The initiative will begin with 30 kiosks and expand to up to 100. They feature 32-36 inch touch screen monitors and will offer Groupons daily deals as well as travel deals. They will also give users access to social networking sites and allow them to take photos from the kiosk and send them to the sites. So you can check your Facebook from the kiosk.

Julie Mossler of Groupon explains, “We think the kiosk partnership offers a fun way to get great, relevant Groupon deals while you’re out exploring Chicago.”

The Kiosks currently feature a non-emergency 311 app that allows visibility to public transportation availability and soon will be linked to 911 emergency services and vicinity security cameras.

SmartDigital CEO George Burciaga is a native of the Chicago area and sees the kiosks as a way to put internet technology in the hands of those who have not been exposed to it before.

Burciaga says: I leverage what I didn’t have growing up to help even the playing field and build technology to help everyone.”

The partnership is hoping to expand to the Miami and New York areas in the near future.

There are plenty of achievements on Foursquare, known as “badges,” that are city-specific. For instance, there’s one for checking-in above a certain street number in New York City and there are badges for specific events that taken place in certain cities like SXSW. The new Windy City Badge is the first badge that really promotes checking-in around an entire city.

Users can unlock the badge by visiting 5 of the 21 places on the list. The places on the list are all local attractions or small businesses that are historically significant or popular around Chicago. The list includes “Dat Old Fashioned Donut” Donut Shop, The Oriental Institute Museum, The Garfield Park Conservatory and the 63rd Street Beach.

Of course, the badge serves as a motivation to get people to visit local establishments. It aims to help people explore the city and find some of its best local venues.

As part of this launch, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel joined Foursquare as “Chicago’s Mayor.” He currently has over 1,000 followers on the service, and says that he will be checking-in to locations all over Chicago to help promote the new Windy City Badge.

Cities everywhere could benefit from this kind of specialization in the future. Like the Windy City Badge, other badges can be based off the new Foursquare Lists feature. This could promote local businesses and attractions by harnessing the power of the achievement. Everyone loves to win something – and badges like this can serve as an incentive to visit locales in the same way holding down a Mayorship does.

Would you like to see special Foursquare badges for your city? Let us know in the comments.

Why is this significant? Because that would be Groupon’s home turf, and the thinking is that direct competition from a powerhouse and trusted brand such as Amazon could be a major thorn in the company’s side.

Another line of thinking, however, would be that there’s plenty of room for a lot of deals providers to thrive. People like to save money, after all, and many are likely to use a variety of providers. There are already a lot of different options out there, and they don’t seem to be having too much trouble attracting advertisers.

The Wall Street Journal reports: “For now, sales people from LivingSocial — a Groupon rival in which Amazon has an investment — are roping in the merchants for the Amazon local-deals offering. But Amazon said it has hired its own sales team for a standalone daily-deals offering planned for the latter part of this year.”

Amazon is quoted as saying: “Customers already know and trust Amazon.com for their online purchases, and now with Amazon Local, they can also find great deals right in their own city. AmazonLocal is a great way for residents of the Windy City to enjoy the restaurants, spas, and activities in their backyard.”

Groupon filed for its IPO right around the time Amazon Local launched in Boise. It has been pushed back, however, pending an SEC review of the company’s accounting practices.

Last week, Groupon and Foursquare announced Groupon Now for the popular check-in service.

This is the second crack that prosecutors have had to take down the former Governor. In the original trial, the jury was unable to reach a verdict and came back hung after two weeks of deliberation. In that case, Blagojevich was hit with 24 counts which ranged from wire fraud to extortion to bribe solicitation. The jury was only able to agree on one count – lying to the FBI.

So prosecutors decided to go at him again, this time simplifying the charges. They did this by dropping some racketeering charges and leaving Blagojevich’s one time co-defendant, his brother, out of the whole thing.

They also took only 3 weeks to present their case. The first trial took over a month and a half. According to the AP, they just streamlined the whole thing – called fewer witnesses and played shorter clips from the damning audio evidence from the FBI wiretaps. Basically, anything to make the decision for the jury less complicated.

And at the retrial, Blag himself testified in his own defense. “When I hear myself saying that on tape, I’m an effin’ jerk, and I apologize,” he said on the stand.

This time, Blago has been convicted of 17 of the 20 counts. The jury was unable to come to a verdict on 2 counts. He faces up to 350 years in prison.

Blagojevich had turned himself into a somewhat unwanted celebrity after his removal from office. He made the talk show rounds immediately following his indictment, hitting The Late Show with David Letterman, The Daily Show and others. He tried to appear on the short-lived NBC reality show I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here, but the judge in his case wouldn’t let him leave the country to film it. His wife took his place on the show.

He also appeared on the 9th season of Celebrity Apprentice. He didn’t last very long, as Trump fired him during the 4th aired episode.

Blagojevich hasn’t always been an avid Twitter user, but he joined the network about a month or so ago. He then publicly announced that he would be live-tweeting his retrial. The judge in his trial quickly nipped that idea, as he banned Blago from using the social media client inside the courtroom.

The Twitterverse is reacting to the breaking news, most of which are not too sympathetic to the ex-Governor –

Ol’ Rod still has some supporters out there, however –

ORIGINAL ARTICLE: How much is a single tweet worth? Would you believe $50,000? That’s the price a Chicago based realty company is trying to get in a defamation lawsuit.

Back in May, Amanda Bonnen, did what any Twitter user does… tweeted a complaint. Below is the text from her tweet, via Chicago Bar-tender:

"@JessB123 You should just come anyway. Who said sleeping in a moldy apartment was bad for you? Horizon realty thinks it’s okay."

Though her account has since been deleted, it should be noted that at the time of this tweet Amanda had approximatley 20 followers.

Do you think this tweet could’ve caused any damage? Tell us.

The Horizon Realty Group feels that her tweet did some damage, as they’ve filed a suit in the Cook County Circuit Court. The Chicago Sun-Times has some interesting quotes from Jeffrey Michael, whose family runs Horizon:

"The statements are obviously false, and it’s our intention to prove that … We’re a sue first, ask questions later kind of an organization."

If you wish to read the "Verified Complaint" you can go here (it’s a PDF).

Do you think we will start seeing more lawsuits from tweets? Let us know your thoughts.

While it is happening in only major markets first, ESPN is going to expand on the test that it has run in the in the Chicago market with ESPN Chicago into Los Angeles, New York and Dallas. One of the last strongholds that any major metro ‘local’ newspaper has is its sports coverage. Many people will buy a paper just for that reason (stop rolling your eyes, sports fans are different). The New York Times reports that the Chicago experiment has set the stage for a battle that could be the death knell for already struggling entities like the Chicago Tribune. In addition, there are local editions of SportsCenter to compete against the local TV market as well.

Chicago news outlets, which have some experience competing directly with ESPN, acknowledge that the threat is real.

“We are taking ESPN’s marketing push seriously, and we are looking forward to the local sports turf battle in the weeks and months ahead,” said Bill Adee, The Chicago Tribune’s editor for digital media.

In less than three months, ESPN Chicago has become the city’s top sports site, attracting about 590,000 unique visitors in June, according to data from comScore, an Internet measurement company. Second place went to The Tribune’s online sports section with 455,000 unique visitors.

It took just three months to leap frog the Second City’s most venerable newspaper in the online arena. Advertisers will have to take notice and now the revenue that the Tribune realized from its online presence will be threatened by ESPN’s offering. The effect thus far is not actually taking audience away from the newspaper’s online presence but it is certainly slowing growth. That growth, however, may be the life support that most papers need to survive so this threat is very real.

ESPN has plans to dig into the local sports scene down to the high school level and is even offering tools to help manage sports leagues. There is also talk of partnering with local newspapers in content sharing arrangements dependent on the market. None of this comes without potential downside of course. Cost and effective coverage being chief among them. In Chicago, however, the advertisers are taking notice.

ESPN, of course, is going after local ad dollars, as well as readers. Chicago Lincoln-Mercury dealers, Hilton Hotels of Chicago, MillerCoors and Hawthorne Race Course have been among ESPN Chicago’s advertisers.

No matter how this shakes out, Internet marketers will have to take notice of such a move by a national player. What if CNN or FoxNews decided that they could localize their content as well? How much room would be left for newspapers then? Sure you will always have your newspaper loyalists but are there enough of those to sustain operations for a major news operation?

As if the news couldn’t get worse for the reporters of the news.

Comments

This afternoon he just emailed me to let me know that he’s hosting a small-group word of mouth marketing seminar in Chicago on July 30 and September 4, which is a cool opportunity for you to spend a day learning from an expert. It’ll be a small class too: max of 50 people.

He describes it thusly:

• Master the five steps of word of mouth marketing
• Construct an action plan that your company can start using the very next day
• Get the same training that big corporations (Microsoft, TiVo, eBay) have received — for a fraction of what they paid
• Know how to translate word of mouth marketing into real ROI
• Participate in an active, intense day of practical brainstorming (not boring theory)
• Learn from Andy Sernovitz, the guy who literally wrote the book on word of mouth marketing

Andy promises that attendees will learn a repeatable, proven marketing framework that is easy to execute, affordable, and provides measurable results within 60 days.

If I were based in Chicago, I’d definitely attend, but since I’m not, maybe you would be interested in going instead? You can learn more at events.gaspedal.com.

Oh! Andy’s extending for a $250 discount for readers of my weblog, which is a nice additional perk. Just use discount code weloveintuitive when you register.

Comments

It’s no surprise that Chicago wants a piece of the action every time a ticket changes hands for a city event. Chicago called for a little juice when someone takes a ticket and resells it to someone else for an event in the city.

Internet Retailer said the city’s legal representatives want StubHub and other websites to collect and pay Chicago’s 8 percent amusement tax for each of these transactions, of which the city believes it is owed some $186,000 to date. City attorneys also content eBay and StubHub aren’t being very forthcoming with information for the case:

The city, represented by city attorney Mara Georges, contends in the lawsuit against eBay that the e-marketplace maintains relationships with businesses based in Chicago but that the city needs to “engage in discovery to determine the full extent and specifics of Defendant’s operations and amusement tax liabilities.”

The city charges that eBay and StubHub have refused to comply with a request to submit their records on ticket sales since last year, which triggered the imposition of fines set at $500 per day until the matter is settled.

eBay doesn’t think it owes the amusement tax, a position that should lead to a protracted lawsuit. We’re wondering how the idea of a first sale of a ticket will be treated by the court; allowing Chicago to collect an amusement tax each time a single ticket has been resold looks like a slippery slope to us.

The city charges in the lawsuit filed in Cook County Circuit Court that the two companies are "reseller’s agents" and are required under Chicago’s law to pay an amusement tax. The suit asks for a court order that will allow the city to audit the companies and hand out fines for not collecting and paying the tax.

eBay and StubHub plan to challenge the suit. "We do not believe that the City’s Amusement Tax applies to either eBay’s or StubHub’s business models nor do we believe that the Amusement Tax can properly be assessed here," said a statement by a spokesperson for both companies. "We intend to fight this litigation vigorously."

The lawsuit alleges that thousand of tickets have been sold to events at Chicago venues via the two Web sites. Total ticket sales sold through eBay and StubHub are not known, which is why the city wants to audit the two companies, said Jenny Hoyle, a spokeswoman for the city’s Law Department.

The amusement tax ordinance says that a resellers agent is "a person who, for consideration, resells a ticket on behalf of the ticket’s owner or assists the owner in re-selling the ticket." The term applies, "whether the ticket is re-sold by bidding, consignment or otherwise, and whether the ticket is re-sold in person, at a site on the Internet or otherwise," the ordinance states.
 

Earlier this month online retailer Amazon.com sued the state of New York challenging a new sate law that requires out of state Internet retailers to collect sales tax. The state of Texas is also looking into making Amazon collect taxes since it has a physical presence in the state.

Take-Two sued the transit authority in Manhattan federal court, saying the CTA violated its right to free speech and contractual rights by removing ads for the game from the transit system.

"Take-Two GTA IV advertisements promote an entirely lawful, mainstream entertainment product enjoyed by millions," Take-Two said in the complaint, alleging that the CTA used "improper content-based restrictions" to pull the ads.

Take-Two is accusing the CTA and its sales agent, Titan Outdoor LLC, of violating a $300,000 ad campaign agreement that included displaying Grand Theft Auto 4 posters on buses and transit display places. The ad campaign was scheduled to run for six weeks between April and June.

The suit is asking for the transit authority to run the ads and is also seeking monetary damages of  $300,000.

The advertisements were taken down after a Fox News affiliate questioned why the ads were allowed to run after a slew of violent crimes in Chicago, the suit said.

Previous Grand Theft Auto games have drawn criticism for depicting a variety of violent behavior.