Chicago Archive

NY-based appointment planning and physician review service ZocDoc has announced they have traveled via the El and have expanded to Chicago. Last October the doctor management service expanded to Washington, D.C.

ZocDoc is very easy to use. You select your insurance provider, location and specialty (dentist, psychiatrist, derm, etc.) and ZocDoc spits back a list of available appointment times. For me it’s saved a ton of time calling around to find available appointments that match both my insurance provider and my availability. ZocDoc notes that they have over 150,000 available appointments in the Chicago area.  Currently ZocDoc is handling appointments for three specialties: primary care, dermatology, and OB/GYN.

ZocDoc is currently available in NYC, San Francisco, Chicago and Washington. The company generates revenue by charging doctors a fee for completed appointments although I believe the primary care appointments are at no cost to the doctor.

Check out all of our ZocDoc coverage including my real-world test of the service.

When you ride the subway, have you ever thought, “boy I’d like to get her on my Twitter”. Or what about, “his tush belongs on my Facebook”. Perhaps, “She would be a great friend for my feed”. But the problem is that it’s hard to go up to someone and tell them about your interests and desires on a train.

There’s a new service that will help you reveal your interests in a man or a woman named SubwayCrush. The service currently serves NYC, London, San Francisco, Boston and Chicago. The idea is simple…find someone on the train you are interested in, write up the person’s specs on SubwayCrush and then the person might just answer. Naturally the more people who know about, and use, SubwayCrush, the better chance you have for a match.

You can view all “crushes” by city or by type (e.g m4w, m4m, w4m, w4w). You must enter the rail line you were on when you found your crush — this helps narrow down who it might be. I hear stories all the time about people finding love on the subway. I did a search for “hot male entrepreneur who also runs a tech blog” on a few of the subway lines in NYC but I came up empty.

I am guessing at some point they will add the ability to post photos – which might be a bit creepy. They should also add the ability to signup for alerts based on location and/or subway line.

The service was created by NY-based Lolz.

During my December trip to Chicago, I noticed a billboard on a subway platform for the Treo which featured flickr on the display. I wrote a post about whether flickr had the mainstream appeal that would make sense to run on a billboard.

When I hit NYC and walked around Times Square, I noticed more billboards for the Treo. The ads are below. I think Palm did an excellent job in mixing Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 together to create a campaign that can appeal to everyone.

New York:

Chicago:

This is a follow-up to my post earlier this week, "How Many Freakin Job Boards Do We Need?" So where are the great web apps being created? Where is the web development work, the designers, etc. Now, in speaking with Matt yesterday, he spoke about the fact that people can now be anywhere since technology can finally handle it correctly. But still, I think there are local hubs of web apps. Clearly, San Francisco is leading the race by several miles/kilometers observed by the number of meetups and conferences located in the region.

I took a long look at the niche job boards I mention in the other post and here is what I have come up with as a starting point:

• California – specifically San Francisco / San Jose / Mountain View
• London
• New York
• Chicago

A funny side note – including the terms "Ninja" and "Rockstar" seem to be the hottest catchphrases for web jobs today.

I am quite disappointed that so few locations seem to be focusing on Web 2.0 and creating great web apps. Places like Atlanta and Boston were hot spots in the Web 1.0 boom, but appear non-existant now. This list does not include Asian locations as I cannot read nor understand these languages. Perhaps someone can share the Asian locations for web apps.

So people of the world – speak out – represent the +49 or the 404! Where are great web apps being created?