The Built in Chicago Launch provides an opportunity for startups to present their companies in front of local investors, techies and fellow entrepreneurs. More than 300 people came out last night to support the five startup founders' innovative visions. 

Liz Eavey from startup Stork Stack probably best sums up the localized community feeling of the night: “They say it takes a village to raise a child and we certainly think it takes a village to raise a start up—Chicago has been our village.”

Stork Stack

Doejo client Stork Stack was founded in an effort to overcome one of the major challenges facing busy parents today: researching and finding the right products for their children at a time when there are more products on the market than ever before. To provide the best products in a simple format Stork Stack offers curated “stacks” of five hand picked items. The monthly subscription-based service is aimed at mothers and babies from newborn to 36 months. And since the parent community is built on sharing, Stork Stack has incorporated a "Stork Stack Gives Back" program, a charitable component to the startup, that donates a stack to families in need every time a subscription is ordered.

Who’s In

Who’s In founder Nate Lassiter has a simple vision for his start up: to help you "do more fun shit with your friends." To make this as simple as possible, he has created an iPhone application that allows you to share what you want to do. Founded on the basis that we all have places we want to go, Who’s In helps you easily unlock this information by creating a list of the locals you want to go while allowing you to see which of your friends are also interested. When you decide you want to have some fun, the app helps you create connections and set these plans into motion.

NoRedInk

Started by an English teacher on the premise that kids need help with grammar, NoRedInk is an adaptive learning tool that replaces red ink marks on a paper with actionable, differentiated feedback allowing them to improve. Jeff Scheur created NoRedInk inspired by low national test scores in grammar/ writing and teacher salaries being linked to these test scores. This platform takes kids interests, favorite celebrities and Facebook friends to generate custom  sentences that allow kids to practice their grammar skills. NoRedInk data mines the results to produce tutorials and generate color-coded heat maps that help young students focus on what they need to improve. This allows teachers to focus on instructional decision-making and school districts to track improvements.

Elixerve

Elixserve is a restaurant management system that combines employee scheduling, staff communication and online training tools into one web-based application. Created by alumni of the restaurant world, Elixerve allows restaurants to run as smoothly behind the scenes as possible. The application streamlines work responsibilities, improves employee productivity and solves managerial challenges, founders say. It also provides automated scheduling, allowing restaurants to focus on customers, private messaging functions and a public newsfeed for easy communication between employees. But that's not all. Elixerve is also a platform for efficient internal training: users can upload study materials, create quizzes and access performance metrics.

bethie b.

bethie b. is an online boutique for recycled interiors, allowing clients and small businesses to sell quality recycled furniture and helping you turn your house into a home. The founder of behtie b. recognized that furniture, accounting for 9.8 million tons of waste, was the number one least-recycled household item and ran with it. The ecommerce site hosts a curated and hand chosen selection from stylish locals and small boutiques. Currently in beta, the $10 listing fee is waived. They believe in promoting green living while paying forward style and goodwill.

All photos were taken by Murphy Welch. 

(photo courtesy of JellyChicago.com)

It seems self-employment is the loneliness job, especially for laptop-bound freelancers, designers and writers on the coffeeshop circuit. And good luck networking.

The goal of Jelly Chicago has always been to remedy this lack of social interaction and camaraderie, meeting twice a week in public spaces, most notably, the shuttered Noble Tree in Lincoln Park.

Luckily, the 5-year-old group just announced its new meeting spot: The Whole Foods in Lincoln Park, 1550 N. Kingsbury St. Perfect for its free Wifi, parking, plethora of power outlets and gigantic coffee bar. What more could you ask for? There’s even outdoor seating, a diner, wine bar and all the other Whole Foods amenities. But, of course, those aren’t the only benefits you’ll find here.

Founder Sean Johnson describes Jelly Chicago as “unnetworking” in that you’re not standing in a banquet hall handing out business cards. The informal group is much more organic than that, he says.

“The benefits are getting plugged into a community of folks who are smart, creative, and usually getting off their feet, eager to meet others,” Johnson says. “We've had a ton of folks who were Jelly regulars who've gone on to do awesome stuff.”

And interestingly, a Jelly Chicago meeting is where Doejo co-founders Darren Marshall and Phil Tadros’ first met, while at Noble Tree—so, we’re big proponents of the group’s co-working model.

Other founders and entrepreneurs rooted in Jelly Chicago, according to Johnson, are Jeff and Allie Siarto, who started social analytics company, Loudpixel together (now in Michigan); Rishi Shah, who started e-commerce platform, Flying Cart (now in SF); Willy Franzen, who started entry level job post site, One Day, One Job; Jessica Lybeck, who started mini class discovery network, Dabble; Pek Pongpaet, who just launched Pinstagram (now in SF); and David Kadavy who wrote Design for Hackers and tours the world speaking about design; among others. Finding yourself in good company here is a give-in.

If you’re looking for the perfect public co-working space to make new friends (hit up a happy hour every once and a while) and informally network out—check out our friends at Jelly Chicago. In their new space to start, they meet on Thursdays from 12pm – 4pm. And follow them on Twitter.

DePaul University’s entrepreneurial acceleration booster, DePaul C.E.O. kicks off its four-week FoundersWeekends tonight as a program for first-time entrepreneurs and recent graduates with a venture idea looking to establish the right team. 

Tonight’s opening event pulls together 14 young CEOs, founders and entrepreneurs to share their startup stories to budding students looking to follow in their footsteps. With DePaul C.E.O. President, John DeOrian, organizer and serial entrepreneur Elbert Clayton designed the discussions to be roundtable style, believing panel discussions to be less authentic and accessible, Clayton says.

He also wanted more opportunities for students to hear success stories organically and be inspired beyond the classroom.

“We want to be that hub that generates innovation outside of DePaul,” Clayton said. “The goal is to have a conversation with a new person, hopefully one that may offer them an opportunity or a job or even give advice for their idea.”

Speakers include Doejo founder and CEO Phil Tadros, who bought his first coffeeshop at 19 and has been building businesses and his digital agency ever since; Kris Petersen, CEO of DealsGoRound, a secondary marketplace for daily deals; Jonathan Pasky, co-founder of midVentures, on the helm of tech startup business and legal strategy; and others.

Each table will have a separate speaker with seating for up to 12 individuals at each table for a one-on-one discussion around our four principle topics: Building A Brand That Breathes Your Company Mission (with the above mentioned speakers), Recruiting Great Co-Founders For Your Start-Up, Creating A Disruptive Business Model On Day One, and Launching A Product From A Napkin Idea.

At the end of each 20-25 minute discussion, the event attendees will be able to rotate to another table to listen to another speaker, according to FoudnersWeekends.com.

“This allows the students to ask the questions that they want to get out of this event,” Clayton said. 

The events are open to the public if you go to FoundersWeekends.com and register. Tonight’s kickoff, “Listen, Learn & Launch” will be held at DePaul University’s downtown campus, 1 E. Jackson, 9th Floor, from 6pm – 9pm with an after party mixer (with food provided) at Pazzo’s Cucina Italiana from 9pm – 1 am. For more information contact FoundersWeekends@gmail.com.

Last night 1871 kicked off its Chicago Founder Stories event, a monthly series that will feature the most successful local entrepreneurs taking the audience through the good, the bad and how they ended up where they are today. The inaugural event featured GrubHub co-founders Matt Maloney and Mike Evans.

Maloney and Evans shared tips they acquired since launching GrubHub in 2004. For those that have been living under a rock, GrubHub is the #1 food ordering service and reached 300,000 unique individuals last month alone. They took the audience through their scrappy start, which included buying Selling for Dummies and working out of a spare room in Evans' apartment, to present day successes like signing a lease for a new office space in downtown Chicago next to City Hall.

What worked for GrubHub? “Sell before you have a product, then think about the overall benefit,” said Evans, explaining the value of launching in beta and adjusting as you grow. “Everything that GrubHub does is to benefit the restaurants. If they make more money, we make more money. You don’t have to build a bunch of bullshit markets – just do what is fundamental.”

Staying focused has been vital, he says. Despite consumer requests for GrubHub to branch out internationally or tap into other delivery markets they have stayed focused. “Less than 1 percent of all food pick-up and delivery is placed online. There is still so much growth in what we are doing here,” said Maloney. This focus has helped them to find product market fit and build what the customer wants while avoiding becoming too abstract.

Satisfying the customer was a re-occurring theme throughout the event. Evans recommends always ending the conversation with the consumer by asking ‘what can we do for you better?’ He acknowledges that “the answer may be ‘oh, we won’t get to that in two or three years’ but it’s never ‘we will never get to that’”

With the events' Chicago location and GrubHub being a Chicago-based startup, the city played a large role in last night's conversation. Maloney described the city as a “great cross-section of the U.S.,” explaining “if you start and succeed here, that success will translate across all of the U.S.”

For startups looking for funding, they recommend staying close to home and put an emphasis on the fact that you are taking on investers as a part of your team – it’s not just about the money.  Investors also provide strategic guidance, executional strategy, help with hiring, partnership and mergers and acquisitions.

“Starting close to home will give you a higher touch relationship … it’s very helpful to be able to call someone and have them in your office that afternoon,” said Maloney.

The ongoing series takes inspiration from Chris Dixon’s Founder Stories on TechCrunch. With no shortage of local inspiration, this event allows us to hear the story straight from the mouth of the Founders. Instead of broadcasting interviews online, 1871 is conducting them in front of a live audience using Twitter and GoSoapbox, to field questions. GoSoapbox is a web-based app that joins event attendees in the digital space, allowing them to ask questions or vote up existing questions, ensuring the presenter answers them.

If you want to know more about the event 1871 will be posting the full discussion online on their website.

BowTruss, our new coffee roaster, will be the home to the largest Gentleman’s Boombox ever! The seven cases will be linked together to work as one stereo system, to create a transportable device that will fill the room with sound.

Drinks and snacks will be provided at the event. Guest should come prepared with their friends and their smart phones in order to qualify for the "Gentleman’s Boombox" that will be given away at some point during the night. More details about the giveaway will be revealed on Friday at 6pm.

You can RSVP to the event, held in Pilsen at 1827 S. Halsted Ave., on Facebook here. Sponsors for the event include Reyka, Pabst Blue Ribbon and the Chicago Arts District. 

Mouthee, The Future of Web Recommendations: Friends or Robots?

TechCocktail last week profiled social recommendation app, Mouthee in a feature pitting recommendation apps that utilize social media verses a robot-like algorithm. So, would you rather get book, movie, restaurant, etc. recommendations from your friends or a program that predicts your tastes based on previous choices.

From TechCocktail:

[Mouthee’s] pretty useful – for example, movie recs include movie previews, duration, release data, and a link to buy on iTunes, while restaurants link to OpenTable for making reservations. Unlike some other apps, you can also write negative recommendations.

So Mouthee is taking the “friends” approach to recommendations. It’s based on the belief that our friends know us best, and it mimics word-of-mouth – “Hey, what movie should I see on Friday?”Unsurprisingly, this is also Facebook’s approach with its recommendations box; if you visit external sites like WSJ.com, you can see which content your friends “like” the most. Or, you could just post a status update asking for advice. 

The Snackpot gets shout-out from The Onion’s A.V. Club and Crain's

The Snackpot, a snack-centric review site we’re launching next month, was profiled for its upcoming launch party May 10. The A.V. Club said they were looking forward to the night's DJ sets, the readings, and of course, the scores of top-notch nosh.

From the A.V. Club:

A new website plans to explore the uncharted terrains of snack criticism, gratifying pretentious snackers and hopefully putting a fork in the whole Doritos Locos taco debate. The site is called The Snackpot, and it will launch this month with reviews, commentary, and testimonials about the most important meal of the day.

Crain’s Chicago Business covers “businesses getting off the ground in and around Chicago.” This week they covered both The Snackpot and Falafill! From Crain's:

This Chicago-based website, which launched Monday, is all about snacks. Editor-in-Chief Jacob Daneman says it aims to be “the most trusted source for snack reviews and critical evaluation of the snacking zeitgeist.” The first articles include a review of Funyuns (“Their crunch reveals their synthetic nature, their zest leads to taste bud death and their snackability leads to inevitable shame post-consumption”) and an interview with the popular musical remix artist Girl Talk, aka Gregg Gillis, about his favorite snacks. Mr. Daneman is also a music publicist at Pitch Perfect PR, so you can expect an indie-rock vibe at the Snackpot. Watch soon for snack-oriented interviews with Jose Canseco, Len Kasper and members of Fleet Foxes, the Dismemberment Plan and TV on the Radio.

Crain's on Falafill's site launch and company growth

This falafel restaurant now has a second location at 72 E. Adams St. in the Loop, with plans to open a third joint soon in Oak Park. Like the original Falafill, at 3202 N. Broadway in Lakeview, the new counter-service restaurant lets customers choose the fresh ingredients that will go into their pita pocket or bowl. According to the Falafill website, “every ingredient in our foods comes to our kitchen fresh and raw.”

The Academy of Global Citizenship wins “Green Ribbon School” award

The Academy of Global Citizenship was declared a “Green Ribbon School” last month by the U.S. Department of Education along with 78 other schools across the country. In the first year of this nationally recognized distinction, AGC was lauded for its efforts in environmental, energy conservation and wellness education.

From the Sun-Times: 

At the Academy for Global Citizenship, students start the day with up to 15 minutes of yoga and a scratch, organic breakfast.

“Health and nutrition are incorporated into our core philosophy,’’ said Academy executive director Sarah Elizabeth Ippel.

Some 13,000 square feet of asphalt that surrounds the school has been converted into an “urban center for sustainability’’ featuring a green house, an organic raised-bed garden, a composting bin, a wind turbine and a chicken coop that produces eggs, Ippel said.

Read more from NBC Chicago and Medill Reports.

In a never-ending campaign to improve online readership, lobbying eyes in a heavily saturated 24-hour news cycle, broadcast stations across the country are reevaluating site design and functionality. And in the new web-centric world, no publication can afford not to. 

Local TV LLC, which operates 21 broadcast stations from various networks in 16 U.S. cities, needed to update its legacy content management system. The broadcast management company’s team knew they wanted an easy-to-integrate and customizable WordPress VIP platform for its network of sites and a web design team that understood the modern web from a designability and user functionality perspective. 

The company was also looking to study how users consumed the news and navigate through its news sites, honing in on page views, site traffic and popular content worth giving hierarchy to. Local TV LLC came to Doejo in the spring of 2011 to help them expand on what its stations were good at: a dedication to hyper-local news and weather coverage. 

Doejo’s development and discovery team did a comprehensive job helping Local TV LLC define its audience, parsing through billions of page views from websites that reach more than 15 million people each month.

In what has been one of our most extensive projects to date, we applied the user discovery information we learned and produced a custom WordPress VIP design flexible enough to be used by all Local TV LLC stations. The new platform is much easier for editors, reporters and producers to upload content cleanly, efficiently and consistently. And after viewing the heat maps of where users were viewing the page and how far they would scroll, our designers made the pages more condensed with easily navigational tabs and more logical locations for content.

While reducing clutter and giving breaking news prominence at the top of the page, the page design allows for Twitter-style status updates on ongoing news items without compromising valuable ad space.

Developers also integrated social media platforms so readers can recommend stories and comment using Facebook, Twitter and other networks. Other third party integration natively ties in an online video platform, a social login and authentication provider, a hyper-local news platform and numerous advertising partners. To better manage ads, our developers also wrote a custom open-source plug-in called Ad Code Manager.

Read more about Local TV LLC in our case study here. And visit some of our newly desgined sites: KSTU Fox Salt Lake City, WNEP ABC Scranton, WITI Fox Milwaukee, or view the full list with links here. 

Attendees will enjoy free beer from 7pm-9pm and DJ sets by Pat Sission, Ed Anderson and Johnny Loftus. Snack related readings by key contributors including Shannon Cason (Chicago Moth Grandslam Champ), Keith Ecker (Essay Fiesta) and Johnny Loftus (Village Voice, PitchFork) will keep your appetite whet throughout the night.

Doejo is proud to have created The Snackpot’s flying Twinkie logo and, of course, the forthcoming site. The company, which launches on May 7th, will also provide commentary, testimonials, experimentation and observations on how snacking intersects with pop culture.

A $10 dollar suggested donation for the event covers all of your snacking needs and enters you in door prize raffle. Can’t get enough of The Snackpot? Check out their “The Snackpot Asks” segment where the interview artists and musicians about their favorite snacks here. Also, be sure to friend the Snackpot on Facebook and follow them on Twitter for updates!

(Image courtesy of ITA from the 2011 CityLIGHTS Award Gala)

Last week we found out that our fearless leader and CEO, Phil Tadros, was nominated for the Illinois Technology Association’s coveted CityLIGHTS Award—an award granted to a business or individual that continues to support growth of the Illinois tech community. 

Past winners include Howard Tullman, Flashpoint Tribeca Media Arts Academy (2011); Eric Olson and Frank Gruber, founders, TECH cocktail (2008); David Weinstein, President, Chicagoland Entrepreneurial Center (2006); and Chicago Mayor Richard Daley (1999).  So to say this is a prestigious award is an understatement. And, of course, not everyone can claim such an honor.

So today we congratulate this year’s ITA CityLIGHTS Award winner, Dan Lyne of World Business Chicago. We are proud to say we were even nominated alongside him.

Dan Lyne, as many of you know, is the Technology Development Director of WBC, where he addresses local, national and international audiences representing Chicago-based public/private technology and digital media initiatives. Aside from convincing and facilitating global technology companies to make the move to Chicago, Lyne has been a dynamic tastemaker and ardent influence in the city’s tech/entrepreneurial ecosystem. A glance at his portfolio and accolades solidifies his win as a no-brainer: sitting on Mayor's Council of Technology Advisors, the Advisory Board for DePaul University’s College of Digital Media and DePaul's College of Communications. He also serves on the Midwest Executive Committee for the international FIRST Robotics program.

The 13th Annual ITA CityLIGHTS Awards Gala on May 10 with honor Dan Lyne and other 2012 ITA Award winners at the Grand Hall at Chicago’s Union Station, hailed as the largest gathering of technology execs in Illinois. You can purchase tickets here. (It’ll basically look like a runway show for Brooks Brothers, so choose your power tie wisely.) 

We’re excited to introduce one of our newest partner clients, Uber Chefs, launching next month! So for all you culinary aficionados, get your cutting boards ready.

Uber Chefs is a new online cooking show, with a subscription service opportunity, that will feature exceptional vegan, vegetarian and raw food recipes by top chefs. In an effort to demystify healthy eating, Uber Chefs will show how easy and accessible this type of cooking can be.

The site will launch before June 1st with a video featuring Chicago-based Chuy Valencia of Top Chef fame. He is the first of many mainstream chefs that Uber Chef will be targeting in the hopes that they will become a proponent of vegetarian eating and include it in their menus.

Chef-inspired recipes will be presented in an online cooking show format that will explain how chefs make appetizers, entrees and desserts in their personal kitchen.

For members, non-perishable ingredients including exotic spices and hard to find seasonings will be measured and distributed through a mail kit. Users have two options: buy food right away and in a short time it will be mailed to you or you can opt in for a subscription model which will allow you access to premium services such as a Q&A with dietician Carolyn Tampe. Tampe will also provide nutritional analysis for those inclined toward a vegan lifestyle but are unsure of the ingredients needed to obtain proper nutrients. Kind of like a how-to care package.

Dhara Mehta, a lifelong vegetarian with a passion for healthy eating dreamed up Uber Chefs after traveling to India and seeing how accessible a vegetarian lifestyle was there. Seth Kravitz, fellow vegetarian and CEO and Co-Founder of Technori, helped tweak the idea and introduced her to our CEO, Phil Tadros who has helped by sharing his connections throughout the city and helped fund the Uber Chefs startup.

Uber Chefs has not officially launched yet but you can still check out the Doejo-designed website and logo here. Check back on June 1st for the debut video featuring Chuy Valencia. For the latest on Uber Chefs, follow them on Twitter where they’ll be offering free promos at the launch!

When guests enter your office, what’s their first impression?

For us, in our new space, it’s been bright-eyed and complimentary. We have this urban loft/ exposed brick/ stripped wood-feel, complimented by inspiring design chotskies. But, despite our arsenal of toy robots and Nerf guns, our office furniture can use some help—mismatched chairs and a lack of storage isn’t as endearing as it was when we were a young company.

That’s why we’re thrilled to announce that we’re finalists this year for Turnstone’s $25,000 office makeover contest. Until a winner is announced on May 31, Doejo joins 24 other offices vying for public votes at contest.myturnstone.com. It’s a good thing we have a video team.

Office supplier Turnstone is giving five small businesses this generous makeover to promote their dedication to smart office design and productivity-stirring workflows.

“The winning companies will receive not just $25,000 in renovations; they will have their workplaces transformed into environments that will facilitate growth," said Turnstone’s Ken Neil in a statement. Well then, color us excited!

Check out our video and vote for us below!

Jokes4Miles is an interesting concept on it’s own, even before it tugs at your heartstrings with the story of a young man’s fight with cancer. But if laughter is the best medicine, then this video submission project is the Pfizer of hilarity.

To cheer up his son Miles, who is battling a rare form of brain cancer, Len Austrecivh launched Jokes4Miles.com, which seeks video submissions from comedians to entertain his now-19-year-old son as he receives treatment at LA Children’s Hospital. From this idea the site has grown inspiring hundreds of submissions to Miles and other children from all over battling cancer—videos from famous comedians and athletes included.

Across the street from Doejo, at the recently opened Laugh Factory theater, Jokes4Miles held an impressive 30-hour Joke-A-Thon on April 24 – 25, which was free to attend.

Doejo worked on the Jokes4Mile.com site to make the site a bit more professional as the project started getting publicity ahead of the Laugh Factory event. Here, you can access some of the video submissions, get info on the documentary they’re working on and learn about this inspiring project’s ambitious future plans to get personalized videos for other children fighting cancer. 

Chicago’s leading start-up accelerator Excelerate Labs just announced its summer 2012 class—this year’s 10 young companies entering the 13-week program, now an anchor tenant in the 1871 non-profit digital startup center.

And while Doejo is not actually affiliated with Excelerate Labs, now in it’s third year, we can’t help but geek out about their reality-show-like intensive program. Think about it, these ten stage one companies come together with remarkable business models, in the middle of Chicago’s tech-startup renaissance, hoping to build Chicago’s next Groupon or Grubhub. Seriously, they are a confessional room and a reunion show away from being the most thrilling show not on television.

As you may or may not know, each of these startups are given $25,000 from Excelerate Labs, $50,000 in convertible debt from New World Ventures (Chicago’s largest VC) and the invaluable opportunity to get one-on-one advice from hundreds of tech mentors and entrepreneurial leaders over the adrenaline-rushing course of three months. And this year, according to a release, Excelerate saw a 50 percent increase in applications from 2011. So, expect this group to be the best of the best.

But which companies made the cut? Glad you asked. This year, two of the companies are traveling abroad to Chicago all the way from Bangalore, India and Paris, France, respectively. By the way, Whimseybox and Cureeo sound amazing, check them all out. From the Excelerate release: 

The ten companies selected for Excelerate's 2012 class are:

• 71lbs – Helps small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) save money on shipping through data analytics, allow SMBs to easily understand their parcel shipping spend and make better shipping decisions for the first time.  Clients recover an average of 4-6 percent of their shipping fees.

• Cureeo - Offers original and limited edition artwork to collectors and novice art enthusiasts without the hassle of personally hunting through physical and online gallery to find that perfect piece.  The company provides background about the artist and their work as well as education on how and why to shop for fine art.  Customers can share their taste preferences and design needs then receive a selection of artwork options handpicked for them by one of Cureeo's art specialists.

• Fibroblast – Helps solve three big, interrelated problems in US health care: shrinking margins, convenient access and need for preventive care.  The company solves these problems by providing patients with the ability to self-schedule appointments anytime and anywhere by using a cloud-based calendar; by automating appointment notifications; by providing analytics tools for providers to optimize their practices; and by creating a network of interconnected providers to seamlessly refer patients.

• frintit – Acts as the "adsense" of the physical direct mail world by allowing direct mail advertisers to intelligently target a consumer based on their interests.  Using a combination of web and mobile data, frintit offers everyone from small business owners to large corporations a direct mail platform to reach the right customer.

• Good Karma Clothing for Kids – A new subscription service that delivers right-sized baby clothes that customers exchange as their baby grows so busy parents don't have to spend a ton of time and money keeping up with fast growing little bodies. Good Karma delivers bundles of ready-to-wear clothing on request, washed in environmentally-and-baby friendly detergent.

• Lasso – A new service hailing from an uncharted land where friends freely gather with the whip of a hand, where plans manifest in a couple of clicks so friends can greet faces and not profile pictures. 

• Orbeus – An advanced computer visual recognition engine that enables computers to perform face detection and recognition, logo and product recognition, optical character recognition, and scene understanding. 

• Pictarine – Centralizes photos from all online services including Facebook, Flickr, Instagram and Twitter.  Pictarine automatically organizes photos as timelines, backup the best photos, share favorites with friends and help discover new photos.

• SpotHero – Acts as the "Orbitz" for parking spots.  The company works with some of the largest parking operators in the country to make discounted parking available to customers by helping drivers get the parking spot that they want. 

• Whimseybox – A subscription service for the DIY and craft community.  Every month the company ships customers craft product samples, helping to rediscover crafts with a fun and beautiful reminder to express their creativity.  Users can visit the company's Project Gallery for inspiration and ideas or upload and share their projects with the Whimseybox community.

It’s that little box above the “subscribe” button to the right of this blog. Sign up to get weekly updates on Doejo news, new product launches, articles we’re reading and gadgets we’re coveting.   

Chicago-based social media gurus, SocialKaty recently held a team building think-tank-incubator-workshop day at our client, State Farm’s Next Door Cafe in Lincoln Park—and made some great progress thanks to the unique public workspace.

The folks at SocialKaty dubbed this team building exercise “The Rebecca Black Initiative” (because it fell on a Friday), and powwowed on their 2012 marketing plan among Next Door’s slew of whiteboards, massive tables and endless cups of coffee and snacks. Here’s what they had to say on their blog:

We took our team to Lincoln Park’s Next Door Chicago. Statefarm had this brilliant idea to hire Philip Tadros of Doejo to build a coffee shop where people could rent space for free - a type of community office space. It’s an experiment for now (thus why it’s free), but while it lasts, check it out. The space is beautiful, with rooms full of white boards and tables big enough to spread out. The perfect space for an event like this. I highly recommend it. 

Glad you guys had a great time!

And with companies like these, we’re just honored to be nominated as a finalist!

The ITA CityLIGHTS Awards are an annual celebration of the growth and vitality of the local technology community, according to their site on Illinoistech.org. Celebrating its 13th Year, CityLIGHTS recognizes some of the leading technology companies and individuals in the state’s tech community whose innovation and success are driving growth in Illinois.

The CityLIGHTS Award, which Phil Tadros and Doejo are nominated for is described as being “Presented to an individual or business that actively and consistently supports the growth of the Illinois technology industry through demonstrated collaborative involvement that brings a spotlight on the community.”

Our new coffee roaster Bow Truss will be selling coffee this summer at The Vintage Bazaar, a cooperative of over 200 venders of vintage décor paired with local food, music and activities.

We’re really excited to show off our Bow Truss coffee-brewing prowess at this event at the Aragon Ballroom, 1106 W. Lawrence, in Uptown—on June 10, July 8, August 12 and September 9. The Vintage Bazaar opens at noon until 5pm, so mark your calendars!

You may be asking, what is The Vintage Bazaar? Good question. Think of it as a curated urban flea market that’s part vintage resale and part DIY craft fair. 

Founded in February 2010, vintage vendors are joined by local food purveyors, beer and cocktails marketed to a younger, hipper set of urban dwellers perusing an array of clothing, jewelry, housewares, furniture and accessories. In past bazaar’s vendors included, Cercis Design, Manly Vintage, Labrabbit Optics, Kokorokoko, Seek Vintage, Dethrose Vintage, Circa Modern, Hot House Market, Apartment 528, and Green Cricket Salvage, among others.

This summer The Vintage Bazaar will be partnering with  CHIRP Radio, Chicago Reader, Unscene, Bow Truss Coffee Roasters (that’s us!), One Tail at a Time, and Joe's Barbershop.

For photos of February 2012’s Vintage Bazaar at the Dank Haus German Cultural Center, check out blog Aroision.com. Looks like they had some great finds! And sign up for updates from The Vintage Bazaar on their Facebook page. 

At Doejo, we’re constantly creating custom solutions to everyday problems, or simply finding ways to make software more efficient—Like platform applications improving the way you organize audio recordings, or find affordable body shops for car dents, or choose the right college, for example.

An old Forbes article randomly caught our eye highlighting this growing need: building software as a custom business solution. In a post written by General Electric VP and global technology director Bill Ruh, he says we’re in a budding Industrial Revolution-like movement “maximizing the potential of the “Industrial Internet,” a software-driven movement that will advance industry and improve lives by connecting people and businesses…”

He uses the analogy of the Industrial Internet being the “the Facebook or Twitter of things enabled by customized, innovative software,” improving the way we communicate and therefore perform—improving and simplifying notifications, scheduling, reminders, payment processing, etc. With this comes the benefit of value-adding efficiency and shortcuts, taking the friction out of day-to-day processes and improving connectivity. 

Speaking of connectivity, this brings up another Forbes article by Axeda Corp. founder Dale Calder, who asks readers in “The Internet of Things: Like Facebook, But Bigger,” to “imagine the power and productivity that would be unleashed when everything you use and interact with is being extended by an army of developers.” This brings to mind the way iPhone’s apps now empower your phone to act as a TV remote control, a flashlight, a GPS, an eBook reader or an ATM, for example. At some point, someone, somewhere thought, ‘my iPhone could easily use the camera flash as a flashlight,’ and then made it happen.

Here’s a look at how Doejo is building software as business solutions for clients or as in-house projects. These are examples of how you can take existing technology people are already familiar with and apply it in a new, novel ways. Many of these problems were simple hiccups requiring simple solutions as well, we found over the years.

Wiggler: Internal Groupon project management tool

Back in 2011, we built Wiggler, which provides Groupon execs with a customized project management platform so they can stay on track of the surging company. Think of it as a corporate to-do list. Providing group management notifications, tracking copious milestones and organizing internal priorities are functions of Wiggler―from operations, marketing and legal to HR, product services and even mergers. We designed this private application to keep a staff of about 50 Groupon managers well coordinated smoothly and simply.

Weungry: A group ordering platform that’s GrubHub meets Seamless meets Evite

Weungry is an in-house project that provides a platform for restaurants to post their menus online for e-commerce ordering and group ordering, with a focus on the user experience. If a whole office wanted to order food, for example, a user can send an e-vite to the staff to order from Weungry and pick what they prefer from the menu. The administrator can then set a budget and either cover the cost singularly or have each person in the office enter his or her credit card information, streamlining the payment process before placing the order.

Another software solution we developed while working on Weungry was in improving faxes sent from online orders to the restaurant itself—many restaurant that use GrubHub for example, require orders be sent by fax. And we all know how unreliable faxes are. So our developers equipped Weungry to confirm that faxes are processed properly. This led us to create a separate application where you can take photos of documents to fax from your phone. 

TextHog: Easy expense tracking for the iPhone

In 2009, we created in-house expense tracking app TextHog. TextHog became one of the first message-based (SMS) expense reporting mobile platforms in the iOS market. We wanted the app to let users email or text everyday purchases into one location to track and manage spending.

Data is compiled into graphs for visual learners and spreadsheets via Quicken and QuickBooks for tax filing. Users can snap photos with their camera phones of receipts, create tags, categories, bill reminders and set budgets to stay organized.

Introducing Mouthee, a play off “word of mouth,” and Doejo’s newest iPhone app launch fashioned by founders Chad Silver and David Pritzker.

The concept is simple: Users make recommendations, “Rec it,” of their favorite restaurants, hotels, movies, music and books, all tied into the APIs of Amazon, iTunes, Yelp, Fandango, Last.fm and OpenTable. These platforms in turn aggregate scores of info into Mouthee’s clean user interface so you can read more about that book through Amazon, sample and download a song from iTunes or make a restaurant reservation through OpenTable, for example.

You can also “Get Rec’s” from Mouthee users or ask a specific user for their rave-worthy hotspot reviews. On the run? Well, Mouthee is location-based too, so when you’re looking for popular finds in your neighborhood, just browse what local Mouthee users are raving about—or avoiding. And if you’re the competitive type among your friends, or fancy yourself the tastemaker of the group, you are rewarded with points and higher rankings for your activity.

For Mouthee’s logo and brand identity, Doejo played off the acronym WOMBAT (“Word of Mouth Based Advocacy Technology”) with a toothy-grinned wombat character. Cute, huh?

Check out some of the logo ideations our design team played around with and download Mouthee for your iPhone today, while it’s still FREE!