June 9, 2008
One of the most difficult things about using any location-based service is setting and maintaining your location. Lots of forces are working to simplify this: in particular, location-sensitive devices like the iPhone and GPS-enabled handsets will shake things up, but one cool software-only simplification is Yahoo! Fire Eagle.
We just launched synchronization with Fire Eagle. If you haven’t seen it yet, Fire Eagle is a location brokering service that allows you to share your location beyond the boundaries of an application. That is, if you set your location in one app, your location will be propagated out of the app into any other location-aware that you use.
If you have a beta invite to Fire Eagle, click on your username in Outalot to edit your settings, and enable Fire Eagle to get your location synchronized across Outalot and any other Fire Eagle-enabled site.
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Posted by Jesse
May 15, 2008
We’ve put together an experiment with Google Mapplets that will show you the most recently rated restaurants, bars, and shops. Mapplets are overlays that you can apply to Google Maps, so you can now get Outalot data directly at Google.
Give it a try: Click here to add the mapplet! And feedback and ideas are most welcome, as always.
No Comments » | Features, Google Maps | Permalink
Posted by Jesse
May 13, 2008
Yesterday, we pushed two big changes to the service.
We now offer Outalot for the San Francisco Bay Area. Like New York City, you can simply enter your address/ZIP/intersection to set your location in this area, or you can switch the neighborhood view to the SF Bay Area:
We also launched a Shops category for both NYC and SF Bay Area, which includes categories like Clothing & Accessories, Eyewear, Home & Furniture, Pharmacies, etc.
No Comments » | City Coverage, Features, Product News | Tagged: San Francisco, Shops | Permalink
Posted by Joe
April 24, 2008
Yesterday afternoon we pushed yet another huge set of updates out the door. You’ll see changes in the way we display ratings, search results improvements, a lot of stylistic tweaks, and a few other things we’ll talk about later.
For some reason I feel compelled to highlight one pretty important but minor change: moving search functionality up to the top of every page on the iPhone.
We talk about ourselves as an being app for browsing what’s nearby (as opposed to searching), but search is nevertheless one of the most important features on the site and we’ll continue to make improvements to it. We’ve already seen the number of searches done on the iPhone app more than double in the last day, which seems like a pretty good sign.
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Posted by Jesse
April 9, 2008
We just pushed out some great new changes to the site. The most noticeable new feature (for now) is Google mobile maps, now embedded in business details.
Enjoy!
No Comments » | Features, Product News | Permalink
Posted by Jesse
March 19, 2008
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Introducing Your Network |
We rolled out a very cool feature on Outalot today called Your Network.
Your Network allows you to add other users’ bookmarks to your own, and to see users who are fans of your bookmarks. When you add a user to your network on Outalot, his bookmarks are aggregated with your own, in effect creating a personalized guide based on your friends’ recommendations. |
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The benefit of Your Network |
- Combine all your friends’ bookmarks on Outalot in one place
- Find recommended places easily, online or on your mobile phone, when you’re in an unfamiliar neighborhood.
- Use thumbs up/down, comments, and tags to describe what’s great, or lacking, about a restaurant or bar.
- Like another user’s comments? Become a fan by adding her to Your Network.
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How to add a user to Your Network
To add a user to Your Network, simply click on that person’s username. You’ll be able to see this person’s list of bookmarks, and will be prompted to add this user to your network.
TIP: To view your network
To view Your Network, visit your own bookmarks at
outalot.com/users/<yourusername>
Note you won’t see an option to view Your Network until you add others to it or others add you.
TIP: Understanding Arrows
Your Network
You→AnotherUser (You added this user to Your Network)
You↔AnotherUser (You and this user are in each others’ networks)
Your Fans
You←AnotherUser (This user is a fan of your bookmarks)
TIP: To add a bookmark
When you click on 
next to a restaurant, bar, or movie theater, it adds it to your own list of bookmarks.
No Comments » | Features, Social Network, Your Network | Tagged: network, new feature, Social Network, Your Network | Permalink
Posted by Joe
March 16, 2008
It’s been only a couple weeks since our launch, and we already have some cool data to share. Here are the top five most popular places (rated by number of people who bookmarked them):
- Babbo
- The Odeon
- Republic
- BXL Cafe
- East Side Company Bar
You can bookmark the restaurants and bars by clicking the heart 
next to a business. Use this to keep track of where you go, where you’d like to go, and share your bookmarks with your friends. Here’s mine.
We’ll periodically revisit this kind of data to keep our eyes on the up-and-coming and down-and-out places to go in NYC. More users are hopping onto the service, and this information is really starting to get interesting.
No Comments » | Features | Permalink
Posted by Jesse
March 4, 2008
Here’s one little feature we put in as an experiment: KML for recent comments on Google Earth. If you have it installed, click on the 
icon under ‘Recent Comments‘ on Outalot and get a different view on what’s been happening lately:
P.S. I also wanted to give a big thanks to the people who have helped us get to launch. Your contributions were unbelievably valuable! Please keep the feedback coming!
We’ll continue to keep this blog updated with what we’re up to, so stay tuned for new features, company news, stats we find interesting, job postings, incriminating photos of celebrities at our wild dot com parties, etc.
1 Comment | Features, Google Earth, Product News | Permalink
Posted by Jesse
