Two Iconic Philly Images

My brother Rob recently was visiting Philadelphia and took this cool photo of the new Apple Store with Two Liberty Place (I believe that's Two Liberty; I sometimes get them mixed up) in the background:



(Photo by Rob Paine)


Kembrel Scores Industry First with Launch of Facebook Private Sales Store for College Students (PR Web)
Company started at Wharton.


StreamTV Elocity A7 tablet packs Tegra 2 and Android 2.2, coming to Amazon for $399 in September (Engadget)
Engadget gets a look at Philly startup's new tablet.

Jeff Shell Wants a Job -- But at Tribune, or Comcast? (The Wrap)

Clearwire to Launch Pre-Paid WiMAX Service (GigaOM)


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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