Selling seats on high-speed data rail

The future of Chicago goes where information flows. While our city was built around transportation, that train not-so-recently left the station. Future prosperity revolves around data transmission.

River North-based Darkstrand hopes to capitalize on this inevitability by leasing access to a government- and university-developed fiber-optic communication network to large corporations. The four-year-old company has raised $12 million from several notable investors -- including former Caterpillar Chairman Glen Barton -- to commercialize the National LambdaRail supercomputing network. With an eye on $20 million more from institutional backers, Darkstrand plans to charge Fortune 500 companies $1 million annually to get on the best of broadband superhighway.

"Demand for the network rises with businesses looking for smarter ways to connect their company and suppliers together," said Darkstrand CEO Mike Stein. "Companies can innovate with outside resources by accessing supercomputing facilities and research labs on the network."

What this means is that a manufacturing company like Caterpillar can engineer its vehicles more efficiently by having their teams access the same computational model in real time. For entertainment companies, the film and video postproduction process is made easier with the immediate transmission of high-resolution content. By pushing through their information confines, biotechnology companies could eventually bring drugs to market more quickly.

LambdaRail is a 12,000-mile optical network that transmits information at up to 40 Gbps (fast!). Darkstrand's new chief technology officer previously sat on the Lambda board as a senior researcher with Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

While Darkstrand has yet to transmit any income to its bank account, Stein says up to seven contracts are in place. Regardless, the present and future appears to be on the side of this Chicago startup.

"More high-speed bandwidth for research and commerce passes through our city than anywhere else in the country," Stein said.

TWITTERING PROSE

37Signals CEO Jason Fried thinks Twitter is good for the English language. Fried, who makes millions selling simplicity through Web applications, explained during a recent MIT Enterprise Forum panel conversation that "it is good for culture to run into a constraint of 140 characters." Harper Reed, chief technology officer for crowdsourcing retailer Threadless, said his company has 160,000 followers on the microblogging service. There is not much constraining either company these days.

INTERNET RADIO HITS

No "crappin'," but the Boers and Bernstein radio show on 670 the Score last month delivered an Internet hit with its Tournament of Bad. Modeled after the NCAA tournament and its 65-team bracket, the contest asked viewers to vote online to advance issues that truly irritate them. Page views quadrupled and "Web traffic is through the roof," said program director Mitch Rosen. Taking home the tournament crown were "people who use Bluetooth when not driving."

Rogers Park-based Sportscasts LLC today airs its 500th Cubs cast.com podcast and welcomes Cubs play-by-play man Len Kasper to commemorate the occasion. Founder Andrew Figgins said the site also will debut community features for fans to interact online while watching the games.

HE GONE

"He" is Wikipedia founder and former Chicago-based options trader Jimmy Wales. What's gone as of last week is his community-based Wikia Search Engine. Launched in 2006 as a grass roots competitor to Google, Wikia was only generating 10,000 monthly unique visitors before it was edited out of cyberspace.

In other notable national news, Google last week launched a $100 million venture capital fund. Google Ventures allows the company to invest in startups that could bring financial as well as strategic returns.

Brad Spirrison is a local technology writer. He can be reached at chicagotechmatters@gmail.com.