Chicago Tech Report

OneWed.com Launches Making Wedding Planning Easier

A recent 2008 bride, I wished this site existed when I was planning my own wedding....

Serial Chicago entrepreneur, Troy Henikoff, purchased the assets to OneWed this summer, put a team together and relaunched the site last week. The free service hopes to take the pains out of planning a wedding.  Thousands of bride-to-bes will provide their own reviews and feedback on wedding vendors and partners. The service is free to users and basic vendor listings are free. A premium listing is $45 a month. 

I'm sure OneWed hopes to give The Knot a run for its wedding industry money. By the looks of the sleek site design, coupled with the no nonsense approach to the community forums, it just might.

MyWineTxt Launches Its Beta Service

 

Ever go to a wine tasting at someone's house, enjoy the wine, want to order some, but realize that you don't feel like lugging an entire case home?

A new service, MyWineTxt, hopes to solve this problem. The brain child of Leah Jones and Richard Schaffer, MyWineTxt gives you the ability to order wine from your handy dandy phone via text message. 

Ideal for wine tastings and/or house parties, MyWineTxt is available nationwide. The team is also open to other uses of the service. For more information and/or partnership opportunities, send a note to info@mywinetxt.com.

Belvedere Vodka Launches Buy Your Friend a Belvedere Program - Complete with Facebook Application

 

Now this is what I call using regional marketing for a national brand in a smart way.

Belvedere Vodka just launched a Facebook application that enables 21+ users to literally buy their friends a drink. The drink is purchased in real dollars and sent via text message or gift card. The recipient then redeems their gift at a Belvedere partner bar/club/restaurant.

Here is the list of participating Chicago bars that one can redeem the gift.

 

CTR plans on testing this application out soon and will let you know of the results. Note: there is a $.99 transaction fee in addition to the drink price when using the Facebook application.