Selecting the best mobile internet provider has become a tricky business, as there are so many operators offering a myriad of deals for you to wrap your head round. Contract lengths are getting longer and longer, with providers wanting to lock you into a contract for as long as 2 years. Finding the right deal has therefore become quite a complicated task.
Here are some tips for fining the best mobile internet deals. (more…)
Tech in Motion: Philadelphia, an inclusive group of local tech lovers and enthusiasts, is having their first event on May 10, 2012.
This group of geeks will discuss how to improve efficiency and scaling in the cloud. They won’t be talking about rain. Weathermen should not come, unless they are interested in hearing Phil Ives talk about his 14 years of experience delivering mass appeal consumer facing technology or Don Norbeck talk about long term product strategy.
Cloud Reality: Improving Efficiency and Scaling in the Cloud Environment
Thursday, May 10, 2012, 6:00 PM
Offices are places of work. They’re usually set up for practicality and function. They’re full of cubicles, fluorescent lights, and water coolers. The offices of an eCommerce vendor would seem to follow in that tradition, but WebLinc is no ordinary company. Based in Old City, the company has two offices on 3rd street both with interesting features that would bring out the inner geek of any jaded office worker.
Darren Hill was kind enough to show me around WebLinc’s offices. It turns out tailoring eCommerce solutions for clients is easier when there’s a ready supply of caffeinated beverages, arcade games, and Nerf guns. It doesn’t hurt being above National Mechanics either.
The office space above National Mechanics is devoted to WebLinc’s developers. Developers are programming geeks. These are the guys who write the back end code for e-commerce solutions. They’re also known to break out into Nerf gun battles. I was lucky enough to visit during a cease fire, but if anything went down I made sure to note the location of a Nerf shield to deflect any stray darts.
WebLinc’s other office on 3rd street has a storefront that looks like a demented butcher shop. It’s twisted and a little sick, exactly the look that Darren was going for in historical Old City. I always wondered what odd people occupied this storefront in Old City. It’s WebLinc.
This space houses mostly project management employees so there’s less of a threat of taking an errant dart from an over caffeinated developer. But there was a higher threat of cardiac arrest from trucking up all the funky stairwells. I am out of shape.
Darren explained how a lot of the features of the office are to instill creativity and productivity. The whiteboard walls are great for jotting down ideas or collaborating with coworkers. The red telephone booth rooms provide privacy when taking conference calls. The televisions in the bathroom? Those are for multitasking.
Based on what I saw, WebLinc’s digs give any red blooded geek office envy. Scope out some more pics in the Flickr gallery or in the slideshow below.
Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.
Deals on the Way is a nifty Chrome Extension that integrates into Google Maps and aggregates data from deal sites to help you find discounted food and entertainment in your local area.
Once you install the extension, ask Google for directions and you’ll see a button that opens up a window offering up discounted gift certificates, event tickets and vouchers. You can even customize the deals that you see by modifying the filters across the six categories and the 50+ sub-categories.
Here’s a video of how it works:
Deals on the Way from Aksel Gungor on Vimeo.
The “on the Way” part of the name represents the idea that you can find deals even when you’re traveling outside of Philly. We know you would NEVER leave Philly, but let’s pretend you were shipped out of town for work. Instead of eating at the crappy hotel restaurant and watching reruns of Family Guy on TV, you can use this site to find something interesting and different without having to sign up for a plethora of local deal sites. Heck, it can even help you find something interesting right here in Philly!
The group that created the extension, Ridaroo, is a local Philly-based start-up run by a group of Drexel graduates.
Website design has gone from something very complicated that you needed to hire someone to do for you to something almost anyone can do for themselves. And WordPress is a big part of the reason why.
Started in 2003 as a free, open source blogging tool, it now powers millions of websites across the internet and makes setting up a website as easy as a download and a few clicks. But one of the great things about the platform is that you can customize and tweak it as much as you like, or keep it simple and just start posting.
If you ever wanted to know more about WordPress, Philly Tech Week has you covered.
The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philly WordPress Meetup group are presenting WordPress for Beginners & Intermediates, presentations designed to get you rolling and working with the platform. The Beginners presentation will cover posting content, handling comments and working with video and audio. The Intermediates presentation will go over creating themes and plugins and what exactly that entails.
So be at the Philadelphia Inquirer’s building (400 N Broad St, Philadelphia) at 6:00 PM on April 25th. It will cost you $10 and you do have to register, but it will be worth every penny if you want to know the ins and outs of WordPress and what it can do for you.
WordPress for Beginners & Intermediates
April 25th, 6pm, $10
www.phillytechweek.com/events/WordPress_for_Beginners-Intermediates
Philly Tech Week
www.phillytechweek.com
Our frienemies over at Technically Media (publishers of Technically Philly) have just launched a Philly-specific URL shortener: ph.ly and along with it, a weekly email newsletter.
Brownstoner.com, Brooklyn’s leading site for real estate and neighborhood news, started a Philadelphia edition back in early 2010. Along with it, they launched ph.ly which was a URL-shortener that could be used for anything (it mirrored the now-defunct bk.ly which they launched the year prior for Brooklynites).
Unfortunately by the end of 2010, Brownstoner’s presence in Philly was no more. And without philly.brownstoner.com, they took down ph.ly. “They had launched a Philly URL shortener, to their credit, before we did, and so when they took theirs down, rather than reinvent the wheel, we figured we’d just use that domain in a bigger way.” says Christopher Wink of Technically Media.
Consider yourself an expert on something? Don’t give away that information for free. Local startup, Quewey is about to shake things up from their homebase in Rittenhouse Square. Utilizing the LinkedIn API as a method to verify professional standing, Quewey aims to create a business-oriented community that will connect knowledge keepers with knowledge seekers.
According to Quewey:
Quewey founder Matthew Safaii noticed the way people gathered business information online was often inefficient and the answers they found were not always credible or easily cited. Not only was he more likely to get the answers he need from his own network, but also the people in it had the time on their hands to go in depth. From there, Matthew sought to bring a network of business professionals together, and Quewey was born.
Users can ask or answer any business question in the Quewey community: from entrepreneurs looking for advice on how to start their company or manage their growing brand to students looking for career guidance. “The process of gathering business information has always been time consuming, and answers can be hard to verify,” said Matthew Safaii, founder of Quewey. “Think of Quewey like your own personal rolodex of subject matter experts, who will help streamline your work flow and answer any business-related questions you have.”
Sounds cool right? Visit Quewey.com and sign up for the private beta.
Don’t talk about “Puck Man’
Geeks and Valentines Day are two things that have never really gone together in most peoples’ eyes, kind of like geeks and anything that has to do with an athletic activity. But the truth is that a lot of us do date.
But what if you are in the extremely rare situation of dating a non-geek? What if the person you are going to spend Valentines Day with doesn’t know the X-Men from Mad Men? What if they couldn’t tell you the difference between Star Wars and Star Trek, neither of which they have seen because they just don’t “get it”?
This was the very situation I found myself in when I began dating the woman who would eventually become my wife. She is about as much of a non-geek as I am a geek, which if you have read my writing on Geekadelphia should tell you something.
I thought that with Valentines Day upon us I would share a few tips if you happen to find yourself dating a non-geek.
Your personal soundtrack t-shirt is a no go.
Tip 1: No ‘Geek Articles of Clothing
Yes, I know you are very proud of your Think Geek t-shirt collection and your G.I. Joe Destro tie and your Nintendo controller belt buckle. But Valentines Day is not the time for it. Leave that stuff in the closet and dress like you have no idea how many Gears of War games have been released. (more…)
Painting by the lovely Britt Miller
When the president tells you to do something, you do it. Luckily for us, our POTUS is also a Geek in Chief, and recently launched a tourism-boosting initiative called #visitUS, tying together the White House’s tricked-out Foursquare page and multitude of social media accounts.
We’ve been dreaming of a Philadelphia foursquare badge for years, but now that’s a real possibility. Foursquare’s jumping on the #visitUS train, asking users to curate city-specific lists with the best hometown spots the world should know about. From now until Feb. 3, you’ve got a chance to create your own visitors’ guide, add tips, photos and gain followers. Foursquare will then pick the three most amazing lists and create city badges for them (Move over Seattle!)
We’ve made two lists and hope you’ll follow them (we promise there are only a few tourist traps). To help us make the Brotherly Love or Geekadelphia badges a reality, we’d love it if you share with friends, check in, tweet, shout, hashtag, Facebook, e-mail, blog, send smoke signals and @-reply the mayor. Then head to the streets and check out the venues for yourself!
GEEKADELPHIA: Geekiest Places in Philly! Philadelphia has such a vibrant techie and creative community. You can’t ignore innovation that goes all the way back to Ben Franklin! We’ve curated 30 of our favorite geeky spots.
Badge of Brotherly Love: Must-see places to eat, visit, see, learn, explore and experience in Philadelphia, from historical venues to gourmet restaurants to boutique shopping.
Think you’d like to try it for yourself? See below the jump for instructions on how to make your own list.
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We tend to avoid politics here on Geekadelphia, but when a local talent creates something this awesome… well, we just can’t resist. Plus I think I recognize the dude playing the computer.
Produced by Ritz Reynolds (The Roots, Mac Miller) and shot/edited by Dan King at Stupid Easy, Firewall is Leah Kauffman’s tender ode to the Internet. A lot of you might know Leah from her work over at Phrequency, or perhaps from her viral Obama Girl videos. She wrote the music for that, you know. From Kauffman:
Senate and Congress are debating bills (Protect IP Act + Stop Online Piracy Act) that would allow federal law enforcement to seek court orders compelling ISPs and search engines to filter domain names and block websites merely accused of copyright infringement. This will force websites to censor their users. Our first amendment rights are at stake here. Visit americancensorship.org for more information.
The video is making the rounds across the Internet, popping up on CNET, Boing Boing, etc. Let’s see how popular this thing can get. You can scope out the video here and share it with your friends. Nice work Leah. And dude playing the computer… he’s awesome.
You and a friend are at the local pub, arguing about which Star Wars movie is the best. You think The Empire Strikes Back is by far the pinnacle of the series. You friend disagrees, saying Revenge of the Sith is unsurpassed in terms of Star Wars movies. The argument goes back and forth for hours with no decision imminent. What is a geek to do?
Thankfully, there is now a way to solve not only that conundrum, but countless others. Local guy Dan Koch has created The Reckoner, a straightforward, democratic way to solve any argument. You simply go to the site, list the question you need reckoned, the people vote and a week later you will have the answer to your burning inquiry. It really is that simple.
Not only can you post a question, but you can vote on any that strike your fancy. There are reckonings for everything from “Dishwasher Challenge! Do you put the utensils in with the business end up or down?” to “The Beatles or The Rolling Stones?” to the ever pressing “Should men sit when urinating in a home bathroom?”
The Reckoner is the kind of site you could easily get lost on for hours at a time. It’s an amusing way to solve an argument and could prevent you getting into a fist fight. Go check it out and have fun.
The Reckoner
www.thereckoner.net
As I have written about before, one of the truly great things about webcomics is just the sheer amount of different types of comics you can find out there. Literally any type of webcomic can be found if you look hard enough. A perfect example is Ace Kilroy, a webcomic by local talent Rob Kelly and Dan O’Connor that I recently had the pleasure of being introduced to.
Ace Kilroy is the story “Special Agent” Ace Kilroy, a man living a life of mystery and intrigue in the world of the 1930s. The opening storyline features Ace going up against vampires in Transylvania as he searches for a fellow agent who ahs gone missing. Part Indiana Jones, part Phantom, part James Bond, the story is a mix of so many of types of genres that it’s hard not to find something to enjoy in his adventures.
Adding to the appeal is the stellar work of Kelly and O’Connor. The story moves at a steady, enjoyable pace and the art is some of the best I’ve ever seen in a new webcomic. You can also follow Ace on Twitter, read the blog and check him out on Facebook. Plus the guys have a Kickstarter campaign so that they can just focus on the comic and nothing else.
All in all, it’s an impressive debut for a webcomic. It updates everyday with a special color comic on Sundays. Getting in on the ground floor of any new comic is always fun, and Ace Kilroy promises to be a hell of a ride.
Ace Kilroy
www.acekilroy.com
