Fooala tries to bridge the gap between online ordering and local restaurants. When I first heard their idea at last year’s AlphaLab demo day, I was like “Wow that’s a great idea”! A lot of small restaurants do not have the time or the money to launch a platform to take orders online. Even if they did, trying to promote the fact that they could take orders that way would also be costly and time consuming.

Fooala provides an open online ordering system to restaurants as a Software as a Service. This means there is no hardware or software the restaurant needs to install. Fooala ties in to what the restaurant already does to take orders by phone and fax. They take it another step to help the restaurant integrate the system on an existing website.

Now here is where Fooala get interesting, the restaurant can also tie into a network of high quality websites and applications to engage and attract new customers. A great example of this is CollegeBite.com and the Facebook game Bite Bandit.

Fooala created College Bite to provide online ordering for delivery and pickup from local restaurants. Right now it’s only in Pittsburgh but they plan to launch in other cities soon. I could take the time to explain how the site works, but if you just go to it, it’s self explanatory. Think of it as an interactive menu section of a phonebook (if anyone still uses one of those giant wastes of paper anymore).

Another great example, Bite Bandit creates an interactive food ordering experience. The recently launched Facebook game gives away valuable coupons for orders from CollegeBite.com. They tell me the game has reached thousands of people and has given away thousands of dollars since they launched it a few weeks ago.

The game is setup like a slot machine and with each spin you can win up to $10 off your net order from College Bite. You only get 5 credits a day but you can score you self some more by promoting the game and your winnings.

Fooala is making it easy for small restaurants to reach an audience they would have never been able to reach themselves. I’m really looking forward to watching what this local startup will do next.

They wouldn’t give me details but they tell me they are working on a few major deals with publishers to use their system. I am thinking it’s going to be some kind of widget that the publisher could tie in with their food section. If this is true, then this would give restaurants another great way to reach customers.

Startup Digest offers the easy answer to “where should I network this week?” In order to do so, the team at Startup Digest gets local entrepreneurs to curate a list of hand-picked events each week. Spanning across the globe, including London, Paris, Nigeria and of course, Silicon Valley the digest has come to Pittsburgh.

“I am not looking for events. I am looking for idea-grounds. Places, where people can exchange ideas and also have fun.”

The Pittsburgh Startup Digest, being curated by Abhishek Sharma the co-founder of MobileFustion a South Side start-up, has published two weeks worth of lists including events from TiE Pittsburgh, Chatham University and the Duquesne University Small Business Development Center. Sharma believes that networking events is not the right title to give what he is looking for. “I am not looking for events. I am looking for idea-grounds. Places, where people can exchange ideas and also have fun.”

Pittsburgh may be a little-known city for startups compared to others with their own Startup Digests, but Sharma thinks it isn’t surprising at all. “Pittsburgh ranks as the 12th biggest destination for venture capital, and has the highest number of university spin-offs after Boston.”

For someone already in the network of startups in Pittsburgh, the events might not be new, but, Sharma is aiming for a new audience. “I expect to see our established entrepreneurial leaders I would be very happy if we could pull in borderline entrepreneurs.” We can expect the events to be places where a newcomer can come and feel welcome.

Startup Digest will be an excellent resource for successful and budding entrepreneurs alike. I suggest you sign up.

BioEnterprise, the Cleveland-based biomedical business formation initiative published their Midwest Health Care Venture Investment Report on Friday. The health care venture field is beginning to pick up. In terms of number of companies funded, Pittsburgh leads the pack with twenty-four totally almost $40 million in funding.

This high concentration stands out. In comparison the deals are smaller than the top city (in terms of amount funded) but the number of seed type funding provided is a good sign for Pittsburgh.

Comprising the report were mainly biopharmaceutical (48%) and medical device (38%). The larger Pittsburgh deals included Foundation Radiology Group, ALung Technologies, ClearCount and BodyMedia. The seed deals are hopefully companies to look for, including Almedtrac, Blacktown NC and Flexicath.

[via Pittsburgh Business Times]

myGov365 offers a new service to engage the public in the political process. Similar to the Sunlight Foundation’s OpenCongress.org, myGov365 allows users to support different politicians, bills, causes, etc. OpenCongress only gets as local as congressional districts, myGov365 takes the concept further by connecting at the “hyper-local” level such as city councils. This isn’t just a copy-cat idea, the best part of myGov365 is that it allows and encourages local politicians to interact within the network.

I recently was invited to join go the private beta and have had an opportunity to use the product. This is a perfect time for a product like myGov365 to launch – political participation was at an all-time high during the last presidential election and now with hot button issues such as the stimulus, health care reform and (for Pittsburgh) library closures and the tuition tax people are more interested than ever to know about the issues.

Pittsburgh City Councilman Bill Peduto spoke with me about his involvement and goals with working with myGov365. He became involved early on in the project and worked diligently for almost a year to clear the obstacles for myGov365. The trick was to allow for one-way communication and not put a burden on the City Clerks office. This is great news. Because of Peduto’s experience in working with open government initiatives and foresight this access is available free of charge to any group or individual interested.

Peduto goes on about myGov365’s goal to move beyond just government and into the community. He mentions that the beta will soon grow to include some “technically and social media savvy” non-profit organizations from the East End.

The goal of myGov365 is to give politicians and community groups an easy to use platform to engage with their constituents. I believe this is a great goal, but a lofty one. Politicians have numerous opportunities to interact and with their constituents via Twitter and Facebook – what compelling reason do politicians and constituents have to go to another network? Peduto belives that this is going to be the “Facebook or Twitter for Governments.” He may be right, but to get people to move between Facebook and myGov365 may pose a challenge.

Given that myGov365 is still in it’s infancy I think they have a chance to answer that question. Right now, they are working to refine their product. Despite some hiccups with the beta invites, myGov365 is a solid beta. Unfortunately the webpages look like a beta, right now it isn’t very polished (especially given the focus on design and usability in so many of today’s startups) and it takes some guessing to determine how to get information (like to find out what H.R. 3975 is, I have to click on the title and dig through the information there.)

Like most networks, you can comment on things (bills, etc), join or create groups and contact other members of the network. For the politically active this is a great tool to find like-minded individuals and discuss the topics. For the curious it’s great to see what representatives are promoting and discussing.

Overall I think it’s a solid product headed in the right direction for local politics and non-profits. But, I’m still going to use OpenCongress as my go-to reference for national issues because of the larger community and easier to navigate UI.

Malia Spencer has a new article up on Pittsburgh Business Times about ITSqc spinning out of CMU. While it isn’t exactly your typical sin-off, it does bode well for CMU and Pittsburgh. ITSqc works with companies such as IBM and Accenture to create models around the IT service sector.

“The research was done and the models were created and focus shifted from creating and gathering, which universities are great at, we produced the models and now it’s a more commercial adoption issue,” said company director Jeff Perdue of the decision to spin-off.

Now that the shift has moved from research to commercialization, Jeff thinks it’s time to spread their wings and fly. IT services is a maturing industry, it was only a short amount of time until a network of companies that support it was created. Not surprisingly, it came out of CMU. Good luck, ITSqc.

[Pittsburgh Business Times: IT service company ITSqc spins out from CMU]