Startup Roundup: Groupon partners with Cherry Hill’s iCueTV

Technically Philly’s Startup Roundup parses out the small pieces that make our greater Startup ecosystem thrive. We want to keep you in touch with the innovations that we can’t quite get to covering, but that deserve highlight. Follow along with a weekly email newsletter by clicking here and selecting the Startup Roundup button or follow Startup Roundup’sRSS feed. If you’ve got news to share, get in touch.
Updated 6/16: Fixed spelling of Ryan Meinzer’s name. Also updated that the company is not currently seeking funding.
MUST READS
Groupon is moving its deals offerings to television, in thanks to Cherry-Hill based iCueTV, the Chicago Tribune reports. As we wrote in 2009, iCueTV launched an interactive cable platform, tru2way, with Comcast Media Center’s labs. The platform enables viewers to interact with video advertising, including making purchases on their television. In Groupon’s case, iCueTV will be an email lead solicitor for the startup, which is considering an IPO. [h/t PhillyTechNews]
Invite Media is one of Google’s fastest growing acquisitions, according to Google Vice President of Product Neal Mohan, AdExchanger reports. At the Conversational Marketing Summit last week, Mohan said that he has “never seen a technology ramp up as fast as real-time bidding.” Mohan says that Google plans to go fully global with the platform, as 88% of advertisers are interested in real-time buys.

GIVE A GLANCE
Jameson Detweiler’s Startup Weekend launch, uhm, LaunchRock, was accepted into the 2011 500 Startups, a Mountain View, Calfornia-based incubator which invests between $25,000 and $250,000 to businesses in the program, so says a TechCrunch post.
Hipster City Cycle was featured on Pitchfork, in a new partnership with videogames magazine Kill Screen. Though the game scored a modest 68, it was a warmer review. “Developer Port 127 understands the best parts of riding a fixie, it also understands the best parts of being in a city,” the publication noted. Full disclosure: we’ve been playing the game a lot.
Monetate‘s $5,000 Philly Open Source Contest has narrowed down to 5 finalists, including local Ruby developers Mashion — who we featured in April — and a handful of other projects, like RxShortages, a popular iPhone app that tracks the obvious. If anything the contest says Philly is a Ruby town (or that Monetate’s looking to hire Ruby developers, ahem).
MIGHT BE WORTH YOUR TIME
Ryan Meinzer of language learning startup PlaySay, which has been networking with groups in D.C., and the company now employs 5 people, the founder tells us. Hopefully we’ll get him on the line about the move, soon.
A new iPhone app called Nearing which is adding a photo layer to the popular check-in application concept is looking to hire a part-time developer.
A craiglist ad for a new local startup is soliciting volunteers to collect short audio interviews with local business owners for a forthcoming iPhone app that is collecting oral histories around the city.
Startup Roundup will post weekly on Wednesdays until there’s not a Philly startup story left to link to on the Internet. See others here, or sign-up for its email newsletter.