Chicago

Websites improve by incremental but important steps -- Friendster was the premier people-connector, 'til its "Profile" was trumped by adultfriendfinder's helpful "likeitinthebutt?" tab. Continuing the march of progress with event tickets is LiveStub.

The next step in the StubHub/TicketsNow evolution, Stub's a Chi-based secondary ticket marketplace, stripped of annoyances (time-wasting online registration) and boned up with tools to help you accomplish everything from snagging Bears tickets, to scoring seats at the Lewis Black show, to selling back Lewis Black seats once the drugs wear off. Click a general tab (All Events, Sports, Concerts, Theater), winnow down (Most Popular, Newly Added, Events Happening Soon), choose an event, and then get to the frugal-minded good stuff: graphs showing total tickets listed, popularity, and average prices over upcoming days, which taken together'll let you to gauge the risk of waiting for you and your girl's Wicked tix to drop $40, or determine when they'll drop safely to "Unavailable". On the sell side, Stub's strongest tool is its "LivePrice" widget: enter the pertinent deets (event, date, seat/row numbers) and it'll quickly spit back a suggested average selling price based on supply/demand -- a term that would make you drive back to your college frat house and fall asleep on the couch out of habit.

Right now the majority of Stub's stash is sourced from other merchants, but they soon hope to source all their own tickets and make all sales commission-free -- a blessing if you left "likeitinthebutt?" set to "No".

---