FanGo Software Systems: FanGo produces an iPhone app and mobile commerce ordering system that allows fans at stadiums and arenas to order concession food and drinks directly from their iPhone app. Food is then delivered to the fan’s seat, allowing fans to avoid long lines at food stands in stadiums. The startup is already in progress of negotiating deals with professional sports stadiums across the country.

Noblivity: Noblivity aims to bring trade shows for small boutiques and manufacturers online. Its online marketplace aims to connect small brands to small specialty stores to order jewelry, clothing, and home goods for their stock. It’s similar in theory to to Etsy, but aims to be more of a B2B platform.

PVPower: The startup simplifies the installation of solar power projects by developing a productivity tools for solar installers. The web-based application allows any contractor or installer to source solar panels, learn the best practices for installation and more.

Tap Me: Tap Me’s advertising platform iComplishments hopes to bring advertising revenue to game developers with an in-game advertising technology. The technology allows developers to reward gameplay with advertiser branded points and virtual gifts.

WeGather: WeGather’s goal is to offer religious institutions a custom based software to create a community website to engage participants. The SaaS platform helps increase donations, improves volunteer participation, centralizes e-communications, and helps create calendars.

TransFS: TransFS is a comparison shopping site for credit card processors. The startup aims to help merchants save money on credit card fees and also conducts reverse auctions to solicit competing bids from credit card processing companies. Merchants can then review each proposal and select the bid that saves the most money.

EduLender: EduLender, which has yet to launch, is a comparison search engine for student loans. You simply enter your name, location and financial information, and EduLender will show you all of the lenders serving your area that offer student loans, requisite interest rates, and what your loan will cost in real dollars in an apples-to-apples comparison.

GiveForward: GiveForward is an online fundraising tool aimed at a niche audience. The platform aims to make it easy for people to raise money for a loved one’s medical expenses. The allows anyone to create customizable fundraising pages where friends and family from across the world can donate online.

MathZee: MathZee aims to make learning math more fun for small children. The online platform teaches math via games that utilize audio, visual, and interactive features.

In focus: 2 Chicago film schools get noticed
By Nina Metz, Special to the Tribune
August 20, 2010

Without much fanfare, Chicago has become something of a film school hub in the last few years. Even as UCLA and NYU are still the brand names to beat, the offerings in Chicago have a good shot at closing the gap. Digital media is where it’s at, and these days you’re just as likely to find video game designers and animators as well as filmmakers among the ranks of graduates. With classes set to start next month, I decided to see where things are headed for some of the newer programs in town.

DePaul University’s School of Cinema and Interactive Media was launched in 2008, and the department added several new faculty positions this year, including director Tommy O’Haver (credits include the Anne Hathaway comedy “Ella Enchanted”) who is relocating to Chicago from Los Angeles for the school year. Also on board is Chicago-based film producer Steven A. Jones (”Wild Things” and “Mad Dog and Glory”).

While these kinds of hires bring real-world experience, one of the more intriguing aspects of DePaul’s program is something called Project Bluelight, which gives a faculty filmmaker a budget upward of $50,000 to make a film. Industry professionals are hired and students fill out the crew.

The forward-thinking momentum is all about the technology. “It’s basically film school for the new era,” says assistant professor Jonah Zeiger, who thinks competing schools with longer established reputations (including his alma mater, NYU) are “somewhat encumbered somewhat by the last hundred years of cinema history, whereas DePaul in a sense kind of said, OK, we’re not going to deal with celluloid. We’re going digital on the professional level. There was no baggage of an earlier program.”

A similar “no baggage” vibe is evident at Tribeca Flashpoint Media Arts Academy, located in the Loop. The two-year, high-end alternative to traditional undergrad programs was known simply as Flashpoint when it launched in 2007. Last spring, the Tribeca Film Festival inked a deal with the school to become both a financial and creative partner. “It’s a very snobby business, and the truth is the Tribeca thing was a tremendous additional credential,” says Howard Tullman, the school’s president and CEO.

Basically, the school is a faster route for students who want careers in digital media but aren’t interested in plowing through a four-year liberal arts education to get one. (It’s also cheaper, roughly $43,000 for the two years compared to four years at DePaul, which can run to $114,000.) Already alumni have seen some success with their gaming company Tap Me! Games (for iPhones and the like), based here in Chicago.

Class size at Tribeca Flashpoint is kept intentionally small (about 260 are enrolled this fall), and Tullman has been using his contacts to help students network with the likes of Chevy Chase, John Woo, Ken Burns and Liev Schreiber.

“The whole business is relationships, so we bring hundreds of employers and talent of every stripe through the school, they do a session with the students and they end up becoming advocates. So by the time we launched the first group of graduates this past spring, we were able to place eight or nine students, for example, with Mark Burnett on his various TV pilots. Our kids go in and get the jobs and it’s theirs to lose, whereas 10,000 other people are out there wondering how do I get my resume under the door to Mark Burnett?”

Read the full article at ChicagoTribune.com

This week at Tribeca Flashpoint, we’re proud to host an advance screening of the new film Sin Bin with director Billy Federighi.

A team of eight Tribeca Flashpoint students and recent graduates recently completed work on this coming-of-age comedy, filmed here in Chicago starring Michael Seater, Emily Meade and Bo Burnham.

Film synopsis from screen writer/producer Chris Storer:

Sin Bin is a high school take on The Apartment and the constant quest to find our own personal space. The film explains what happens when Brian, a high school senior, loans out his van, lovingly-referred to as “the Sin Bin,” to his friends as a spot to bring dates and serve as a portable apartment. While the film is a teen comedy, it quickly turns into a story of friendship, family, and Chicagoland… a comedy about the first time and how we get there.

The film is ode to John Hughes, a nod to the struggling teenagers striving for a place to call their own. Using the sights and sounds of Chicago, the trials and tribulations we all face growing up will be lovingly recreated.

On Tuesday, the screening will begin around 5pm, followed by a brief survey for all the guests followed by a Q&A with the director.  Guest feedback will be considered when the director makes the final cut of the film.

Ms. Burstein is a critically acclaimed director and producer primarily known for her work as an award-winning documentarian.

In 2000, Burstein was nominated for an Academy Award® for Best Documentary and the Independent Spirit Awards’ Truer Than Fiction Award, and won the Directors Guild of America’s Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement, for her film On the Ropes. The film was also awarded the Special Jury Prize at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival. Burstein returned to Sundance in 2008 with her film American Teen, which earned her the Directing Award at that year’s festival. She also received an Emmy nomination in 2008 for “NY77: The Coolest Year in Hell,” a TV documentary that she wrote and executive produced.

Burstein’s additional directing credits include the highly lauded documentary The Kid Stays in The Picture, as well as the television mini-series “Say It Loud: A Celebration Of Black Music In America“. She also served as a producer on those films, and as an executive producer on the comedy feature American Shopper and the television series “Autobiography” and “Film School.”

Mr. Wood addressed these issues and more in this enlightening Jumpstart session:

• What are copyrights, trademarks, patents, trade secret and rights of publicity and privacy? How do those rights arise? How do they differ from each other?

• What is the value of eac…h of these rights? How do you protect and exploit these assets?

• What are some of the legal ramifications when these rights are infringed? What constitutes infringement vs. permitted use (including a discussion of the Fair Use Doctrine)?

• Case studies from each field comprising the Tribeca Flashpoint programs (e.g., legal disputes involving music sampling, issues implicating film and broadcast, disputes arising in the gaming industry, and legal rights with respect to animation and VFX)