Tech Loop

Using Apple's new "Find My iPhone" feature which lets iPhone users pinpoint the exact location of a lost or stolen iPhone from a computer, Kevin and two friends, equipped with a Macbook Pro connected to a Sprint 3G USB dongle, embarked on a digital adventure on the streets of Chicago:

Last night, after seeing Second City improv, we ate at a pleasantly sketchy dive bar in uptown Chicago, where the food was mediocre and the characters were questionable. I definitely had my iPhone while at our table, and I definitely did NOT have it (whoops!) when we were 100 feet down the street.

Us three skinny white guys walked at a rapid pace in the direction of the circle. We moved past the birthday party, curious if one of the participants might be culpable, but the circle again shifted farther south. I was ready to break for our car if the phone started moving away faster than we could catch it, but it hovered at the very end of the street, at the corner of Washtenaw and Milwaukee...

Congrats, Chicago. You've made it to D-Day and have slaughtered the 70-year-old beast that is analog television. Now that 0s and 1s are being pumped into your digital converter boxes or new digital-ready TVs, what do you do with your analog leftovers?

Option 1: Make a few bucks and sell the old TV on Craigslist. Fellow Chicagoans can still put them to good use as long as they have a converter box.

Option 2: Save it in case Skynet becomes self-aware.

Option 3: Make sure they don't end up in a landfill and recycle them! TVs are made up of a myriad of materials that can be salvaged, processed and reused. Some of those components are harmful to the environment if not correctly disposed of.

"In 2007, Americans had accumulated 99 million TVs in storage and discarded nearly 27 million TVs," according to the EPA. "Of the TVs discarded, approximately 18 percent were recycled. Between 2004 and 2007, the number of TVs that entered the waste stream increased by 14 percent."

Here's where you can drop off your TV for recycling in the Chicagoland area:

(Blue = Samsung TVs; Green = Sony TVs; and Red = Panasonic, Toshiba and Sharp TVs)

AirTran just announced it will outfit every single one of its planes with GoGo in-flight Wi-Fi by midsummer. In other words, Facebook stalking will be taken to a whole new level, literally. 

Chicagoans traveling to Boston, Atlanta, and a few Florida cities can get there in full Wi-Fi glory without a stopover. Those setting off to other AirTran destinations will have to fly through Atlanta.

The service will set you back $12.95 for flights over three hours, or $9.95 for flights less than three hours. Travelers with handheld devices get access for just $7.95.

We can see the status messages already: "[Insert random Twitter or Facebook friend] is 34,985 feet above [insert U.S. landmark]!"

AirTran destinations from Chicago:

We here at Tech Loop would agree that it is more than acceptable to be a cool, hip, startup trying to appeal to a younger generation. But, sometimes, people just try just a little too hard. Take the psuedo-hip jokesters over at Cushy CMS, for example.

I was surfing around the Twitterrific iPhone app the other day as I normally do, trying to ignore all of the blatently placed and annoying ads found in the free version when this Cushy CMS ad caught my eye. The first thing I thought was that it was a joke, and that there was absolutely no way a company would ever make an advertisement dissing my mother, but quickly realized that this was, in fact, a real ad. Last time I checked, being provocative in adverstising was fine, but being downright offensive was NOT okay. I've screencapped the offending ad below, which you can see in the top right corner:

For the record, Cushy, my mom is NOT easy. Thanks.

Blow out your cartridges, plug in your controllers, and hit the power button…Chicago’s own NES-Rock band I Fight Dragons wants to put you into a warp zone..straight into 8-bit rock heaven. We think that the Nester nerds from I Fight Dragons are actually carving out a mostly-untapped music styling that, quite possibly, could become its own genre. 8-bit NES sounds have been used before (listen: Game Over by “Lil Flip”), but merely as gimmicky side-noise to what would be considered a normal song. I Fight Dragons uses Nintendo-style synths, bleeps, blips, and crashes as part of the musical landscape and arrangement throughout their entire debut EP titled “Cool is Just a Number”. Heck, even the album cover looks like an old-school Nintendo Entertainment System cover.

Not even Trent Reznor would use a video game controller to call upon the many sounds in his arsenal, but these guys just don’t care, and we respect that. The band’s “Mad Scientist” Bill Prokopow uses Power Pads, SNES Controllers, the Power Glove, the NES Advantage, and even a Guitar Hero controller, just to name a few of the peripherals. And they do so in style – each band member wears a signature shirt with a logo of their choosing emblazoned across the front. Singer and front man Brian Mazzaferri wears a shirt with a Superman logo on the front, and bass player Harry Rao rocks a Batmans tee – in fact, they look more like a mish-mash of superheros on stage rather than a rock band. Don’t let their campy NES theme or 8-bit avatars throw you off though, these guys are the real deal and ready to take Chicago by storm, as evidenced by the live video below. It's definitely a live show you don't want to miss.

IFD’s debut album starts out with the audio instrumental “Power Up” which is basically just the sounds of someone inserting an NES cartridge, closing the flap, and firing up a game with cheesy yet all too familiar NES intro music starting soon after. (you can even hear the clacking of the controller’s A and B buttons). We prefer to call this type of intro “Geek Chic”. It is a fitting prelude to an album full of quirky, yet tastefully inserted, NES tinks and twangs. If you’ve played any of the Mario Brothers series, you’ll recognize sounds from the game throughout the album, but we are also sure there are sounds from numerous other games included as well (Double Dragon?). One example of in-song usage is “Heads Up, Hearts Down” – you can plainly hear the trill sound from Mario Brothers 3 when you make Mario Run to charge up his “P Meter” in the background. Other times, it isn’t just noise. For example, at the end of “Money” there is a full-on symphony of NES sounds and synths creating the bridge composition of the song. Come to think of it, it sounds a lot like run-of-the-mill background music of any Nintendo boss fight.

Aside from the artistic use of NES sound effects, the group is effective in putting together well thought out songs, with catchy melodies and smart lyrics. On that merit alone, they are worth a look…you won’t be sorry.

This weekend, Tech Loop is going to sit down with the men and women of I Fight Dragons to discuss exactly how they create their trademark sound using programming and peripherals, and maybe also challenge them to a SMB2 time attack. Check back here next week to see exactly how they do it! In the meantime, check them out on the iTunes Music Store, or head over to their website for full details and upcoming shows (PSSST: we hear they’re currently giving away their debut EP for free). They’ve also got a merch store with some geek-friendly band schwag you might want to check out.

 All images are courtesy of IFD's website.

Forget the cubicle, get off the couch, and ditch the coffee shop.

Freelance technology workers these days have a new way to get things done – coworking (enthusiasts insist there is no hyphen). A new coworking space, opened in January, aims to provide Chicago's independent workers with a different kind of occupational environment.

The COOP is a hip office space where technology workers such as graphic designers, programmers, and Internet experts can rent a desk for a day, a week or a month at a time. Instead of punching the clock at a soulless cubicle farm, freelance workers can call their own shots. Instead of writing code on the couch at home, where a variety of diversions threaten to sabotage productivity, independent contractors and telecommuters can get the benefits of having an office without the expensive overhead of leasing their own space.

The COOP space, located on Fulton Market, once housed a chicken processing business. The exposed brick walls laden with art create a comfortable, relaxed workspace. Young entrepreneur Sam Rosen, 23, operates his web design business, One Design Company, in one section of the loft. The other portion is reserved for independent workers and freelancers to use for coworking. The easily reconfigurable loft space can comfortably house perhaps a half dozen such workers at a time.

Coworking enthusiasts say that the spaces aren't just useful for getting work done, but also can be a resource for generating new business and for fleshing out new ideas. “It's an incubator model,” said Rosen. “We're not by any means asking for a stake in anyone's venture, but the idea is if they come here and they're starting up something, and it works, they're going to need help. And we can help, or we know people to help. That's cool, and that seems a lot more natural and nicer.”

The coworking movement began several years ago in California, but has rapidly become a global phenomenon. “It's pretty widespread,” said Eric Marden, a freelance web programmer and coworking advocate. “It used to be where there would be one city in every state, and now multiple cities in the state, and sometimes multiple spaces in one city are happening, and that's become more prominent. There's a third one about to open in Austin.”

“It's great,” said Brett Yates, a freelance computer programmer and patron of the COOP space. “I spent probably at least a year working out of my apartment, and doing that just kind of drove me insane. I started to find I was getting a lot less done – I'd go to coffee shops and get more done in two hours than in a full day at home.” That lack of productivity drove Yates to explore coworking. “I got out and kind of checked out a couple different places and this one seemed exactly like I was looking for.”

Chicago hasn't yet gotten completely on board with the idea of coworking, but it's catching on. “It was kind of a slow start for us, getting things out there and advertising,” said Linsey Burritt, a designer for One Design Company and a leader of the COOP. “People in Chicago haven't heard about it as much as other cities.”

Workspaces at the COOP rent for $20 per day, $90 per week, or $300 per month, and include T-1 Internet access.

An informal “coworker visa” program lets members of one coworking space use the facilities of other coworking groups when they travel. Open sharing of ideas and resources is encouraged. “Any time we've communicated with anybody, people have come to us, or we've gone to them, people are with open arms,” Rosen said. “They're like, 'Here's what I've got, let me help you. How can you help me?' It makes the pie bigger.”

Marden was utilizing the COOP space to work on programming projects while visiting Chicago with his family. He helps run a similar space in Orlando, Fla., and traded ideas with Rosen and Burritt during his stay. “The coworking [in Florida] kind of grew out of our BarCamps [open conferences on technology and culture],” Marden said. “For us, it's the physical hub now. Sort of the creative club house for all the stuff that was already happening all over the city, but it kind of lets us gel and have an area to work. We still all do our own thing, but we all kind of come together for that sort of stuff.”

Coworking may not yet be mainstream, but Rosen said it has caught the attention of many successful independent professionals. “We're lucky because we're busy, but you hear so much about how people are struggling,” Rosen said. “People who come here are not struggling. People who come in here are thriving. The people who are sitting down working, they're here because they have too much work to do. They need a place to focus. That's interesting.”

As President Obama addressed the National Academy of Science in Washington D.C. today, the administration's Office of Science and Technology Policy released the names of 20 people that will be on the panel responsible for advising the president on science and technology policy matters.  Amongst the members of the PCAS announced today was Dr. Chad Mirkin, a professor of materials science, engineering, chemistry and medicine at Northwestern University.

Mirkin is considered one of the top experts in the United States on nanotechnology.  His work at Northwestern led to the creation of NanoInk, a Chicago-area company that specialized in nano-scale fabrication processes using a technique called dip-pen nanolithography.  Mirkin won the Feynman Prize in 2002 for his research in nanotechnology.

Other members of the advisory council named today include: Rosina Bierbaum, the dean of the School of Natural Resources and the Environment at the University of Michigan; Eric Lander, a professor at MIT and Harvard; Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google; and Mario Molina, who won a Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1995.

In a statement from the Office of Science and Technology today, Obama said, “This council represents leaders from many scientific disciplines who will bring a diversity of experience and views. I will charge PCAST with advising me about national strategies to nurture and sustain a culture of scientific innovation."

Swine flu is slowly but surely spreading its way across the globe. Thankfully it hasn't hit Chicago yet , but it's getting closer. To prevent a pandemic of Outbreak-like proportions, the Center for Disease Control recommends frequent hand washing and also says to:

Try to stay in good general health. Get plenty of sleep, be physically active, manage your stress, drink plenty of fluids, and eat nutritious food.

We stressed-out, indolent, burrito-loving insomniacs at Tech Loop have come to the conclusion that we're a lost cause. So, we've decided to add one more item to our gadget arsenal: the N95 NIOSH-approved particulate respirator mask.  

Right now, "drug-store chains are preparing stores for a possible rush on hygiene products and pharmaceuticals" by ensuring adequate stocks of face masks and hand santizers, according to Bloomberg News. But a quick search of Walgreens' Web site for N95 face masks show they are out of stock at several Chicago locations. 

Tech Loop has created a map of where you can get yours, and we'll try to update it as stores sell out or replenish inventories.

We've already seen Chicagoans wearing masks (I personally did on the CTA this morning) to avoid the outbreak of the H1N1 swine flu, and rightfully so - It's getting close to us. Chicago is a hub for flights to and from Mexico, so it's probably only a matter of time before it makes it's way over to us.

You can use Google Maps to track the flu's spread across the country in real-time as cases are reported. The map even gives you the age of the indivual and a brief description, which makes it very interesting just to look at. According to the map, it shows the closest case to Chicago was reported in Indiana, roughly 155 miles southeast of the loop. The pink markers are suspected cases of the flu, the purple markers are confirmed cases. If a death occured from the case, the marker will not have a black dot in the middle.

We hate to bring bad news here at Tech Loop, but we want you all to be safe and healthy.

Visit the map here, and please, remember to wash your hands...it's a jungle out there.

*Edit: You can also follow @CDCemergency on Twitter to learn important updates about the flu.

So, what are you doing to steer clear of the virus? Are you going to buy a mask? Let us know in the comments below!