshohocken-based Empathy Lab to develop a portal and UI offering that smaller cable operators can use to deploy "TV Everywhere" service.

The Daiily Pennsylvanian reported that Penn is expanding to the far side of the Schuylkill to build a new 16,000 square foot data center.

In venture news, search engine DuckDuckGo continues to report phenomenal traffic growth, Exton
Healthcare IT firm HIT Application Solutions raised $2.75 million in Series A funding (don't know from who), and Bucks County venture incubator Novotorium welcomed it second tenant, Inhabi.

Notable tweet: Wendy Warren, VP & Editor, Philly.com: @colinmlenton @ckrewson Guess what? We are not happy with the look of the site ourselves, and we're planning an overhaul...


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Daily Links 4/2/2012: Philadelphia Media Network sold; Dell Acquires Wyse

Local group to buy Phila. Media Network for $55 million (Philadelphia Inquirer)

Dell Buys Cloud Client Computing Company Wyse To Expand Desktop Virtualization Products (TechCrunch)
Wonder what this means for King of Prussia-based Devon IT, a key Dell supplier in this market.

Dell To Acquire Virtual Desktop Player Wyse Technology (All Things D)
One analyst pegs price at between $350 and $400 million on estimated revenue of $375 million.

Dell plans to acquire Wyse. (It's about time!) (BrianMadden.com)

Apple Jumps to #2 Position in New IDC Health Insights Life Sciences Survey; a 220% Increase Since 2009
Dell leads hardware category while Oracle maintains position as #1 software vendor of choice (Business Wire)

SAP Celebrates 40 Years of Innovation (PR Newswire)



SAP structures specialized unit for national security clients (Washington Technology)

WorldGate files for Chapter 7 bankruptcy (phillyBurbs.com)
The end of the line for WorldGate; an interesting piece of Philly Tech history.

ICG Acquires MSDSonline, a Cloud-Based Environmental, Health and Safety Compliance Solution (Globe Newswire)
Pays $48 million for 96%.

Will telcos and MSOs lose SMEs to upstart hosted service providers? (FierceEnterpriseCommunications)

Rue La La bulks up on warehouse space (Internet Retailer)
Buys 400,000 square foot Louisville warehouse from GSI Commerce. Michael Rubin reacquires one of his old properties.



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Philadelphia Media Network Publisher Osberg to announce "Project Lifeboat", Partnership with AOL Patch, on Tuesday

Tom Paine

After the expected announcement of the sale of Philadelphia Media Network to a new ownership group on Monday, PMN Publisher & CEO Greg Osberg will hold a press conference to make an important announcement about the future direction of the papers on Tuesday at the Academy of Natural Sciences, according to an internal company memorandum that somehow ended up being republished in the newspaper trade blog Poynter.

According to a source who spoke with Philly Tech News, Osberg will be announcing a new initiative, "Project Lifeboat", in which PMN will partner with AOL's Patch and incorporate Patch's Philly area journalists into its reporting. A key objective of this plan will be to phase out what the source referred to as "PMN's legacy journalists" over the next few years.

"These legacy journalists often make six-figure plus salaries, can't produce more than two stories a day because of their stubborn insistence on meticulous original reporting, and can't be trained in new technologies. In essence, they are dinosaurs", the source said. Furthermore, he commented, legacy journalists often go behind management's back by leaking embarrassing stories or memos that reflect poorly on management and ownership, sometimes going so far as to make up tales of imagined meetings that never occurred.

However, the source continued, Patch reporters "are like machines", turning out keyword-rich stories almost every hour, while working for little more than minimum wage. They can also handle most of their own technology needs, reducing the need for expensive tech support. A company PR person can order a story killed for business reasons without getting any flack. And with Patch, there is no troublesome Guild to deal with.

The source described the transition as being like going from Mainframe to Cloud Computing, with an emphasis on efficiency, flexibility, and elasticity of resources.

This initiative will also reduce the squeeze on space in PMN's new city-subsidized offices on Market East, to which it will move this summer, as Patch employees can work outside of the office in their parent's basements. This will leave more room for important activities like table tennis for Project Liberty startup employees.

Osberg led Newsweek from 2000 to 2008; in 2009 it was sold for $1. Osberg took over the papers after Philadelphia Media Network acquired them for $139 million in 2010. They originally were said to be on the market earlier this year for $100 million, but the single bid reportedly came in at $60 million or possibly even less.



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Philly Tech People News 4/1/2012

Cloud Industry Veterans Join Evolve IP to Support Company Growth
Five new hires join one of the country’s fastest-growing cloud services providers to further strengthen virtualization and hosted call center platforms (Business Wire)

Comcast Corporation Names D’Arcy F. Rudnay Chief Communications Officer (Business Wire)

Scott Ungerer of EnerTech Capital Expands Involvement with National Smart Grid Interoperability Panel (Business Wire)

Bentley Systems' Faraz Ravi Named Chairman of ASTM International Committee on 3D Imaging Systems (GeoPlace)

EXTOL International Appoints Reeve Fritchman its First Chief Strategy Officer
Transportation Management Systems Veteran to Guide Integration Technology Provider's Cloud-Based Initiatives (PR Newswire)

Jamie Allen, a leader in the Scala programming language development community who has been with Chariot Solutions, is now a consultant with Typesafe in San Francisco. Typesafe was founded by the creators of Scala and Akka middleware to develop a platform around those tools.

Heartland Payment Systems(R) Promotes Michael A. Lawler to Chief of Corporate Development (Marketwire)

Infragistics Appoints Ken Azuma as Managing Director of Japan (PRNewswire-AsiaNet)

The Cline Group Names Scott Piro Senior Vice President (Business Wire)




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Tribune Co. set to pull its programming off at DirecTV as midnight deadline approaches (Baltimore Sun)
Phillie games on WPHL could also be pulled from DirecTV.

SAP’s Plattner Seeks New Term as Chairman, Welt am Sonntag Says (Bloomberg)

SAP Founder Says Acquisitions Strengthened Company, Euro Says (Bloomberg)
Dietmar Hopp has no plans to sell stake, report says.

Medivo's CEO Says He's Never Seen So Much Investor Money In Healthcare Startups (Silicon Alley Insider)
Medivo raised $7 million in a Series A round led by Safeguard Scientifics late last year.

Dell Cloud Computing Partner Program: A Closer Look (TalkinCloud)

UPenn Frat Boys Are Taking Over New York Tech (Silicon Alley Insider)

QVC to cut 606 call center jobs (WAVY 10)
Company says its cutting Virginia call center jobs because more orders are being placed online.

Daily Links 3/30/2012: Sale of Philly papers expected to be announced on Monday

Philadelphia Newspapers Set to Be Sold to Local Leaders (New York Times: Media Decoder)

Announcement of sale of newspapers, website expected Monday (Philadelphia Inquirer)


New Jersey comptroller details waste by Delaware River Port Authority (Philadelphia Inquirer)
Norcross sounds like just the guy we need owning the Inquirer.


10 Questions for Scala CFO Anthony Maddalone (PC World)
Interesting interview with CFO of Exton-based Scala. He says his previous experiences with the IPO process was one thing that interested Scala, but he joined the company five years ago and I don't know if that's in the plans today (although its certainly not inconceivable).

Verizon plans wireless video service: report
CEO says offering could be ready as soon as this holiday season (Reuters via MSNBC)
From this article, still not quite sure what this is about; will find out more. (Here is a little more of an explanation), although details are still unclear.

Apple Doesn’t Need To Make the TV of the Future
The revolution is already here—and it’s called the Xbox. (Slate)

SunGard (Ellucian) Still Suing Cajana and NSCC (The Higher Ed CIO)

Server Flash Memory Craze Buoys Violin, Attracts SAP (Wall Street Journal: Digits)

Stroll Achieves New Revenue Milestones in 2011 (Business Wire)
Philly-based Stroll says 2011 revenue was $40 million, up from $17 million in 2010.

Fisker's Project Nina exposed ahead of New York Auto Show debut (Engadget)
Does it actually operate, or is it just a brick?

Exton-based HIT Application Solutions Secures $2.75 Million in Funding (PR Newswire)

Look at that DuckDuckGo! Daily search traffic is ballooning, up 227% in 3 months (The Next Web)

Inhabi Begins Business Incubation with Novotorium (PR Web)

A Few Early Observations On Xfinity Live! (The 700 Level)



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