Chicago Tech Report

NU Professor Analyzes Online Gaming Community

Professor Noshir Contractor of Northwestern University and his research team analyzed over 60 terabytes of log data from the multiplayer online game EverQuest II and made some interesting discoveries which they presented at this week's annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Chicago. Most surprising, according to Contractor, was that players tended to play with others near them geographically and socially. Perhaps this suggests that although technology has made the world smaller in many ways, we still feel more comfortable hanging with our own local "tribe".

Looking for Writing Help/Resources/Tech Enthusiasts

Many of you are wondering what happened to the more consistent posts on this Chicago centric tech blog. In a nutshell, time.

If you or someone you know is interested in carrying the torch and helping to shed more light on what is happening in the Chicago tech/startup/online marketing scene, please have them contact me.

I know many of you expressed interest in assisting in the past and hopefully you have time now.

Thanks!

Understanding Why Marc Andreesen Left Illinois

A morning breakfast with a Chicago start-up resulted in me going back to the Crain's Chicago Business article I recently read. The term, 'technology transfer tax' seemed to stay in my head these last weeks and I set out to understand they 'why' behind the university + start-up mix.

Marc Andreesen, one of the brains behind Mosaic, which was developed at the University of Illinois, said this in an older PC World interview:

"We took Mosaic as far as we could in a research environment. [There,] we could do new things without worrying about return-on-investment requirements. But you couldn't hire support people for the users. The National Science Foundation doesn't pay for technical support people.  So we decided to start Netscape around this idea."

Marc went on to create Netscape and has since contributed millions to Stanford, including $27.5 million to Stanford Hospital.

Ron May Gets a Scoop

At the recent Social Dev Camp Chicago post-party, Ron May stumbled upon a piece of tech news that was so unbelievable, even I couldn't believe it:).  Here is a snippet of video as Ron's 'Eureka' moment was captured:

Controversial TableXchange Comes to ChicagoBidding on Restaurant Reservations?

A NYC startup, TableXchange, just blew into Chicago and obviously didn't do their research about the Chicago way of doing things straight up. I suppose they didn't learn from Donald Trump's real estate woes. Remember the lessons we were taught about new markets, cultures, etc.? This way of thinking applies to all business, in my opinion. Whatever happened to talking to your potential customer and merchant base first?

The Windy City Wine Guy just sent me a recent article that ran in the Chicago Tribune this week. Let me get this straight. I want to eat at the latest and hottest restaurant in town. I go online and pay $20-$40 to buy someone else's reservation. This person may have up to four reservations at a time..which means they can sell four reservations at one time. In addition to this, I am NOT obligated to call the restaurant and tell them that I decided to CANCEL my reservation if I end up not SELLING it (per TableXchange's site, the person buying the reservation is only' 'asked' to cancel). Ahem.