Webbmedia Group CEO Amy Webb is an author, speaker and future thinker, adapting current and emerging technologies for use in communications. She has spent more than 15 years working with digital media, founding several web-based companies and now advising various startups, retailers, government agencies and media organizations as well as Webbmedia’s clients all over the world. She will be the featured speaker at tonight’s meeting of Philadelphia Initiative for Journalistic Innovation which starts at 5:30 PM at the Tuttleman Learning Center at the corner of 13th Street and Montgomery Avenue on Temple’s main campus. (Map) Amy began her career as […]

BY MAVIS LINNEMANN I, like you, am still eating turkey and I’m starting to get sick of it. I decided last night that I wanted to make something very homey with my leftover turkey in the spirit of the holidays, something comforting but not at all related to Thanksgiving. In moments like these, there’s only one place to turn: mom. My mom was (still is) the queen of comfort food. Since there were so many mouths to feed in my family (triplets + me and my dad), casseroles were a staple in my mom’s culinary repertoire, and it’s no wonder […]

BY MATTHEW HENGEVELD One thing is clear about Jay-Z’s new book, the memoir-cum-rap-treatise Decoded: He didn’t write it for the money. There are two “cash cow” stories he completely left out of the book. In the 334 pages documenting his life experiences, the names Nas and Beyoncé appear no more than once each. He never discusses his marriage with the R&B superstar and doesn’t even allude to his well-publicized and oft discussed feud with his Illmatic New York foil. So, if you are looking for a gossip-filled book of big-booty sexploits and MC pissing contests, you’ll be fully disappointed with […]

THE GUARDIAN: The United States was catapulted into a worldwide diplomatic crisis today, with the leaking to the Guardian and other international media of more than 250,000 classified cables from its embassies, many sent as recently as February this year. At the start of a series of daily extracts from the US embassy cables – many designated “secret” – the Guardian can disclose that Arab leaders are privately urging an air strike on Iran and that US officials have been instructed to spy on the UN leadership. These two revelations alone would be likely to reverberate around the world. But […]

INQUIRER: In a highly unusual move, city School Superintendent Arlene C. Ackerman interceded to remove a contractor from a $7.5 million, no-bid emergency project and then awarded the work to a small company to install surveillance cameras in 19 dangerous schools, according to sources with extensive experience in district business operations.  IBS Communications Inc., the Philadelphia firm that was awarded the project, was not on a state-approved list of contractors eligible for emergency work. Without explanation, sources said, Ackerman summoned key aides to a meeting Sept. 23 and ordered them to award the work to IBS, a minority firm, without […]

BY PELLE GUNTHER “If I had a genie, all three of those wishes would be that tonight was THE BEST SHOW EVER,” Eric Nally, front man for Ohio’s Foxy Shazam, screamed into his mic before raging through their single song set and leaving the stage with a nice “Thank you for having us, we’re Foxy Shazam.” Although they were thankfully cheered back on for an hour long “encore”, even that single song wouldn’t have disappointed. With Nally’s mic stand tricks, and the band’s various acrobatics and stage antics the show was as much a theatrical act as a concert with […]

[Painting by MILO] ROLLING STONE: Willie Nelson was arrested yesterday at a border patrol checkpoint in Sierra Blanca, Texas after agents reportedly found 6 ounces of marijuana on his tour bus. Mickey Raphael, Nelson’s longtime harmonica player, tells Rolling Stone that the singer, who posted a $2,500 bond was freed by 1:30 p.m. yesterday, is in good spirits. “He said he feels great — he lost six ounces.” Raphael says Nelson, 77, was traveling without his band from California, where he spent the Thanksgiving holiday, to Austin, TX, where he owns a ranch. The El Paso Times reports that agents […]

Merry Go Round, City Hall Christmas Village, Friday 8:32 PM by JEFF FUSCO

AUSTIN AMERICAN STATESMAN:  Tom DeLay, the former U.S. House majority leader whose name became synonymous with the Republicans’ controversial rise to power in the Texas House, was found guilty today of laundering money in connection with the 2002 elections. DeLay was charged with money laundering and conspiracy to commit money. He faces a possible sentence of 5-99 years in prison and a maximum $10,000 fine on the money laundering charge, and 2-20 years in prison and a possible $10,000 fine on the conspiracy charge. MORE