Hyperlocal website Outside.in has long been exciting stuff for those of us interested in the geographic web, not only because the brilliant Steven Johnson has been at its helm but because they seem to actually have some sense about how to make geolocal work, tying blog posts and other chunks of online content to your pinpointed location. I input my location near the edge of Prospect Park in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and I get served up news on restaurant openings, crime reports, and general neighborhood gossip.
Outside.in has just launched a new service called Radar, now being alpha tested by those of us in Brooklyn. (Outside.in is, as the t-shirts from Brooklyn Industries say, "Made in Brooklyn," so the site tends to be optimized for this borough first.) Radar is not only hyperlocal, it's smart. It filters news so that you get what's relevant to at the resolution it's relevant. So where I might get served up the news that only a Sloper might care about, like the new signage at the Park Slope post office, the goal is to only show me the news from Fort Greene that I might actually find useful, like when Habana Outpost opens for the season. The most refined Radar gets is 1,000 feet, which in a dense neighborhood like Park Slope covers much of my immediate world. Rumors are that Radar is going to become the front door to the site.
Dragging Radar down at the moment is that all those chunks of relevant data need to be geo-tagged. Even in blog friendly Brooklyn, there are not yet enough posts to make Outside.in worthwhile on anything other than a zip code wide level. That might be solved by pulling in more "professional content" or by getting more businesses to participate. I love the updates I get from Pacific Standard, a promising new bar on 4th Ave, telling me that they're giving away cheese left over from a party or that Sunday Trivia Night is back on. That, my friends, is information I can use.
