Oh come all ye tinkerers, nerdy and philanthropic, come ye oh co-ome ye to American Maker. From the folks who run Make Magazine and Maker Faire, American Maker will honor someone whose tinkering has the potential for greater social good. According to event organizers, "American Maker is a live, day-long program that highlights grassroots innovation in local communities around the country." A panel of judges will select their favorite Chicago "maker," whose project can benefit......

Motorola will have its answer for the iPhone out in the next few months, according to Crain's. [Motorola CEO Gregory Q. Brown] said new phones in the second half of the year will have "capabilities that will include touch and messaging . . . and we'll be looking to enhance our smartphone portfolio." Asked whether such a phone will be in U.S. stores by Christmas, he said, "That's a reasonable expectation." Brown wouldn't elaborate, but......

The City of Chicago is planning to drop the hammer on motorists that don't pay parking tickets, presenting them with more than just a ticket: evidence! From the Sun-Times: The Daley administration has purchased 140 hand-held devices from Duncan Parking Technologies -- at a cost of $2 million -- that don't just issue tickets. They take pictures. Parking enforcement aides will use the new technology initially to support tickets issued for parking illegally in a......

Photo by The New No.2 We're the seventh-biggest "cybercity" according to a new report, whose findings we will immediately dismiss based on their use of the prefix "cyber." What year is it, people? We ranked behind New York, Washington, D.C., San Jose, Boston, Dallas-Fort Worth, and Los Angeles. All the data is from 2006, the last year for which info is available. The report, issued by the American Electronics Association, says Chicago has 164,000......

JoeM500 gets ready for "Antiques Roadshow" Hummer owners are feeling the squeeze from high gas prices. Boo. Hoo. Technology in Action: Cook County Sheriff's officials are now busting prostitutes on Craigslist. On Sunday, DePaul PhD candidate Karen Alkolby will become the first deaf woman in U.S. history to earn a doctorate in computer science. Alkolby created a computerized dictionary that translates English to American Sign language. Envelopes containing white powder were sent to Alderman......

Chicagoist remembers the day when we had to wait for the next morning's newspaper to see whether our team won or not, and we'd pore over the previous night's box scores while eating breakfast before heading off to school or day camp. Now, we furtively glance at our iPhone under the table to see real time updates while out for dinner. But how does every pitch, out and home run make it to our handheld......

Get ready for WiMax to blanket our region with delicious, wherever-you-want speedy internet connections (provided you have a WiMax-enabled device). Come to mama. Sprint and Clearwire Corporation announced that they're teaming up to form Clearwire, a new wireless communication company that's all about WiMax, which is like Wifi on awesome sauce. Intel, Google, Comcast, Time Warner and Bright House Networks invested a combined $3.2 billion in the new venture, and Chicago gets first dibs on......

State Rep Kenneth Duncan (D-Chicago) introduced a bill that would make using a cellphone while crossing the street illegal. House bill 4520 proposes an amendment to the Illinois Vehicle Code, adding in Sec. 11-1011.5. Pedestrian use of wireless telephone. (a) A pedestrian shall not use a wireless telephone while crossing a roadway. (b) As used in this Section, "wireless telephone" means a device that is capable of transmitting or receiving telephonic communications without a wire......

Finally! The CTA is introducing new machines that let you buy transit passes with your debit or credit card. Welcome to the future, CTA! By "the future" we mean "the present" or "several years ago." But welcome, nonetheless. The minimum value you can buy or add with your plastic is $5 and the max is $25 per day (as a security measure, according to the press release) for Visa, MasterCard, Discover Card and American......

Who doesn't love dogs? Besides these two, we mean. Many of us here at Chicagoist have our own pups that we lavish with too much attention and expensive things to chew. There's nothing that warms our hearts after a long day at the office like the excited look and wagging tail of our canine companions. That said, we've been fascinated with the show dog obsessives since the time our high school girlfriend's mother yelled at......

It seems like everybody in town knows Tony Rezko's name. And why not? Besides being under federal indictment, he's a big player in Illinois politics. He's also gotten some national attention, with Former Gov. Jim Edgar musing that Rezko isn't really Obama's problem, and a photo of him with former President Bill Clinton surfacing on the Today show. So who is Tony Rezko, and why is he under indictment? Rezko immigrated to Chicago after high......

Will I Ever See My Laptop Again?...

As Frank Burns says, it's nice to be nice to the nice. And it seems like people are getting on the kindness bandwagon today. First the Neighbors Project wants us to give out thank you for shoveling cards. The folks at NP will send you free postcards to pass out to your shovel-inclined neighbors to thank them for their magnificent de-snowing skills — and it's also a way to shame your blockmates into clearing......

If you need further evidence that cultural awareness is increasingly non-existent among the general populace, look no further than college blog Campus Squeeze. Following on the heels of its list of the 20 most beautiful college campuses, the site recently weighed in on what they deemed the 20 ugliest campuses in the country. While the prison-style buildings of Drexel University and the utilitarian blocks at Rochester Institute of Technology certainly didn't look appealing, we......

There are good ideas and there are great ideas. Doctors at Loyola University Medical Center have devised a way to make sure surgical sponges don’t get lost in people anymore. Hooray for medical technology! They’re going to put bar codes on the sponges, and a nurse will scan the sponge before it goes in and the system will tell the nurse if any sponges have been left inside. That all seems a little too complicated.......

Some things never change. One of those is spending Sunday nights watching "Doctor Who" on Channel 11. Twenty years ago yesterday one of those episodes (from the run of the Fourth Doctor, Tom Baker) was interrupted by a video pirate in a Max Headroom mask and held the signal hostage for over two minutes. As Rick Klein at Fuzzy Memories notes, the pirate also jammed Channel 9's signal earlier in the evening, but the......

Two stories have us thinking about the continuing evolution of the cinematic experience and the differences between going to see a movie and just watching one. First off, "boutique" theater chain Muvico has signed a letter of intent to occupy two floors of the Block 37 development. The proposed multiplex would have only seven screens, much smaller than the AMC RIver East 21 for example. But (to quote Seinfeld) they'd be draped in velvet, so......

Check, Please! just launched an interactive video-based website today where visitors may send in restaurant recommendations and audition for the show. The site also contains over 300 reviews from the show's run, the one-minute segments that began running on NBC 5 on Tuesdays and Fridays (NBC 5 is a partner in the site). Now you can look up recent reviews in case you missed a recent review or just want to view a truncated......

We've decided that even though this feature is still in its nascent stages, we're giving Steve Johnson a "bye" week already. Why? It was pointed out to us that after a certain comment on this site, Johnson has suddenly started to include links in his posts. So Steve, whether it's you, or some interned monkey, that's made this brave embrace of modern technology, we doff our hats, and offer our grandest salute. Welcome to 1998!......

Who gives last rites to the priest? Who installs a new crown in the dentist's mouth? Who buries the gravedigger? Or, more importantly, who gives the eulogy when a funeral home dies? If you're the family that has held sway over Griffin Funeral Home for 60 years, you give it yourself. The historic, African-American-owned parlor at 32nd and King Drive is closing its doors come New Year's Eve. Griffin has played host to such final......

The Greenbuild Expo started this morning at McCormick Place with a keynote by none other than Al Gore's president, Bill Clinton. Greenbuild 2007 brings 18,000 building professionals together for education sessions, lectures, tours of Chicago's greenest buildings, and a huge number of booths featuring new products and technology. Greenbuild says they chose Chicago because of the city's legacy of great architecture and Mayor Daley's dedication to all things green. (During his reign, the city has......

In a move sure to send ripples throughout the video game community, Electronic Arts, aka EA, is shuttering its Chicago office effective immediately. In case that leaves you scratching your head, EA is responsible for such gaming franchises as Madden NFL, The Sims, The Orange Box, and the upcoming Rock Band. The now former studio was located at 215 W. Ohio. According to EA Games president Frank Gibeau, shutting down the Chicago branch was “the......

Well, it's finally happened: the Writer's Guild of America declared a strike early this morning after midnight negotiations stalled. Naturally there's been plenty of finger-pointing, with writers claiming that the producers broke off talks while producers say that the writers were the ones who walked out. Regardless, the strike will have some very immediate effects, which the Trib has handily put in chart form. Daily shows will suffer the most at first, with programs like......

This is the final week for the CTA as we know it, unless state funding kicks in. To highlight the upcoming doomsdsay, the CTA put on a quite a little show. There's a Wicca school in Rossville, and boy are some close-minded residents not thrilled. Quoth a local youth pastor, "The school closed. This is a popular place for meth. We're like, 'Great, now a witch school.'" Yeah, meth and witches. Totally comparable. The......

This week's Free Shit column in the Reader points us to what sounds like a really fun event: Head over to Blick (42 S. State) today between 11:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m., and they'll give you a free scarf to decorate. It's part of the Fashion Focus festivities, and students from the International Academy of Design & Technology will be on-hand to help you with your embellishment endeavors. Sounds like a good lunch hour to......

Chicagoist commenters now have avatars! If you have a profile (and if you don't yet, why not register?), just go to "Edit Profile" and upload a 100 x 100 pixel image. Then try commenting (on this post!), and bask in the glory of our ever-improving commenting system. For now, the default icon for registered users across the Gothamist network is a panda, which is a nod to Executive Editor and Gothamist Co-Founder Jen Chung's well-documented......

It almost plays like a plot from a trifling summer movie: The Illinois Medical District wants to build a new biotech building on the Near West Side. The kicker is, they want to build it in the same spot as a current Little League baseball field. In a letter dated Sept. 25, Medical District counsel states that the Chicago Park District must remove all improvements from Livingston Park, at Lexington and Leavitt, so that construction......

Dun-dun duuun, duuun, dadada duuuuuuuun! The "Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination" exhibit opens at the MSI today, sure to delight both science and Lucasfilm geeks alike with its focus on the legit science behind some of the fantasy elements of the movies. The 10,000-square-foot traveling exhibit is split into two main themes: Getting Around, about transportation, and Robots and People, about ... yes, robots and people. There are plenty of props from the movies,......

Do you find your cell phone doesn't do enough for you, what with features limited to text messaging, video and music playing, internet access, cameras, alarm clocks and, oh yes, actual call capabilities? Do you find yourself wondering, "When, oh when, will I finally be fulfilled by my cell?" Well, until we get those kind of Touch capabilities built in, maybe not for a while, but in the meantime, you'll soon be able to use......

We once dreamed of free municipal WiFi. Now, we'll settle for cheap WiMax, the new standard that will offer WiFi-like speeds but with about ten times the range, which cuts down on the number of towers needed in a coverage area. Tech website Ars Technica was on the Chicago River earlier this week for Sprint's demonstration of its new XOHM WiMax service. The testers were given laptops with XOHM plug-in cards and Motorola cell phones......