Paoli Startup Alphabuyer looks to take advantage of Pennsylvania Electricity Deregulation

A Paoli-based startup is building a platform for group buying programs, with an initial emphasis on energy utilities.

The company, Alphabuyer, was founded by three area entrepreneurs: Kevin Johnson, who previously founded Tax Matrix Technologies, LCC and Dryden Procurement, and former GSI Commerce execs Rick Carragher and John Raisch. According to its blog Alphabuyer is a "privately funded early stage start-up currently seeking Series B funding". The company currently is running an ad on Mashable for a "Dev Ops Guru/Systems Admin/Ops Engineer". It plans to start with a program for buying electricity, taking advantage of the deregulation occurring in that market in Pennsylvania.



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Daily Links 10/20/2010: Comcast says its close to releasing iPad App

Invite Media
Nat Turner and Zach Weinberg
University of Pennsylvania Wharton School (Business Week: Business School Entrepreneurs)

He Wants to Shake Your Hand: First Round Capital’s Man in Manhattan (New York Observer)
On First Round Capital's Charlie O'Donnell.

SkillSlate grabs $1.1M to find local service providers (VentureBeat)
The pace of First Round Capital's investment activities seems to be increasing. This one has some similarities to another First Round portfolio company, TaskRabbit, in terms of the types of services provided, although the business model is different.

Plan to partially close an Upper Uwchlan Township road angers neighbors (Philadelphia Inquirer)
Would acommodate planned Bentley Systems HQ expansion.

CTAM Summit: Comcast, CableLabs Click On iPad Remotes
MSO Expects to Release iPad App 'Very, Very Soon' (Multichannel News)

Verizon's FiOS Remote app expands to iPhone; tablets soon (Electronista)



Cablevision, Fox flap has Hamilton Mayor John Bencivengo courting Comcast (The Trentonian)

FCC Responds to Cablevision-Fox Dispute by Tweeting Baseball Scores (Gawker: Valleywag)

Cablevision/Fox Spat Could Affect Comcast/NBCU Deal (The Wrap)

QlikTech Updates BI Product
(IT Jungle)

SAP: gearing up for the future now (ZDNet Blogs)

Keystone Mercy says computer drive of patients’ info missing (Philadelphia Business Journal)

Clearwire details results of initial LTE testing (FierceBroadbandWireless)

Fed Beige Book: Philadelphia, October 20, 2010 (Federal Reserve Board)





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Daily Links 10/19/2010: Urban Outfitters' social marketing strategy

SAP's In-memory Analytics Boxes Set for November Release (PC World)

SAP Brings Customers More Choices to Benefit From Virtualization and Cloud Infrastructures (PR Newswire)

Why An SAP Press Conference Actually Held My Attention (Read Write Cloud)

Unisys lights up Xeon-based mainframes (Channel Register)

Bentley Systems #BeInspired 2010 Event Opens with Congratulations to “Resilient” Users of Infrastructure Solutions (Directions Magazine: All Points Blog)


Comcast Has Answers for FCC
Responses concerned with distribution agreements, rates, proprietary info (Broadcasting & Cable)

Comcast Campaign Giving Jumps by Half as U.S. Weighs NBC Deal
(Bloomberg)

Lockheed sees contract cuts, delays hurting 2011 (Reuters)

ESPN.com Launches New Shop Experience (GSI Commerce Press Release)
In collaboration with GSI Commerce.



Four Ways to Build Customers Into Your Brand (ClickZ)
Monetate board member Sam Decker on Urban Outfitters' social marketing strategy.

Unvarnished Has More Money and a New Name: Honestly (Gigaom)
First Round Capital's latest investment, San Francisco-based Honestly, has some doubters.


10 things: Handicapping Gartner's top technologies for 2011 (ZDNet Blogs)

Cadient Group Launches REVEALSM at 4th Annual Digital Pharma East on October 18-21, 2010 in Philadelphia (Business Wire)

Novartis Pharmaceuticals AG Selects Veeva CRM for Global Deployments (Business Wire)




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Daily Links 10/18/2010: European software company Quintiq establishes dual HQ in Philly Area

Clearwire Sets Big City 4G Launch Dates (Light Reading Mobile)

Quintiq Announces Dual Headquarters in North America and Europe
International B2B Technology Company Targets American and Canadian Growth in Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) and Supply Chain Planning (SCP) (PR Newswire)

AT&T Recovery Exercise to Simulate Network Disaster in Philadelphia Region (PR Newswire)

My history of (mostly failed) side projects and startups (Gabriel Weinberg's Blog)

Still No Break in Cablevision/Fox Impasse
Dispute Enters Fourth Day (Multichannel News)

What Was Fox’ Hulu Blackout Really All About? (Gigaom: NewTeeVee)
Another complication for the Comcast-NBCU approval process?

Comcast begins DNS security rollout
First in U.S. to protect customers against Kaminsky-style cache poisoning attacks (Network World)


Companies Join to Offer Iris ID, Data Flow System (Government Video)
Sarnoff of Princeton, ePortation of Philadelphia.

Is EMC the Next Step in Oracle’s Journey to $100B? (Gigaom)

Software AG acquires MDM vendor (Network World)

Is the traditional BI market in decline? (IT-Director.com)

Latest First Round Capital Investments: FREEjit, UberCab

First Round Capital has joined lead investors Polaris Venture Partners and True Ventures and others in funding FREEjit, an Orange County, CA, stealth startup-so stealth, in fact, that it has no website and there is very little information out there about it yet. Freejit founder Sean Ellis announced First Round's investment in a tweet on Friday.

This blog post by Polaris Venture Partners' Dave Barrett provides some background on FREEjit. Barrett describes founder Ellis as being "widely-known as one of the thought leaders of the freemium model", and says that FREEjit "will address the exploding opportunity created by freemium and trial offers for consumers, prosumers, internet services, content providers and next-generation software companies alike".

It was also announced late last week that First Round had lead a $1.25 million round in UberCab, a San Francisco startup that provides an iPhone app that helps people locate cabs more quickly.

First Round Capital's portfolio now consists of about 90 companies, according to its website, although that number includes some of its exits. An SEC filing discovered last week indicates that it has just raised a new fund of at least $126.4 million. (Josh Kopelman told PE Hub that they are not commenting yet on the new fund, which probably means its still open.)




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News Corp. Tries Fox.com, Hulu As Pawn In Retrans Battle With Cablevision (paidContent)
Still no Fox on Cablevision, according to recent tweets. Which means many Phillies fans can't see game. I'm not taking sides, just saying it isn't right.

Philly Tech People News 10/17/2010

Reuben Hendell Joins GSI Commerce as CEO of Global Digital Agency Business
Digital marketing leader will also serve as Chief Strategist for Global Marketing Services division (Business Wire)

QlikTech Appoints John Burris To Its Board of Directors (Business Wire)

Thomas A. Corcoran Joins ONPATH Technologies as Chairman of the Board (PR Newswire)

Halfpenny Technologies Continues Focus on Growth by Adding Four Industry Veterans to Executive Team (Business Wire)

SAP Appoints New Head of Global Communications (PR Newswire)

Tiffany Baehman Named Vice President and General Manager of AT&T Mobility & Consumer Markets for Greater Philadelphia Region (PR Newswire)

Ross Thomson Rounds out Roska Healthcare Advertising team
(Med Ad News)

imc2 health & wellness Welcomes Medical Science Director
Linda Kay Brings Over 30 Years of Experience to the Agency (Marketwire)

OnPath Technologies of Marlton raises $3.1 million

OnPath Technologies of Marlton has apparently raised $3.1 million in equity, according to an SEC filing picked up by the website Formds.com.

A 2007 spinoff from Brocade Communications, OnPath provides scalable connectivity and monitoring solutions for high-performance networks. OnPath has also recently announced several senior management changes.




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Daily Links 10/15/2010: First Round Capital raises new $126 million fund

Josh Kopelman’s First Round Capital Quickly Reloads with $126.4M (PE Hub)

NBC’s Soft Spots Will Be Comcast’s Problem Soon (Wall Street Journal: Deal Journal)

Comcast-NBCU merger review expected to go into 2011: analyst (Washington Post: Post Tech)


Cable Guys Buck Up for BNI Video (Light Reading Cable)

icueTV’s t-Commerce Application Selected as a Finalist for CTAM’s “Get Interactive Awards” (Business Wire)
Haven't heard much from Cherry Hill's icueTV in the past year.


Comverse unloads Ulticom to Platinum Equity for $90m
New-Jersey based company has long been on the shelf and is the first of Comverse's subsidiaries to be offloaded. (Haaretz)
Ulticom’s shareholders cash out (Inorganic Growth)

Alphion Finds GPON Success in India (Light Reading Asia)
Alphion is based in Princeton Junction.

10 Lessons Learned from the HP-Oracle-SAP-NY Times Saga (CIO.com)

Herley Industries reports $3 million 4Q net loss (AP via Bloomberg Business Week)


Employees of Email Marketing Company Take Vow Not To Sleep
AWeber Communications Hosts 24-Hour Video Game Marathon to Benefit Local Children's Hospital (PR Web)




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Daily Links 10/14/2010: Verizon stores to begin selling iPad later this month

Clearwire’s Spectrum Is The Best Thing It Has Going For It—So Why Sell? (mocoNews.net)

Verizon Stores, Not To Be Outdone, Will Sell The iPad On October 28 (TechCrunch)

Business Journal’s Philadelphia 100 honored (Philadelphia Business Journal)

FCC Votes to Change CableCARD Rules
Move meant to spur competition in cable digital set-tops (Broadcasting & Cable)

Moody's Revises Cable Sector Outlook
Sluggish Economy, Increased Competition Weigh on Sector (Multichannel News)

Comcast targets Lone Star State, causing big money to flow (Washington Examiner)


Microsoft Aims at Salesforce.com With CRM Offer (PC World)
Also to reveal new plans for linking its Dynamics ERP offering with SAP ERP.

SAP's Strategy For The CRM Battle (Forbes)
Interview with Jujhar Singh, SAP senior vice president of CRM Solution Management.

Mozilla Taps SAP Executive as New Chief (New York Times: Bits)

Oracle: Citi Sees BMC, CERN, MLNX As Potential Deal Targets (Barron's: Tech Trader Daily)

The next evolution of investor 'office hours' (Fortune: The Term Sheet)

Viridity Energy and the University of California San Diego Awarded $1.6 Million to Optimize Solar Deployment on UCSD Campus Microgrid (Business Wire)




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Daily Links 10/13/2010: Lockheed sells Valley Forge consulting unit EIG for $815 million

Lockheed Sells EIG Consulting Unit to Veritas Capital (Bloomberg)
EIG is based in Valley Forge.

Sony’s Google TV-Powered Devices Have Arrived (Mashable)

Clearwire Said to Seek Up to $5 Billion in Spectrum Auction (Bloomberg)

Philly's their game
City places and faces enliven a first-of-its kind app coming from a flourishing indie game community. (Philadelphia Inquirer)

Joe Nocera Pleads Ignorance in Fiancée-Based Conflict of Interest (Gawker: Valleywag)


SAP Workflow use spreading beyond financials to compliance, utilities, HR (SearchSAP.com)

QlikTech : There is a Huge Untapped Opportunity in BI (Channel World)

Almac Successfully Moves its Clinical Technologies Business Unit Into New North American Headquarters (PR Newswire)

Salesforce.com and Veeva Systems Announce Expanded Alliance to Serve the Global Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology Industry (Business Wire)
Though based in California, Veeva has much of its sales and client services functions in Malvern.

NextGate and NextGen Healthcare Form Partnership to Deliver Health Information Exchange Solutions (Business Wire)

Drexel Engineers May Soon Replace E-Z Pass Box with Transparent Antenna (PR Newswire)