Daily Links 8/27/2010: Mid-Atlantic Angel Group raises $4.8M fund

Mid-Atlantic Angel Group raises $4.8M in 2nd fund (Philadelphia
Business Journal)

Economists to Meet at FCC About Comcast/NBCU
ACA, Bloomberg, Comcast among those to be represented at Friday meeting
(Broadcasting & Cable)

Report: Pharma Digital Spending Growing — But Slowly
(Wall Street Journal: Health Blog)

5 Myths About Philadelphia’s ‘Blogging Tax’ (Wired Blogs: Epicenter)

Investor group proposes WPCS merger (Philadelphia Inquirer)

GSI Commerce: Citi Starts Coverage With Buy Rating, $29 Tgt (Barron's: Tech Trader Daily)

InfoLogix Positioned for Strategic Initiatives in Second Half of 2010 (PR Newswire)

The Current Competitive M&A Climate (Safeguard Scientifics Blog)

SCVNGR Brings Location Game to Facebook Places (Mashable)
SCVNGR, based in Massachusetts, is a graduate of the DreamIt Ventures program.

LifeShield Security announces technology expansions (SecurityInfoWatch.com)




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Comcast Targets Philly With SDV (Light Reading Cable)

Tribune Co. creditors court Michael Eisner and Jeff Shell for top jobs (LA Times: Company Town)
Shell, a high-level Comcast programming exec, would reportedly become Tribune's CEO if such a deal occurred.

Cisco Makes 'TV Everywhere' Play With Plans To Buy ExtendMedia
Customers of 52-Employee Startup Include AT&T, Bell Canada, Cablevision
(Multichannel
News)
ExtendMedia competes with Comcast's thePlatform in many ways.

Clearwire Considering New Prepaid Options?
Announces cryptic plans to serve new consumer segment
(Broadband Reports)

Gartner criticizes SAP for frequent product name changes (SearchSAP.com)

Rumored SAP-Red Hat Merger Seen as a Long Shot (PC World)

Freshly-founded startup GroupMe raises $850k to bring group chat to mobile (VentureBeat)
First Round Capital invests in New York startup.


Philly companies in 2010 Inc. 5000

Here are the top Philly-area firms on the newly released 2010 Inc. 5000. The fastest growing area company, according to Inc., is King of Prussia's NextDocs, which builds applications for the Life Sciences industry using Microsoft's SharePoint software.


Reed Smith asks Pa. Supreme Court to reconsider "Dechert LLP v. Commonwealth" software tax ruling

Pittsburgh-based law firm Reed Smith announced last week that it had filed an Application for Reargument with the Pennsylvania Supreme Court asking it to reconsider its July decision in the case of Dechert LLP v. Commonwealth, in which it held that "purchases of licenses to use canned computer software, however delivered (my bold), are subject to sales tax", according to Reed Smith. It upholds the application of the sales tax in this case to "electronically delivered" canned software. Whether this would include software as a service delivered via "the Cloud" is not clear. The best summary of the case that I have seen is this one by Pepper Hamilton.

Reed Smith says that the Department of Revenue's interpretation of the tax code implemented in 1971 has been that canned computer programs delivered on physical media (such as disk) are subject to sales tax and software delivered electronically is not. The firm says the Court is ignoring "long-standing, published interpretations of the tax statute".
Obviously, as the delivery of more and more software shifts towards the Cloud this will become an increasingly contentious issue in many other states as well as Pennsylvania.

Reed Smith was representing Phiily-based law firm Dechert.




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Daily Links 8/23/2010: Pay TV industry suffers first subscriber decline

Report: County needs $50 million to debug financial software (Marin Independent Journal)

Jefferson may axe financial software system (Birmingham News)

Pay-TV Industry Suffers First Subscriber Decline On Record (Dow Jones Newswires via Nasdaq.com)


His network funds a virtual one (Philadelphia Inquirer)
On myYearbook's Geoff Cook.

Philadelphia Tax Code Sparks Big Controversy with Small Bloggers (Mashable)

Google Buys Like.com (Information Week)
Google acquires another First Round Capital portfolio company.

Google Offers Cloud-Based Learning Engine
Providing developers with machine learning on tap could unleash a flood of smarter apps.

(MIT Technology Review)
Article highlights Philadelphia developer Joel Confino, an early user.

New Round of Talks In Broadband Regulation Debate
ITIC Said To Be Hosting Latest Negotiations With Industry Players
(Multichannel News)

Verizon FiOS set-top boxes getting a new HD guide, external storage and more in Q4 (Engadget)

U.S. Air Force/Lockheed Martin Team Complete GPS III Design Phase Ahead of Schedule
Next Generation GPS III Program Shifts to Production Phase
(PR Newswire)




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Philly Tech People News: 8/22/2010

IMS Health Names Ari Bousbib Chief Executive Officer; David R. Carlucci to Remain Chairman (Business Wire)

Meet the New PSL Leadership Team (Philly Startup Leaders)

Brian Hull Returns to G2 (MediaBistro: AgencySpy)

Dow Announces Divisional Structure and Leadership Changes to Drive Next Phase of Transformation (Business Wire)

Acsis Appoints Kelly Kuchinski to Director of Product Marketing
(Business Wire)


Philly Tech Tidbits 8/22/2010

Radnor-based business intelligence software provider Qlik Technologies has continued to do well since going public on July 15 at $10.00 per share. On Friday it closed at $16.50. QlikTech reported 56% revenue growth (62% growth in license revenue) last week for the quarter ended June 30.

The blog ERP Software Advice recently looked at large companies that could be potential Oracle acquisition targets over the next few years and put Wayne's SunGard on the list. SunGard, though, may be a bit out of the mode of Oracle's usual business model. The Inquirer's Joe DiStefano quotes SunGard CEO Cristobal Conde (on the subject of selling) from its recent earnings conference: "It comes up at every board meeting and we are constantly huddling and brainstorming, [but] as we continue to grow, it puts us more out of reach of everyone but the biggest" potential buyers. SunGard is beginning to see more growth after its financial systems business was particularly affected by the economic downturn, reporting 4% revenue growth in its most recent quarter.

Except for two rather sketchy press releases issued out of Philadelphia last week, (here and here), not much is known about Stream TV, which says it will introduce an Android-based iPad competitor this coming Tuesday (the 24th). The only clue I can see is that the name of the CEO given in the press releases is Mathu Rajan, which is the same name as the founder of Zero Technologies of Bensalem (Zero Water), though I do not know if it is indeed the same person.

Philadelphia-based Lincoln Financial Group was selected for CSC's Innovation in Policy Administration Award for the successful execution of a program to consolidate its life insurance administration systems. When the program is fully completed in 2011, Lincoln Financial expects to have reduced its number of platforms from 14 to three.

Philly mobile payment startup XIPWIRE is competing for a slot to present at next March's SXSW in Austin. XIPWIRE proposes to talk about reaching the 50 million underbanked Americans who it says are "off the grid" financially. You can vote here until August 27.

It's official: the previously reported acquisition of Brooklyn-based Hot Potato by Facebook has been confirmed by the two companies. Hot Potato's existing online service will be shut down; its founder and staff will be working for Facebook. First Round Capital was one of its early investors.

Philadelphia City Paper reports that Philadelphia seems to making a great effort to round up the publishers of even tiny little blogs with minimal revenue in order to charge them $300 for a business privilege license.




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Interview with First Round Capital's Howard Morgan (This Week in Venture Capital)

Interesting insights into First Round's history and strategy.