CitySquares.com began as an online neighborhood community site for 7 neighborhoods in Boston. Over the summer, they expanded to include New England and recently added 1.7 million businesses to their New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania communities. They are one of the fastest growing local search sites on the web.
Now, CitySquares has their sights set on a national expansion, but they are proceeding with caution. They stress that they don't want to be just another directory, but to truly offer online communities for local cities and neighborhoods across the United States.
Writing on the CitySquares blog, co-founders Bob Leland and Ben Saren said,
Whether a county in Montana, a borough in NY, a village in Vermont, or a neighborhood in Seattle, we want to get all the information about that community, that locale, online. Get the geopolitical information online, municipal information, local government, post office, libraries, public schools, trash and recycling collection schedules, historical facts, playgrounds, parking lots, public transportation, local school lunch menus, athletic program information, July 4th fireworks locations, and so much more. CitySquares’ vision is, and has always been, to be “Your Neighborhood, Online.” Not easy, but necessary. And it will happen.
Recently, SEW Expert Erik Qualman examined Google Insights for search trends related to newly announced Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin. Like Barack Obama, being unknown sends people a-searching on the internet.
Google Trends and Insights gets a lot of attention when it comes to measuring searches, and so does measurement firm comScore.
But the number 2 and 3 search engines also provide insight into hot searches. So, let's take a look at Microsoft's xRank and Yahoo's Buzz Index to see what's hot in their user searches this week too.
Microsoft's xRank sorts hot searches by categories. The current categories are Celebrities, Musicians, Politicians, Blogger and Olympics.
Here's a screenshot of the Politicians page for this week:
The Yahoo Buzz Index has categories, but not one for politics. Here's a general look at the top searches:
What do you think of xRank and Buzz Index? Let us know in the comments.
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Microsoft, Google and Apple Being Sued Over Icon Navigation
A lawsuit was filed in Arizona Federal court against Microsoft, Google and Apple by Cygnus Systems, Inc. over use of their just granted patent for "System and method for iconic software environment management."
As Ars Technica points out:
"Its abstract describes "a method and system for storing, navigating, and accessing files within an operating system through the use of a graphical thumbnail representing the video display of the active document within the active application." In other words, Cygnus' patent describes features similar to those of Windows Explorer and Apple's Finder—these applications use scaled-down previews to represent the actual documents being browsed by users. The patent could also include things like file icons that dynamically update to reflect changes to the contents of their respective documents, as well as Opera's "Speed Dial" feature, which offers a visual dashboard of easy-access websites. Cygnus' complaint even cites the iPhone's "accompanying iconic file preview and access functionality" and the Safari browser's tab thumbnails."
As Ars Tecnica details the suit has some flaws - Google as yet does not have an operating system, and prior art - a major factor in patent law - "constitutes all information that has been made available to the public in any form before a given date that might be relevant to a patent's claims of originality. If an invention has been described in prior art, a patent on that invention is not valid," according to Wikipedia.
Add this lawsuit to the rest that impact the industry and have yet to be ruled on.... should be an interesting year in the legal realm.
