4 comments

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  Joe Gratz

  2 years ago

  Review site Yelp has relatively recently implemented exactly the feature you're looking for, which allows you zoom in on a Google map and see all of the restaurants, divisible by cuisine, and sorted by user rating. I don't know if it has enough momentum in St. Louis to be useful, but it's extremely handy here in San Francisco.
  
  The site is http://www.yelp.com/ , and the map feature is accessible at http://www.yelp.com/maptastic .
• 

  eee_eff

  2 years ago

  Tim University City Loop is one place that has a good web presence. You are probably familar with the area, but if not you should be. It's a happen' place (and very close to my house too, so I can walk to all these great places)
  
  But you are very right, the geographic information should be better organized and it is getting so.
  
  The intersting consideration, when you consider the several trends are happening at once:
  
  1. Street shopping is coming into its own--stores on streets now command both higher rents and higher sales volume per sq. ft than malls.
  
  2. Long tail markets: the idiosyncratic shop can connect with its market. I recall when I lived in NYC there was a shop called maxilla and mandible that sold skeletons and skulls of different animals (presumably for those who "use antlers in all of their decorating" as the song goes) I can't imagine that shop existing anywhere than NYC (and really hope its closed by now--thought it actually was kind of disgusting)
  
  3. Sustainability: As people strive to connect more, using less they will try to avail themselves of their local markets, stores, shops more and more.
  
  I think all these issues will combine to push for much smarter and geographic context-sensitive information becoming available, and actually being used.
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  Luis Villa

  2 years ago

  Tim: for what it is worth, Mozilla is working on some geolocation stuff, so that your browser can report to websites where you are if you're on a mobile device that has GPS. Unfortunately, I can't find any links off the top of my head, but it should open a whole new round of competition around services.
• 

  Tim Lee

  2 years ago

  Joe: That's awesome! Thanks for pointing it out.
  
  EF: I've been to the loop; a very nice neighborhood it is.
  
  Luis: That's going to be pretty cool when they get it working, although I bet a lot of people will be paranoid about having web sites know their physical location.