Groupon

My mother is the only one who still mails me birthday cards. The rest of the world blows up my cellphone and Facebook wall. But I miss the personal notes - getting mail on my special day was fun. Am I alone here? Michael Marchesani doesn't believe I am. That's why the Collegeville-based entrepreneur came up with the direct-mail marketing concept called BirthdayPak. Each month, Marchesani mails 10,000 personalized birthday greetings to affluent women in the Philadelphia area.

It was the stock market event of the year, sure to make millions of dollars for venture capitalists, investment banks and other financiers, and billions for Facebook's founders and earliest backers. It was a cultural benchmark - the day when the phenomenon of "social media," a term many consider synonymous with the company Mark Zuckerberg created, finally cashed in on years of massive and growing buzz. But Thursday's initial public offering for Facebook shares - the most ballyhooed IPO since Google, and successful enough to value Facebook at $104 billion - arrived with some large question marks posted on its wall.

The stretch of South Street from Broad Street west into Grays Ferry has been growing as a food destination, what with such recent arrivals as the Cambridge , Magpie Artisan Pie Boutique , Sawatdee , and the Quick Fixx , and with the second location of Honey's Sit 'n Eat opening shortly at 21st and South Streets. Saturday will see the debut of Miles Table at 1620 South St. (267-318-7337), a cozy, neighborhood-friendly spot from Michael Lynch, whose business Catering by Miles counts for much of the reason people want to join Lombard Swim Club, where he's the exclusive caterer.

In the Region Hill shares up on contract hopes Shares of Hill International Inc. , the Marlton construction-management contractor, jumped 59 percent on hopes that contracts to house more than one million Iraqis would more than compensate for the firm's loss of business due to the war in Libya. Hill shares closed $2.57 higher, at $6.93. Hill and its HillStone International L.L.C. affiliate said they had been awarded contracts to supply homes for Iraq's National Investment Commission.

Mark Wilson was enjoying his success as a technology writer when he had a flash of introspection. It was payback time, the moment for him to honor his good life by supporting nonprofit groups doing good work. "When I did searches online, I was overwhelmed by thousands and thousands of causes," the 28-year-old Chicagoan said. "Even if I could choose, then I would ask if this was the right organization for the cause. " Out of that "donation paralysis," Wilson created Philanthroper, a website that adapts the increasingly popular online deal-a-day formula to nonprofit fund-raising.

NEW YORK - With the possible theft of millions of e-mail addresses from an advertising company, several large companies have started warning customers to expect fraudulent e-mail messages that try to coax account log-in information from them. JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup Inc., Best Buy Co., and other well-known financial and retail companies all say hackers may have learned their customers' e-mail addresses because of a security breach at a Dallas company called Epsilon that manages e-mail communications.

The outlook for venture-capital investment sounds similar to the prognostications for the rest of the economy in 2011: better than 2010. However, the recent survey by the National Venture Capital Association contains one worrisome sign for the Philadelphia region. Life sciences may no longer be ascendant. Attach your favorite reason for why that may be. The Food and Drug Administration is approving fewer new drugs than in the past. There is continuing uncertainty over how health-care reform will affect reimbursement for drugs and diagnostic tests.

NEW YORK - Shoppers are starting to spend, but business owners aren't so sure their customers will keep coming back. These conflicting signals confused investors, who first bought stocks and then sold them as the day progressed Tuesday. It didn't help that there were fewer stock traders in the market as is common during the summer months, which led to lower than usual trading volume. The Dow Jones industrial average closed up 2.71 points at 13,172.14. It was up as much as 53 points at midday.

A quick glance at the annual performance of the major stock indexes would leave the mistaken impression that very little occurred in 2011. The Dow Jones industrial average closed the year at 12,217.56, up 5.53 percent or 640.05 points. Quite disappointing after 2010, when the widely watched stock market measure rose 11 percent. A much broader gauge of U.S. stocks, the Standard & Poor's 500 index, was virtually flat at 1,257.60. Even the technology-stock-heavy Nasdaq composite index didn't benefit from the much-anticipated initial public offerings of LinkedIn Corp.

Though I've pretty much given up hope of seeing an initial public offering of a Philadelphia-area company that's as eagerly anticipated as Groupon's , I still pore over the quarterly roundup of venture financings. If nothing else in these days of economic water-treading, it's a reminder that there are some who will put money where some entrepreneurs' dreams are. Let me emphasize "some," because venture-capital investing in the region remains solidly in second gear. Thirty-six area companies attracted $119.86 million during the recent soggy summer, according to the PricewaterhouseCoopers/National Venture Capital Association MoneyTree Report released Wednesday.