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Sandra Guy biography
Sandra Guy, a 28-year veteran journalist, has covered business, politics, education, technology and peace issues, and served as a former president of the Chicago chapter …
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Sharing mobile wireless networks
As wireless telephone companies and their suppliers meet in Chicago this week to talk about how to serve poor neighborhoods while competing with tech giants Google and Apple, a grass-roots model for high-speed access is popping up — a mobile wireless network shared among friends, …Read More
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Wheaton startup’s shirts blend art, tech, charity
A Wheaton startup is touting its “Made in America” label with a twist: It leverages new fabric technology and independent artists’ crowdsourcing to make fitted and fashionable T-shirts on demand. “We have the belief and the commitment that we can do good locally by investing …Read More
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Empowering entrepreneurs
While Chicago’s startup cheerleaders trumpet rapid-fire business launches, South Side native Aaron Gray is working to empower the underserved, overlooked and unconventional businessperson to think about a variety of options. Gray, 31, has started The Legacy Movement to upend the conversation about business startups: He …Read More
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Women’s history gets digitized, organized
A local historian is digitizing and organizing rarely seen documents that will open whole new areas of on-line research in women’s history. Kristen Gwinn-Becker, founder and CEO of HistoryIT (HistoryIT.com) in Evanston, has leveraged her creative and humanities background to advise the National Women’s History …
Apps for truckers on a roll
Technology is turning the old-school system of trucking goods from Point A to Point B into a sophisticated process that relies on interactive and real-time web capabilities. Chicago — the national transportation hub — has become the focal point of a battle among start-up and …
Social media aids polio fight
Social media is playing a key role in Rotary International’s quest to make up for increasing costs and recession-wracked countries’ funding cuts to eradicate polio — just as the goal reaches a tipping point. “We are 99 percent of the way to making polio the …
$5 get resume to top of stack
Jaclyn K. Hogan discovered a new career when she used a Chicago-based job board, HiredMyWay.com, that lets job seekers pay a $5 fee upfront to ensure their resumes are seen for jobs they’re serious about, or their money back. People who post their resumes with …
Dreams of 1-stop transit-map app
Chicago has a traffic jam of transit apps created by independent software developers, offering everything from transit stop data to real-time parking-space availabilities. A home-grown startup, Greater Good Studio, is using crowdsourcing to research and rally support for an all-in-one transit-map app that would give …
Seeing Braille into 21st century
A Lake Zurich company has played a key role in redesigning a 1950s-era Braille writer into a ‘talking’ LCD-screen device intended to make it easier for people to learn Braille. The new Perkins Smart Brailler, with a “brain” developed by Product Development Technologies, addresses a …
Web savvy draws big for college
Ornis Mala honed his computer skills developing databases, specialty apps and software systems at Lake Forest College, a liberal-arts school whose digital media design studies, specialized website portals and Loop-residency internship program reflect the changing needs of today’s workforce. Mala, 23, a native of Kosovo …
Others help build your resume
A Chicago-based website launching Saturday offers jobs seekers a way to capitalize on their social-media skills by using wordplay and crowdsourcing. The site, GiveBrand.com, lets a job seeker’s friends, colleagues and even detractors post one- or two-word descriptions that highlight the person’s skills and personality …Read More
State CEOs lack social-media savvy
The CEOs of Illinois’ largest publicly traded companies score lower in social-media savvy than Silicon Valley heavyweights like Hewlett-Packard’s Meg Whitman or Apple’s Tim Cook — but top scorer Miles White of Abbott Laboratories holds his own against Groupon celebrity CEO Andrew Mason. PeekYou, a …Read More
Putting pictures with places
A mashup innovation called Pinstagram that combines the hugely popular desktop app Pinterest with photo-sharing app Instagram got its start when web designer Pek Pongpaet, who grew up in Wilmette, joked to colleagues about the potentially powerful combination. “The more I thought about it, I …Read More
Tech firm rides health-reform wave
A Chicago clinic and a suburban tech firm expect to grow as federal health-care reform takes effect — a massive overhaul that the Congressional Budget Office forecast this week will require $1.17 trillion in new government spending in the next decade, or $84 billion less than first estimated.
ComEd tapping online power
This summer’s heat wave and power-outage-inducing thunderstorms are proving to be yet another trial-by-fire for Commonwealth Edison CEO Anne Pramaggiore, the first woman to lead Illinois’ largest utility. Pramaggiore, who took over in February, is faced with the enormous task of repositioning a bureaucratic utility …
Formula to get girls into science
Sixteen-year-old Evergreen Park native K’Maja Bell offered an exclusive glimpse into a new e-book about the cosmos at the nation’s yearly gathering of the American Astronomical Society. Bell has gained her expertise working for the past two years as the youngest-ever intern for astrophysicist Kim …Read More
Classing up music online
Chicago can claim bragging rights to what experts call a leading-edge online network of classical-music composers whose Facebook-like correspondence gives them the rare chance to hear their scores recorded live, and thanks to technology, in better-quality-than-ever online playback. Access Contemporary Music, an eight-year-old non-profit in …Read More
Using new way to sell old books
Chicago is home to a rare concept: A literacy non-profit whose technological innovations are enabling it to earn 66 percent of its yearly budget from targeted programs and book sales so it can focus on strategizing the age of electronic readers.
Casting a wider net on careers
A South Side high school student has ferreted out a niche business that gives aspiring musicians and music producers a way to get noticed against the odds. The idea would seem to fly in the face of technology’s role of upending traditional careers, as it …
A stronger ‘innovation ecosystem’
Students, scientists and researchers in the Chicago area have a new outlet to delve into supercomputing, green energy, the human genome and other hot topics, and to work with manufacturers to try to put the ideas into action. The Northwestern-Argonne Institute for Science and Engineering …