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The two largest startup ecosystems within the United States are arguably Silicon Valley and New York City, but there's a whole lot of land between the east and west coast. Smack dab in the middle of the country is Chicago, and not long ago we told you about a demo contest hosted by venture consulting firm midVentures that brought a bit of TechCrunch50 flair to the Windy City. This September, the firm is hosting another event in Chicago that looks to be the largest startup conference in the Midwest.

The reviewing site Yelp has partnered with the online reservation site OpenTable. Now you can check out a restaurant review on the former and book it on the latter without leaving the page.

Restaurants, Yelp said on its blog, make up 29% of its reviews. The partnership seems strategically smart.

Restaurant review site UrbanSpoon is slowly moving into OpenTable's territory. About half a year ago, the company launched a very limited test of a basic reservations tracking system for restaurants in the Seattle area. At that time, however, restaurant owners could only use UrbanSpoon to tell their customers whether they had last-minute openings. Now, however, UrbanSpoon is launching RezBook, an iPad app and online reservations platform that will allow restaurants to bypass OpenTable and manage their tables and reservation books.

Urbanspoon is getting ready to take on OpenTable, the popular and publicly traded restaurant reservation service. Urbanspoon just started a pilot program with four restaurants in Seattle. Chances are that the company will then slowly expand this service to the rest of the 90+ markets it currently serves. Compared to OpenTable, Urbanspoon offers a fuller range of features for diners, though it is important to note that OpenTable currently offers more features for restaurant owners, even if they have to pay about $300 per month for a dedicated OpenTable terminal.