Where do Chicago technology companies (physically) reside? Most would point to Lisle, IL, home of area's most famous Internet company, divine Interventures. Others would say downtown, in the Loop.

But this reporter would suggest for anyone desiring to see a new tech community in the process of being born to undertake the following journey: hop on the "Howard" Red Line EL, transfer at the Belmont stop to the Brown Line, then get off at the Irving Park stop.

Walk east on Irving Park Road, under the Northwestern Metra tracks, plus another hundred feet. You'll find an old manufacturing facility (from the rust belt days, I guess). Walk up a few floors and you'll find Logika Corporation, one of the technology companies on the very edge of transforming Chicago's Ravenswood neighborhood into....Siliconwood.

Not far from Wrigley field, the Ravenswood neighborhood boasts of more than a few things to attract an up-and-coming Internet start up: cheap rent (as little as 10 bucks a square foot, I hear), room to grow (plus parking), and an area in the heart of "the city that works" Chicago.

Logika's M.O. is the Search business. It's an ASP that makes micro-searching tools and category-specific, portal search engines. Unlike most dot-coms, it was founded on a sure-fire business model that combines solid marketing tactics with smart product engineering.

After surveying the technology landscape with the assistance of co-founder John Sortino, who provided the team's marketing expertise and business direction, co-founders Matt Fordham and Bart Voypick, Anderson Consulting PeopleSoft consultants, decided there was a huge opportunity in the search engine business and launched Logika. Well, I'm getting ahead of myself. It wasn't that simple.

"We consulted while we started to flesh out the business," says Logika's CEO and President Fordham. "We chose 'search tools' because we saw that it was hard to find information on the Internet. Yahoo! generated not only too many results, but too many results that lacked relevance. We decided to create a new kind of search tool that delivered high levels of relevance with every search."

Instead of spending their development time on creating (and figuring out) a business model, as product-aware programmers themselves, it was fairly obvious to them that they needed a product first, not a concept, something that built on the successes of others yet forged new territory.

So they embarked on a 2-year R&D project which ultimately served as the foundation of their recently launched FusionBot product, which consists of "free" intra-site search tool and a mini-portal and (build your own) portal search engines.

Using most of their own money from consulting fees plus some angel investors to finance their company, the co-founders mapped out the technology and by the end of 1999, quit consulting and focused solely on finalizing the product.

In March 2000, they received more funding and conducting testing a beta version of their product. They recently did the formal launch of FusionBot and as well as launching a marketing campaign, including an affiliate program.

Logika's value proposition is based on two important facts: search tools are the primary means that consumers use to find products to buy on ecommerce sites and, literally, most search tools, well, let's put it SiliconWood jargon, STINK!

Fordham explains Logika's technology this way:

"We send out a spider or 'bot' to crawl a site and build an index of its content. The 'bot' will periodically return to the site to update its index to reflect the most recent changes to the site's content."

Adding, "We then provide the site with a few lines of HTML code which will dictate the look and feel of the search results. A webmaster simply pastes this code into the site to get searching capability."

When a site is fitted with Logika's "free" intra-site search tool, visitors' search queries are sent to Logika's servers, which will then return the desired results (i.e., appropriate site pages) depending on keywords inputted.

Logika's mini-portal and categtory-specific search engines work in the same way but with a twist.

"With our 'mini-search portal,' a customer provides the URLs of the sites to be indexed. We then index these sites for inclusion in the mini-search portal search index," says Fordham.

Logika's category-specific search engines are built by utilizing advanced content categorization algorithms, which build a comprehensive index of relevant searchable information targeted towards vertical portals and other community-of-interest sites.

"Our full-blown search portals are used when a customer wants to build a collection of known sites pertinent to a topic (e.g. golf, tennis, accounting) yet it is too expensive for customers to do themesleves. We officially launched First-Search.com portal of cagtegory-specific search engines to show what we can do."

Logika's home in "SiliconWood" while at the edge is not yet a trend in Chicago's Internet scene. Only a few companies presently have roots there--Ignite Sports Media and Cyber Works Media to name a couple--but more should perhaps consider moving there and let Logika be their guide.

Logika's decision to build its technology in an unknown Chicago neighborhood suggests a practical entrepreneurship as well as an enlightened management team.

Sure, the same things can be said of dot-coms that move to other parts of the city. But Logika can boast of a business model that has survived a 2-year R&D project and a recent product and affiliate program launch without a name change, corporate reorganization or the massive layoffs that have plagued many of the dot-com failures in the area.

It's a true technology company with a product to sell, not a simply a vehicle for others to sell their products. Its entrepreneurship more closely aligns itself with the successful business ventures of traditional companies.

While the state is popularly called a "Silicon Prairie," the SiliconWood of the future is more closely aligning itself to the roots of the city--its neighborhoods--than the wide open flat expanse of the region's natural heritage. Chicago's neighborhhods are tight-knit, small organisms that make the city come alive. So, should its technology neighborhoods.

With Logika leading the way for SiliconWood, let's hope it develops into a pure technology neighborhood, that benefits both the local community and Chicago's larger economic melting pot as well.