Holiday Cards Unlimited is a Chicago-based web business selling customized greeting cards.  With all the cries of Internet-created pain from the publishing industry in recent years, it’s interesting to find an online business dedicated to selling a printed product.  Founded in 2005, it breaks from the “typical” Chicago post-dotBomb start-up, in that it’s based on licensed technologies, rather than open source development.  Holiday Cards Unlimited starts with a base card design and allow the customer to add customized text and logos to the card.  Typically, this lends itself to institutional bulk purposes, though “holiday” isn’t the only type of card sold.

Tim Christopoulos, Holiday Card Unlimited’s President, recently took time to answer a few questions about his company. (more…)

If you’re a golfer, odds are you’ve played for money.  Loser buys the drinks?  $5 per hole?

If you’re not a golfer, it should still sound familiar.  Ever do that with a video game?

BringIt is a new company that lets you do the same thing with video games.  Legally speaking, you’re winning a “game of skill,” not betting with your buddy, and this isn’t allowed in the states of Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Maryland, Montana, Tennessee, and Vermont, but this is Chicago Tech News, not Indianapolis Tech News, so it’s legal here.  (You do need to be 18, though.) (more…)

Part of the IT industry built up around the Chicago finance and trading industry, Zen-Fire is a “data and order routing engine” that facilitates futures and options trading.  Launched in conjunction with Mirus Futures, a Chicago-based brokerage, Zen-Fire offers unfiltered tick data and low latency connections to be used with various trading platforms like NinjaTrader and Focus Trader Pro.  Unfiltered tick data refers to receiving market data on every “tick” of the exchange, not just when prices change.  Filtered data may read slightly differently when looking at volume or price changes over a very short period of time, especially when charted. (more…)

Audio books have been around for years.  Congress started a program for them, originally intended for use by the blind, back in 1931.  MP3 audiobooks and downloads are more recent and dovetail with the advent on music going online, although the acceptance of audio books as a download was a little slower starting up. The Audio Publisher’s Association reports that audio book downloads accounted for 21% of the audio book market in 2008, up from 17% in 2007.  Yes, that’s an increasing market segment in 2008.

Batavia’s Sniplits has an unusual niche in the audio book market: short stories.  With downloads ranging from roughly 3 minutes to 45 minutes of playing time, that would put them closer to a music download (single or album), than your typical audio book for a novel which can range from 6 to 40 hours.  At $0.48 – $1.28 per download, depending on length, Sniplets also lines up more closely with music, in terms of their packaging. (more…)

The 8th Annual City Treasurer’s Small Business Expo will take place on Friday, July 17th at the UIC forum (725 W. Roosevelt Road) from 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.  The Expo is a combination of workshops and an exhibition floor.  While the Expo is more of a general business event than a tech-specific one, there are a few things worth nothing for the tech crowd: (more…)

ActofGood is a sort of charity mash-up site, combining elements of social media with a calendar and a good old fashioned Web 1.0 portal component.  If you haven’t heard of it, that’s probably because it launched at the end of April and is still making the publicity rounds.  Still, in a short period of time they’ve signed up 80+ charities ranging from well known names, like The American Lung Association and Children’s Memorial Hospital, to smaller names like Holla for a Dolla and Friends of the Israeli Defense Forces.

In portal mode, the site allows for a quick exploration of different charities and has a filter for “Cause Category.”  This could potentially aid in cross-pollination of volunteers for similar causes, as could the social network set-up of the member pages allow for sharing of causes. The site also allows for donations and volunteer sign-ups, but the main piece on the site is the current  events calendar. (more…)