Metropolitan boosters — men employed in the late 19th century to encourage Americans to move west to burgeoning cities — have been of interest to me lately. I’m interested in how that concept can be brought to modern concepts or urban renewal. I came across a portion of an essay in ‘A companion to the [...]

My first smartphone arrived at my door yesterday. Considering it’s late 2011 and I report for a technology news site, you can be sure that I got a lot of crap for it being only my first. Of course, as I explained, in 2009 I was a struggling freelance writer so I had trouble enough [...]

Near the close of the OpenDataRace, a popularity contest for data sets that affect nonprofit missions, I was asked onto NewsWorks Tonight, the daily, local drive-time news radio show from NPR affiliate WHYY. We recorded the segment last week and it aired Monday. Read more about the contest here, see the data sets and register [...]

How jealousy and other bad qualities can be shaped to help motivate you to reach your goals was the focus of the story I told at Story Shuffle 9, with a jealousy theme. Listen to my story below or find it here, along with the other stories. LISTEN HERE. Number of Views:430

The Philadelphia Daily News today ran a cover story celebrating 10 of the city’s ‘rising power players,’ in celebrating the close of this year’s State of Young Philly, and I am proud to say I’ve been included. Find the story online here, and my section here. Go buy a copy. I was included for being [...]

After years of catching heat from colleagues, friends and sources in the technology world for tapping on my Dell laptop, I jumped in and bought a Macbook Pro, after reading, seeking advice and asking a lot of questions. Suddenly, the passing of Steve Jobs had a more timely, personal meaning. Like most, I grew up [...]

A newly funded ‘apps and maps’ studio at Temple University could be another part of the ‘connective tissue’ between early stage ideas from novice entrepreneurs and sales worthy or impact-driven ideas, I told WHYY reporter Maiken Scott last week for her story on the news. I reported on the funding for Technically Philly. Read her [...]

A variety of strategies and expectations remain, but online media conversations can’t happen in good conscious without at least a glancing mention of business sustainability. That was my first takeaway from the New Media Unplugged #UncappedLive event held at the historic Sigma Sound Studios in Center City Philadelphia Tuesday night. On behalf of Technically Philly, [...]

Another Story Shuffle, this the 8th, the one year anniversary celebration and a theme of Anniversaries, was held in my Fishtown rowhome last week. I told the story of Voyager II, an un-manned spacecraft sent out 34 years earlier in order to go farther than we ever have before. Like other ships send to deep [...]

The Golden Ratio, the 2003 historical analysis of the irrational number phi (~1.62) by Mario Livio, reads more like a top level review of a few thousand years of mathematical history. And so, while I enjoyed the pursuit of phi in art throughout time, I was much more taken by the top-level review of the [...]