SAP seeks gag order for upcoming Oracle trial (Computerworld)

Got an issue with Apple? Email Steve Jobs (It worked for one Philly-area exec)

There was an uproar in the Mac/Java developer community yesterday when a statement contained in Apple documentation appeared to indicate that Java on OS X would be deprecated (left outdated with no more updates.)

Scott Fraser, CTO and Co-Founder of healthcare information technology provider Portico Systems of Blue Bell,
went straight to the source, emailing Steve Jobs for an answer.

And he got a response.

"“Our software is Java based and runs both on the server and the desktop. We have been in business for over 12 years now and are a healthy growing company with about 180 employees”, Fraser wrote in his email, which he posted on his Flickr account.

The reply, in Jobs' name, said "Sun (now Oracle) supplies Java for all other platforms. They have their own release schedules, which are almost always different than ours, so the Java we ship is always a version behind. This may not be the best way to do it.”

Daily Links 10/22/2010: Comcast invests in the sFund

Safeguard Scientifics Partner Company Clarient to Be Acquired by GE Healthcare for $587 Million or $5 Per Common Share (Business Wire)

Verizon Net Beats Estimates as Smartphone Ranks Grow (Bloomberg)
Verizon Adds 226k FiOS Users, Loses 165k DSL Users
As profits fall due to voluntary (and not so voluntary) layoffs (Broadband Reports)

Kleiner Perkins and Partners Create $250 Million ‘Social’ Fund (New York Times: Bits)
Comcast, Liberty Media among those participating in fund.

Offers.com Raises $7 Million To Help Track Down Good Deals (No, Not Like Groupon) (TechCrunch)
Texas firm backed by Susquehanna Growth Equity.

LLR Partners Invests in Lightspeed Financial (Business Wire)

SAP and consumer healthcare (ZDNet Blogs)

Global CIO: SAP Shares Corporate Treasure With Customers (Information Week)

SAP's mobile strategy, the SI perspective (ZDNet Blogs)

Hulu Plus, Take Two: How’s $4.95 a Month? (All Things Digital: MediaMemo)

FCC starting to wade into Fox-Cablevision battle (LA Times: Company Town)




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Daily Links 10/21/2010: Netflix Shares Soar, but it faces challenges from Big Cable

Philly Fed Business Outlook Survey: October 2010 (Federal Reserve
Bank of Philadelphia)
Philadelphia-Area Manufacturing Expanded in October (Bloomberg)

Domino Sugar Moves SAP and Much More to Cloud (CIO.com)

Cloud computing services ‘should be like consumer products’, says SAP (Computerworld UK)

UBS Analyst Cites Four Reasons to Buy Comcast Shares
But Hodulik also becomes latest to predict a delayed NBC Uni deal close in Q1
(Hollywood Reporter)

Ahead of the Bell: Netflix shares soar (AP via Bloomberg Business Week)
Is Netflix at the Mercy of Big Cable? (Gigaom: NewTeeVee)

SCTE Cable-Tec Expo 2010: Motorola Web Tool Lets Broadband Users Help Themselves
Self-Service Portal Aimed at Cutting Support Calls (Multichannel News)

Medical-data breach said to be major (Philadelphia
Inquirer)

Freedom OSS and Symplified Streamline Unified Access Control for Web-Based Apps (Business Wire)

SEI 3Q beats profit estimates despite revenue dip (AP via Bloomberg Business Week)




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MK Capital Invests $3 million in Crowdsourced Video Leader Poptent

MK Capital Invests in Crowdsourced Video Leader Poptent
Digital Media Executive Andy Jedynak Joins Company as CEO (Business Wire)
Poptent raises $3M for new social network for crowdsourced video
(VentureBeat)
Although Wynnewood is given as Poptent's HQ on its website, it seems from what I'm reading that its headquarters may be moving to the LA area, although there is no official confirmation of that at this time.
Update: Mark Schoneveld of Poptent writes in to say: "Actually - we'll be staying here in Wynnewood. Our West Coast office is definitely expanding, but we're growing here, too".




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TruePosition receives $48 million payment in Patent Infringement suit

Wireless technology company TruePosition of Berwyn has received a $48 million payment from CommScope in settlement of TruePosition's patent infringement suit against CommScope's Andrews LLC subsidiary, according to a CommScope Form 8-K filing with the SEC.

CommScope paid up after a Federal Court of Appeals denied its appeal of the trial court's decision in the case and turned down a request for a rehearing. Andrews is still fighting TruePosition in another court case over disputed royalty obligations.

TruePosition provides wireless locator technologies using cell tower triangulation and other means. TruePosition is a subsidiary of Liberty Media. CommScope, based in Hickory NC, was spun off
from Horsham-based General Instrument (now part of Motorola) in 1997.

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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