Maps + News = YourStreet

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1. Brett
   

   October 29th, 2007 at 4:59 pm

   Just checked the site out. One of the best mashups I’ve come across to be sure. It’s even fairly accurate with the placement of the stories.

   Brett,
   http://www.startupstudents.com

2. James Thomas
   

   October 29th, 2007 at 5:02 pm

   I saw this earlier on Mashable… the application is very very well done. It pulled up some news stories in my area. I do plan to sign up when I get home, but I must mention that the app felt like it was lacking an addiction factor.

   Maybe once more people get on it will prove more interesting. How interested am I in talking to my neighbors? We shall see… lol

3. Jason
   

   October 29th, 2007 at 5:02 pm

   I didn’t find this site too useful. Just a couple non-sports stories were listed for my city and they didn’t pertain to any specific neighborhood. The comment section seems dead.

   Other popular sites like city-data.com and topix have had local news for all cities and technology that detects extracts and detects location for years in addition to other features. And you can actually find somebody else to talk to about these stories, since they have huge forums (city-data’s seems very active).

4. Derek Cosson
   

   October 29th, 2007 at 5:02 pm

   Hmm… Cool idea, but it incorrectly detected my location. It thinks I’m in Navarre, Florida (which is about 30-40 minutes away from Pensacola, where I actually am). That’s close, but not close enough for an idea like this.

   Changed my location, though, and it’s working swell, albeit with not very much news (although there aren’t many online sources to pull from regarding my little town).

5. NYC
   

   October 29th, 2007 at 5:02 pm

   Certainly not the first to map stories to maps. See Outside.in, for example, of which this strikes me as an inferior version. NB for Mac users, horrible Safari support.

6. Tostada-Man
   

   October 29th, 2007 at 5:03 pm

   Wow!…just WOW!!!

   This is one of the best mash-ups ever. Being a Silicon Valley resident, I know there is a lot happening in this area. And now everything is just a click away. For example:

   - Great America may get sold to the 49′ers (?)
   - There was a gas leak close to the 101 north, so i know my commute will be long.
   - A small plane crashed on the SF Bay. Pilot and passanger are OK.

   If they add traffic status, it will be perfect!

7. Omar
   

   October 29th, 2007 at 5:03 pm

   No practical use in my books. The problem with most of these startups is that they are good for 5 minutes and thats…. it.

8. MetroBellevue
   

   October 29th, 2007 at 5:07 pm

   Very cool…already signed up!

9. i'm Ronald Lewis
   

   October 29th, 2007 at 5:10 pm

   This mash up is so great, i’d even say it’s greater than mash potatoes

   i highly advice bigger players to buy this website now, while it’s nothing

10. Vinay
    

    October 29th, 2007 at 5:11 pm

    Only for US? ??

11. The Hater
    

    October 29th, 2007 at 5:24 pm

    @9: Why? They can implement this themselves and destroy the site without paying anything. It’s extremely unlikely this will get any kind of traction. Besides, isn’t there a movie clerk you should be yelling at, instead of offering incomprehensible “advice” (note the differences between ‘advise’ and ‘advice’) to faceless conglomerates?

12. i'm Ronald Lewis
    

    October 29th, 2007 at 5:32 pm

    @11.
    lol - the movie clerk, yeah - right.
    That’s old news, I’m a born-again citizen now.

13. Clare
    

    October 29th, 2007 at 5:42 pm

    Sounds brilliant. Does it work for the UK?

14. Jorel
    

    October 29th, 2007 at 5:48 pm

    not useful in my area (Grand Rapids, MI) unfortunately. plenty of stories but almost none of them are placed anywhere outside of the default Grand Rapids marker location.

15. Mary Specht
    

    October 29th, 2007 at 5:53 pm

    It’s rather tedious to check news this way. And the algorithm doesn’t seem to draw selections that make sense half the time. It raises the question: how hyper-local is too hyper-local?

16. Thom
    

    October 29th, 2007 at 5:58 pm

    Pretty cool…I did find some useful stuff around me. Guess it depends on whether you live in a city or out in the boonies.

17. Alfred Toh
    

    October 29th, 2007 at 6:02 pm

    Good luck to them if they think can depend on eyeballs. It’s tough enough to get enough eyeballs with adsense, let alone trying to sell ads to that friendly local dry cleaner.

18. bmof
    

    October 29th, 2007 at 6:27 pm

    Another site that tries to advertise off the back of other people’s content. How novel.

19. Mark
    

    October 29th, 2007 at 6:27 pm

    eh, I wasn’t impressed

20. Ryan @ Nelltec
    

    October 29th, 2007 at 6:35 pm

    Maps + News + social network = Better yourstreet

21. Ben
    

    October 29th, 2007 at 6:59 pm

    A nice looking site, but for Austin, Texas, multiple stories listed as “today” were from August and September, not to mention the Houston stories which just happen include “Austin Street”. Lots of work to do before YourStreet is ready for my street…

22. James Nicholson
    

    October 29th, 2007 at 7:11 pm

    Hi Folks,

    James Nicholson from YourStreet here. First off, thanks for all the kind words. It’s great to show off the site after many months of hard work.

    For those of you finding stories that are not properly categorized, I definitely understand. We’re trying to develop an application that will be as close to 100% perfect as we can, but we’re obviously not quite there yet. But we’re continually working on our system and I think over time you will see YourStreet get more and more accurate. You can help by clicking the “Wrong Location?” button located under each article - this helps us get better.

    Vinay and Clare: YourStreet currently works only for the U.S. We had to start somewhere and trying to get the U.S. right is not easy. We do plan to expand coverage internationally in the not too distant future, so stay tuned.

    NYC: we are working to improve Safari compatibility asap. As a Mac user, I too want to see this.

    Thanks again for all the constructive comments!

23. KirkH
    

    October 29th, 2007 at 9:04 pm

    We’re competitors, here are my hopefully constructive criticisms:
    1) No way to move around geographically other than a text based search. Let them eat breadcrumbs.
    2) No national news. I don’t want to have to keep going to Digg.
    3) No apparent voting mechanism
    4) Geography system based on neighborhoods? Who defines what a neighborhood is? What about cities and counties? I’m a big believer in emergent order but bottom up geo is tricky when you already have counties and cities.
    5) Maps are cool and all but people really want content.

    I like to see more action in local because I think it’s massively, unfathomably overlooked considering the potential for ad revenue and the health of communities.

    Of course you guys probably have plenty of criticisms of HoundWire.com.

24. Steve Ballmer
    

    October 29th, 2007 at 9:31 pm

    We had this idea years ago, nobody was interested.

    http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com

25. StStephen
    

    October 29th, 2007 at 11:18 pm

    I like it! It’s like http://gruvr.com - gruvr for news instead of concerts.

    There are several challenges ahead though.

    As someone mentioned, location detection from IP address can only be
    approximate - it will typically locate your ISP, not your house.

    I think that news density could be a challenge. In major metropolitan areas you’ll likely find hundreds of stories within a few square miles - how can you filter those so the best rise to the top? Google news does location-based filtering without the map presentation, I think.

    But building critical mass traffic-wise could be the biggest challenge here.
    In order to attract advertisers, you have to show them you have enough page-views on the street ‘hyper-local’ granularity.

    In order to do that, you have to pick several locations and promote in each intensely - or else, try to ‘boil the ocean’ by building traffic over the entire US… in which case you’re competing with major media.
    So what’s the strategy to get those eyeballs?

    Finally, if you have enough locality traffic - you have to find the local vendors who are up to speed with putting local ads on the web..

    There were one or two sites trying to put localized coupon feeds out…
    The startups I’ve seen trying that (form about a year ago) look like they are now in the deadpool - no response to inquiries. Any updates from TC?

    Anyway, just some thoughts there- overall I liked the site, nice job!

26. Dan Schawbel
    

    October 30th, 2007 at 6:37 am

    What is going to make people use this? If millions use it then there is value. If few use it, then there is none.

27. sputnick
    

    October 30th, 2007 at 7:03 am

    Thanks for this post Erick. Nice to know how they do it.

    Given that they use keywords to tie news to locations, I’m surprised that false positives aren’t an issue. I mean, you’d think that if you have a story which mentions Lincoln, it would pop up for people living on Lincoln Avenue, a story about Paris Hilton would pop up in Paris, CA, a story about political perspectives might be a match for Something-or-Other View, etc.

28. Pinaki Ghosh
    

    October 30th, 2007 at 7:17 am

    Awesome mashup. I hope they come up with a mobile version soon that can capture weather, traffic etc. Will be perfect for frequent travelers.
    Good job guys.

29. charles
    

    October 30th, 2007 at 7:49 am

    not really impressed. To me its another news site with a map, if this is to be a true web 2.0 company they should pull a little better interaction. Just my two cents but hey what do i know…

30. joe
    

    November 1st, 2007 at 8:40 am

    Remove me from future mailings
    rowgale@earthlink.net