Outside.in launches Radar
Outside.in launched its new "radar" user interface yesterday and had their single largest day in the company’s history in traffic and new registered users. Here are three screenshots of the radar UI (because I can’t get the whole page with the screengrab too I use). These three sections are all delivered on a single page.
I am in SF today and staying on Geary near the tenderloin. Radar knows
where I am and tells me what’s going on nearby (within 1000 feet).
But Radar also knows about the neighborhood I am in and shows me "conversational content" about the larger neighborhood I am in. Note that the "conversational content" includes tweets about the local neighborhood.
Finally, Outside.in remembers that I care about other places like the Shake Shack and Pier 40 in NYC and Pizzeria Mozza in LA. If things are happening in places I care about, Radar lets me know about them.
Everyone who has seen the new Radar user interface (it’s been in private beta for the past month) loves it. So if you’ve been looking for a web-based tool to keep track of the goings on in your neighborhood and the places around the US you care about (outside.in is not yet available outside of the US), give it a try and let me know what you think.
Comments (Archived):
How is this useful outside of NYC or SF or LA where the volume of users isn’t that high? I sometimes wonder about those that develop these tools have ever lived anywhere with a metro area population of less than 5 million.
Hi Tim,Radar (and outside.in in general) is not dependent on the volume of users *on the site* for its content – if there’s anything being said online about a particular location, we’re tracking it, or doing our best to. So ostensibly you could live in a city with zero outside.in users and still have a very rich and informative reading experience, provided there was online content being produced in that city.Of course, outside.in also has lots of users, and they contribute to the site every day in meaningful ways. But we’re not just about on-site contribution – we’re about picking up on conversations about place across the entire web.As for the question of content in smaller cities and towns, we’re confident that the content is there, or will be soon, and we can figure out how to get it and present it to you in a way that is useful and compelling to you…John Geracico-founder, outside.in
Hi John,I am looking forward to the continuing increase in content that is applied to the site, but I find it hard to use the site for anything useful at the present time. I don’t know what is possible in this space for aggregating nearby towns, but would love to see stuff posted from surrounding towns. Try looking at my zip code to see what I mean. 03054.If I could list nearby towns to syndicate that would be perfect since we don’t have a newspaper based in my zip code.Just a thought.
Fred – Looking forward to checking out Radar later. Per your screenshot quandry, check out the “Screengrab!” Firefox extension. Already 3.0 compatible and has an option to save entire pages/frames as .png or .jpg (that said, ignore the copy option – it’s quirky to the point of useless).
Assuming you use a Mac, check out Paparazzi for full page screen grabs.http://www.derailer.org/pap…
What about Mobile access? Does it just know, or do you tell it as you go?
If your phone knows where you are, then there are some great things comingon the front from outside.in
very cool – I look forward to seeing that in action
Fred, this is where i think the 3G iPhone stands to make a huge LBS paradigm shift… There are plenty of GPS and/or triangulation enabled phones that can tell you where you are, and plenty of location-centric mobile apps that hinge on place, but the missing piece has always been seamless usability. If spatial context is elegantly handled behind the scenes, then these mobile apps become truly usable (unlike those where you have to manually enter place: whrll, brightkite, etc..). i’m really hoping outside.in can harness the potential.