emerging technology : Innovation + Job News

When Mayor Michael Nutter unveiled 500 Big Belly solar garbage compactors all over the city in April 2009, there was skepticism as to the effectiveness of this new technology. But when this test run was complete and the Philly Throws Green case study was released in June, city officials found the compactors would save over $1.5 million in waste collection man-hours per year. The city hopes its newest garbage-related investment in composting will yield the same results.

In an effort to conduct a real-world test of its effectiveness, the city of Philadelphia has granted $18,700 to Niche Recycling for one of its composting "Bio Bins." By trapping in natural gasses released from food waste using a sealed bin, a recirculating air system and wood chips, Bio Bins break down food waste so that fewer collections are needed.

"With food waste, you typically have three days before you start to get anaerobic conditions and smell," says Niche Recycling founder Maurice Sampson II. "With Bio Bins, you can handle this on-site. There is a tremendous savings to not have to collect every other day and, unlike a typical composting operation, we can use normal garbage trucks."

The grant comes as part of the Greenworks Pilot Energy Technology (G-PET) program, which is funded through the federal Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant program. With the exposure of this project and the recent opening of the Wilmington Organic Recycling Center, Sampson hopes to offer a full composting service that will give him a competitive advantage over trash collectors.

"We are very proud to be selected for this grant that is about commercialization, so that we can test it and find out what the criteria are," says Sampson. "Composting is not something we typically think of in America but oh my goodness, it is going to make such a difference."

Source: Maurice Sampson II, Niche Recycling
Writer: John Steele

In Scotland two weeks ago, the Scottish Police Service agreed to European firm ITM Power's Hydrogen On-Site Trials, a test of hydrogen fuel cell technology and fueling stations. The trials, scheduled for early 2011, will also be conducted in England (Sheffield and Southampton). The trials are one of thousands of hydrogen-based projects going on across Europe. And Drexel University-spinoff company AlumiFuel Power--the company responsible for aluminum-powder capsules that, when delivered to water, create valuable hydrogen and steam--plans to be involved. This week, AlumiFuel announced the sale of $7.5 million in common stock of its majority-owned subsidiary, AlumiFuel Power International. The sale, officials say, will allow the company to expand internationally.

"This Memorandum of Understanding is the first step in our goal to broaden our reach outside of North America and provide access to capital for expansion of our product development and marketing activities," says Alumifuel CEO Henry Fong.

While much of the company's business currently focuses on lift-gas for weather balloons and flameless heaters, executives hope to expand the use of these cylinder capsules in back-up and auxiliary power for fuel cells and turbines. But they will have to act fast, as hydrogen is rapidly catching on in key worldwide markets.

"While we must still conduct further due diligence, we believe this can be accomplished in a relatively short time-frame for a deal of this nature," says Fong. "The creation of AlumiFuel International and this funding, if successfully completed, will allow us to expand our reach internationally and raise significant capital to fund our operations."

Source: Henry Fong, AlumiFuel Power
Writer: John Steele

When most guys play pool, they talk about girls, music, sports; but when Drexel University electrical engineering grad students Ryan Buchert and Dr. Michael Balog gathered to shoot stick in their basement in 2003, the conversation was a bit more complex. Just as a stick is used to strike one ball against another into the pocket, the pair posited, what if all our tools could be controlled wirelessly, for simpler device management?

Those late-night pool games became the vision for BuLogics, a green gadget firm allowing for wireless control of everything from lights to smoke detectors. This week, the Greenworks Pilot Energy Technology Program--the first pilot program for the Greater Philadelphia Innovation Cluster--announced an award of $175,000 to help these energy-efficient electricians bring light controls and metering technology to the Navy Yard in South Philly and the Inn at Penn in University City.

"Energy costs keep going up and small businesses are suffering because of that," says BuLogics CEO Mirka Walczak. "Everyone is on the bandwagon of reducing parasitic power and we have a solution in place will offer better control and allow them to really keep an eye on that usage."

For these two commercial institutions, BuLogics starts with the Smart-Grid controller--"the glue that holds it all together" says Walczak--that allows all devices to run through the same command center and be monitored for energy consumption. This, along with metering power strips and wireless transponders, gives office and hotel managers the power to run a more efficient business.

"When you lock up the door for the last time, you can punch in a code that shuts off the power to all the devices and lock the doors and the thermostat gets set back," says Director of Operations Jennifer Doebler. " I think that automation piece that makes energy management so much simpler is what makes our technology a little more comprehensive and a little more desirable, especially in commercial applications like the Navy Yard."

Source: Mirka Walczak, Bulogics
Writer: John Steele


 

When the state Department of Community and Economic Development announced this week that Philadelphia would receive $785,000 in grant funding for commercialization projects, local development officials had to feel flattered. After all, very few of DCED's grant programs are this competitive and when all was said and done, Philadelphia programs took nearly half the funding, including the only two universities included in the funding round.

Drexel University's Health Innovation Partnership of Southeastern Pennsylvania ($100,000) is a research-in-action program creating products from transitional life sciences research and Temple University's Pennsylvania Environmental Technologies for Pharmaceutical Industry ($600,000) will develop energy-efficient technologies for waste management in the pharmaceutical industry. But the scrappiest competitor may have been the University City Keystone Innovation Zone. After their first proposal was duplicated by another KIZ, officials submitted a new proposal for a suite of programs to help would-be business owners through the commercialization process.

"We are going to re-scope the grant to include workshops on how to pitch to funders, grant writing advice, that kind of thing," says Jeanne Mell of the University City Science Center. She and Science Center colleague Kristen Fitch worked on the proposals, which earned $85,000 from the DCED. "Beyond that, we are looking to continue the great programming we have offered for the last five years."

But the most important thing the UC KIZ hopes to offer is funding. Through a new micro-grant program, UC KIZ hopes to redistribute this funding award to back worthy business plans, getting some products and business concepts to the marketplace sooner rather than later.

"We will continue to offer a steady stream of networking, professional development and entrepreneurial support programs in Philly," says Mell. "What the micro-grant project will allow us to do is add funding as well to get these companies moving."

Source: Jeanne Mell, University City Science Center
Writer: John Steele

Avid Radiopharmaceuticals, a five year-old Philadelphia company founded by Dr. Daniel Skovronsky and focused on novel molecular imaging able to detect the early stages of Alzheimer's and a host of other degenerative brain diseases, will be acquired by global pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly.

A news release issued on Monday by the Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly says the deal could be worth up to $800 million, including a $300 million upfront payment for all outstanding shares of Avid. Skovronsky and company have made a big splash in Philly. The former scientific director at the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Neurodegenerative Disease Research earned Entrepreneur of the Year honors from Ernst & Young in 2009, the same year the company landed more than $34 million in investment.

"We've had a productive and long-standing relationship with Lilly, and believe in their approach to providing improved outcomes for individual patients," Skovronsky says in the release. The release also says Avid and its team will remain in Philly and will continue its support of ongoing clinical trials for other pharma firms. Avid recently submitted a marketing application to the FDA for florbetapir, a molecular imaging agent being investigated to detect the presence of amyloid plaque (a defining pathology of Alzheimer's) in the brain.

According to an Associated Press story, Eli Lilly halted development of semagacestat, a drug being studied as a potential treatment for Alzheimer's, so the Avid acquisition would give it a leg up in getting back in front of a market expected only to get larger.

Source: Eli Lilly, Avid Radiopharmaceuticals
Writer: Joe Petrucci

Something exciting happened during WHYY's fall pledge drive. And it wasn't a riveting Terry Gross interview. For the third consecutive year, NPR stations saw growth in the 25-to-40 demographic. Welcoming this younger demographic will not be easy for WHYY, Philadelphia's NPR affiliate and home for political discourse and intellectual public programming. So the station created NewsWorks, an online news and commentary site, launching Nov. 15. Enlisting its own journalists and regional content providers, NewsWorks hopes to create a hyperlocal news focus and bring enlightened discussion from the airwaves to the internet.

"The 2008 election was a great thing for NPR stations because a lot of people considered NPR to be the most reliable place to get news on that election so we brought a lot of new people into the tent," says WHYY Director of News and Civic Dialogue Chris Satullo. "Now we are trying to keep them. We are looking for two key demographics we hope will be the early adopters of NewsWorks. One is the younger technologist professional group--the creative class in Philly. And the other is the middle-aged professional who has been an NPR fan for a long time."

One of the goals of NewsWorks is to replicate the open discussion created on air at WHYY and bring it to the internet. Website comment boards are not traditionally known for scintillating conversation so NewsWorks will employ a self-governing rewards system, allowing users to give points to other users for contributing a valuable comment. By changing commenting and by asking the right questions, Satullo believes productive dialogue can occur online.

"We are going to work very hard not to frame things as black and white, left vs. right," says Satullo. "We are trying to get the 360-degree opinions and how people's experiences shape their opinions."

Source: Chris Satullo, WHYY
Writer: John Steele

When CMS Made Simple founder Ted Kulp created the open source website management software in 2004, Wordpress didn't exist and blogging was not yet a way of life. He needed a simpler way of inputting content to websites, so he created one. With designers for the Shops at Liberty Place, the Philadelphia Sun and the African American Chamber of Commerce using the platform, Kulp has spread the simple around, and has been rewarded with users in 219 countries. This month, CMS Made Simple hit its biggest milestone yet, reaching one million downloads.

"After I made it, I just put the code out there to see if other people were interested and it and it has grown so large, and there are so many people who have worked on it, there is no way we could close it now, it's out there for the world to use," says Kulp. "I do things like support and custom development around it so there are a lot of different avenues for everything except the software itself. And it's worked fairly well for me."

As a partner with interactive ad agency Defined Clarity, Kulp has been building websites for years. Today, CMS Made Simple's forum message board allows customers direct access to this CMS and the professional designers who created it, allowing for a fully functional customer experience that Kulp and Defined Clarity partner Bruce Marable hope will continue to grow.

"It's time for all the people who are not using it to know about it," says Marable. "It has been growing organically for the last five or six years. We want to make the project grow and to position it as the number one content management system out there."

Source: Ted Kulp, CMS Made Simple
Writer: John Steele

At construction co-working space NextFab Studio, artists, hobbyists and inventors can work on anything they please, from building a home shelving unit to inventing a toy robot. The only thing they don't want to see is people standing around. So when the studio electronics lab got more spectators than workers, NextFab created a new addition to its class rotation. Enlisting the services of Drexel University co-op student Ryan Barnes as technical supervisor, NextFab's electrical course teaches the science behind electricity and rudimentary skills for building an LED circuit. The second level course teaches soldering and other early projects to turn the watchers into doers.

"From the get-go, NextFab has had an electronics lab and people would always walk by who knew next to nothing about electronics but you could just see them thinking "what could I do in here?" says Barnes.

Opened in January as an extension of the University City Science Center, NextFab offers Philadelphia's innovators, craftsmen and entrepreneurs a workshop complete with hand tools, 3D printers, computer controlled machine tools, software, and electronics workbenches all in a 3,600-sq-ft studio. Since its inception, it has become a popular spot for artists and craftsmen to create profitable home businesses. The classes are geared both towards practical skills and functional assistance, tailoring instruction to each worker's projects.

"Electronics is such a huge field that it is tough to teach everything that we need to know so the way this class is taught is definitely on a craft level," says Barnes. "We have a lot of artists that work here and this is a way to explain electronics and show how they can be used on different projects."

Source: Ryan Barnes, NextFab Studio
Writer: John Steele

University of Pennsylvania's educational and research internet 2 network MAGPI wants to take Philly's teachers on a trip around the world. From Mexican dance teams to Canadian biology experts to shark researchers in Florida, its hard to believe all these educational programs will fit under one tent. Luckily for attendees of MAGPI's first Content Provider Carnival on Wednesday, these exhibits are all online, streaming and coming live to teachers, students and researchers looking to bring long-distance learning to Philadelphia's classrooms.

"This carnival comes at a unique junction where school budgets are constrained and a lot of the things that are being cut for students are those extracurricular activities or those field trip opportunities and a virtual field trip is a cost-effective way of providing those experiences to students," says MAGPI Manager of Educational Services Heather Weisse Walsh. "Now I am by no means suggesting that it takes the place of a student actually visiting a museum but if that is not a possibility, especially if you have a rural school district that can't get to a metropolitan area very quickly, it's a wonderful alternative."

By bringing 22 webstreams online at the same time, the Content Provider Carnival allows virtual field trip organizers the chance to present to teachers who may not otherwise have time to seek out these educational portals. Besides showcasing unique experiences like swimming with sharks or working as a lumberjack, students will be able to ask questions to presenters and engage with these experiences in real time, bringing them a worldly perspective to students no matter where they live.

"We are going to actually simulcast not just the field trip but a class engaging with it," says Weisse Walsh. "That is so important because teachers have so many different competing priorities right now that doing something new can be scary. This is a way for them to see it in action."

Source: Heather Weisse Walsh, MAGPI
Writer: John Steele

Being at an awards dinner with cable giants like Showtime and Starz was a thrill for the self-professed TV junkies at Cherry Hill's t-commerce solution company icueTV. But standing next to them on the podium as finalists for the same award took this gratification to a new level.

At the New Orleans, LA banquet this week, icueTV was announced as a finalist for Cable and Telecommunications Association for Marketing (CTAM)'s "Get Interactive" Awards. icueTV creates a sales portal for advertisers to connect directly with TV viewers as they watch. Watching Shark Week on Discovery? You can buy the DVDs right from your remote. icueTV has been steadily expanding, now represented within the six largest cable providers in the nation. But even with great traction, this is still a new technology and icue hopes this award signals recognition from the cable television industry that it's time to make a move.

"For years, people have thought about using the TV remote to buy products," says icueTV VP of Business Development Ralph Nieves. "We feel that this award signals that t-commerce is an idea who's time has come."

Starting out in political polling and other on-screen data tracking applications, icueTV developed a platform that expedites the purchase process, integrating a PayPal account, e-mail connectivity and one-touch purchasing. And while this is still an emerging technology, no one told icueTV. They have already begun hiring engineers tasked with finding new applications and clients as if this platform was old news. The company hopes this award will cement them as an industry leader as its technology becomes standard in digital sales and marketing.

"Our customers know who we are but to become certified and vetted took us four years," says Nieves. "We are not arrogant enough to think competition doesn't exist already but we are confident that no cable labs are examining commerce applications in the way we are."

Source: Ralph Nieves, icueTV
Writer: John Steele

When geek-themed slideshow franchise Ignite came to Philly in 2008, the event could have taken many forms. As only the second city to host an Ignite event, founder Geoff DiMasi (of P'unk Avenue fame) was unsure how to play it at first. So he went to the originators for guidance. Started in Seattle by O'Reilly Media Technology Evangelist Brady Forrest and Bre Pettis of Makerbot.com, Ignite was designed to introduce Seattle to its own tech and entrepreneurial scene, allowing presenters five minutes to talk about, well, pretty much anything.

After meeting Ignite's inner circle at South By Southwest, DiMasi decided he wanted to start Ignite in his hometown and decided that a traditional conference vibe was so not Philly. So he brought it to Fishtown rock club Johnny Brendas, charged five bucks and set the speakers loose. Five sold out events later, Ignite is going strong and No. 6 is set to be the largest event yet.

"Some people run it like a business and have it in an auditorium and people sit very demurely and listen very carefully to everything," says DiMasi. "We have taken the punk rock approach where you pay your five bucks, it's at Johnny Brendas, it's meant to be really fun and spirited so that the speakers feel like rock stars."

The event used to be free but as attendance increased, DiMasi began charging to donate the profits to worthy causes. Philadelphia Food Trust received money as well as all-girl rock summer camp Girls Rock Philly. With the $1,250 they received, Girls Rock Philly was able to offer scholarships to girls who couldn't afford the camp.

"That culture of giving back to the scene in Philadelphia is what inspires me," says DiMasi. "Someone came up, they shared their idea, and we try to find something that will have a real impact on the city. Coming up with that mechanism is something we are really proud of."

Source: Geoff DiMasi, P'unk Avenue
Writer: John Steele

Everyone is familiar with Black Friday. The frenzied dash of hungry holiday consumers to price-slashed stores the day after Thanksgiving has become an American tradition as timeless as the Christmas tree. But have you heard of Cyber Monday? Between 2008 and 2009, website retailers showed a 43 percent traffic increase on the Monday following Black Friday where online retailers begin their holiday sales.

This year, Conshohocken website optimization firm Monetate.com broke some records of its own, doubling in size over the last six months. From Dicks Sporting Goods to Urban Outfitters, Monetate offers a revolving door of keywords targeting the changing tastes of consumers without calling the IT department. As the holiday season gets underway, the quick turnaround of this solution has new clients joining up.

"If it's raining outside, the store owner pushes the umbrellas up front and adds 30 percent to the price and makes a lot of money that day," says Monetate VP of Marketing Blair Lyon. "Large retail sites have a hard time doing that because of all this overlapping technology that is in place, requiring the IT departments to get involved, preventing retailers from trying things."

With a year of record growth under its belt, Monetate isn't waiting for the holidays to make some purchases. With five open positions listed on its website, Monetate looks to hire 10 new employees in the next six months to handle the demands of an ever-expanding client list. With a veritable whos-who of Philadelphia retailers, Monetate looks to expand its footprint and hopes Cyber Monday can be its coming out party.

"We can have this implemented in minutes, giving it about two weeks to be effective," says Lyon. "That's why we are excited about attacking Cyber Monday. A lot of customers don't think there is enough time before the holidays. We can have them up and running for the holiday season right now."

Source: Blair Lyon, Monetate
Writer: John Steele

As document sharing has transitioned from walking a manila envelope down the hall to e-mailing a digital image, document viewing has become a complicated task. With hundreds of file types and varying security measures, it's hard to be sure your document will get where it's going and will be read when it gets there. Manayunk software firm Vuzit designed the DocuPub platform to simplify the process, allowing companies to view documents of all file types safely and securely, over a cloud-based server system that can even be read on mobile devices.

Founded by former Traffic.com employees Chris Cera and Brent Matzelle, Vuzit has drawn recent investments from Ben Franklin Technology Partners and Robin Hood Ventures, allowing Vuzit to make some upgrades. This month, the company announced it will be using the investment to add advanced search capabilities over the whole cloud or within document files. The company also plans to add search engine optimization.

"Chris and Brent saw that, as people wanted to send more and more files over the internet, they were going to want to do more than just send PDF files around, without having any idea what people were doing with the files," says Board Advisor Coley Brown.

With investment in place, Vuzit hopes not only to upgrade its software but its staff as well, looking to hire three to five new engineers and development professionals over the next sixty days. With these investments, Vuzit hopes to expand DocuPub's versatility, adding more file types (it allows 40 already) and allowing an ease of use not yet available.

"Most people turn everything into PDFs but in many cases, it's a pain or there are conversion problems," says Brown. "What most people would rather do is say 'here is my Visio file and even though you never paid for Visio, don't have a license for it, you can see it as if you did."

Source: Coley Brown, Vuzit
Writer: John Steele

Less than two months since $122 million was announced to create an Energy Innovation Hub at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, the project is already taking shape. United Kingdom-based Mark Group, a European home energy efficiency leader, was welcomed on Friday by Gov. Ed Rendell to its new home at the Navy Yard, where it will hire up to 320 workers over the next three years.

Mark Group was founded in 1974 and boasts of improving the energy efficiency of more than 2 million homes, installing more than 6,000 measures every week that help consumers save. The company is in growth mode, having recently established an Australian base of operations.

Led by a Penn State University-headed team, the Clean Energy campus at the Navy Yard is one of three regional clusters nationally that are designed to bring together leading researchers and the private sector to develop energy efficient building designs. Buildings accounty for nearly 40 percent of U.S. energy consumption.

"The creation of alternative energy sources is key to America's economic future," says Mark Group CEO Jeff Bartos. "We are excited to launch our business from Philadelphia and to deliver energy efficiency upgrades to homes throughout the nation."

As part of the move, Mark Group received a $3.28 million financing package from the Governor's Action Team. Bringing the company across the pond was truly a collaborative effort: The state Department of Community and Economic Development's international trade off, the City of Philadelphia, Select Greater Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corp. and the TeamPA Foundation were all credited.

Source: Jeff Bartos, Mark Group
Writer: Joe Petrucci

Philly Startup Leaders' lecture series Entrepreneurs Unplugged can always be counted on for a great bootstraping, one-man-against-the-world story. But for Mike Rappaport, founder of tech consulting firm Chariot Solutions, going it alone was not an option. Founded in 2002, Chariot has become a million-dollar application consultant company with over 50 employees and has been voted the best place to work amongst small businesses in Philadelphia. So what advice will he have for the struggling entrepreneur when he hits the EU stage on October 20th? There's no I in TEAM.

"The title [of the lecture] is 'Philosophy-Driven Business Growth,' but if I had it to do over again, the title might be better as something like 'The Power of True Team Management,' says Rappaport. "This is not the story of an entrepreneur or a CEO that led his company to greatness, its about a team. Its about how I relied on so many people and really spent my time picking the right people."

Not only is Rappaport a firm believer in a team environment in the workplace, he credits his very existence to delegating, finding quality partners and getting the most out of your business relationships. Once the funding was in place, he chose a team, created a philosophy and was careful to pick people who could share his philosophy. But it all started with those first relationships to get the business off the ground.

"We started with a small level of funding and we go to a point about six months in where we thought we might run out of money," says Rappaport. "Even though the business was going according to plan, we were undercapatolized. One of my mentors really helped us and let us in on other ways to raise money that I was completely unaware of. It was so helpful to know all the resources that were out there."

Source: Mike Rappaport, Chariot Solutions
Writer: John Steele