New in th’ ‘hood.
| Wednesday, August 15th, 2007 | --jr |
If you haven't been by Yahoo Local today, you may want to check it out.
Last night, Yahoo! Local pushed a completely new version of the site live, and wow is it improved. The top page is definitely more community focused (both in the traditional "hey, what's around here" and the new Web 2.0 "empowering the socialized voicitude of gerundizationing"). That's pretty cool since if you're looking for stuff around somewhere, you're probably more interested in getting info about shops and restaurants before looking at a map. You can still get that though. On the right side of the top bit are tabs for "Most Popular" stuff, local Events, a Map, and "Buzz" (popular tags). Fortunately when you first land, that's animated so you can see what's where.
There's also neat little customization things like that city profile graphic in the banner and a Weekend Guide to find out what's happening around you.
Doing a search for things produces an even cooler page. Yep, it's loaded up with YUI goodness, but it's very functional. Reviews now optionally update as you move the map (you can turn it off), you can zoom the map up to "Huge and useful" level while still keeping lots of info on the page. It's using the nifty Javascript Maps libraries so the flash-phobic have one less thing to worry about. But Wait! There's even more!
They fixed the sorting so that locations with the most highly rated reviews show up above other highly rated locations. There's more content for locations including professional photos and events. Oh yes, and you can comment on reviews and add businesses we might have missed for free. (the link to do it is at the bottom of every page)
Should I mention that it gets straight A's from YSlow?
This is a MORE than welcome upgrade to Y!Local and the effort really shines on this one. Still, if you've got an idea or complaint, let them know. They're listening.