local

Google Maps and Google Earth are the centerpiece of NYCGo, a new information and reference project launched by the New York City government to provide resources to both visitors and locals. Wednesday's launch announced the debut of NYCGo.com, a Google Maps-fueled local search and reference site, as well as the unveiling of the renovated New York City Information Center a few blocks north of the tourist-heavy Times Square district.

NYCGo.com contains not just Google map and search data, but also travel deals from Travelocity and local content from what-to-do powerhouse Time Out New York, nightlife culture magazine … Read more

Yodle, a New York-based company that helps small businesses generate leads and power local advertisements, on Monday announced that it has raised a $10 million Series C funding round.

Led by Jafco Ventures, the round was completed with contributions from the Draper Fisher Jurvetson Growth Fund, and previous investors Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Bessemer Venture Partners.

The reason for raising the money? According to a release, it's because Yodle is growing fast and plans to expand further. At the end of 2008, the company had 250 employees and 5,000 customers, and reported 700 percent revenue growth from 2007.… Read more

Finding friends on Twitter was simple when the service was in its infancy, but today, Twitter is home to millions of users. In fact, 70 percent of the entire Twitter community is composed of people who signed up in 2008 and 5,000 to 10,000 new users sign up each day.

That's why I've compiled a list of some great solutions that have helped me find friends more efficiently than asking for their usernames.

Twitter search

Maybe this is an obvious pick, but using Twitter search to find friends on Twitter actually works quite well. The feature allows users to search for a person by name and based on that information, it will return all the Twitter users who registered under that name.

Overall, Twitter's search tool is really fast, and will find the person you're looking for without much digging. That said, it has one severe limitation: finding people with common names like John Smith will take some time, and it's only useful when searching for a specific person.

Twubble

If you haven't tried Twubble out yet, it's time you give it a spin.

Twubble is simple and requires little to help you find friends. Upon surfing to the site, you're presented with a "Find some friends!" button, which when clicked, analyzes your Twitter account and finds people who you may want to follow. I was skeptical at first, but after clicking the button, the service returned a slew of colleagues and friends that I had no idea were on Twitter. I followed many of them and tried the button again. This time, it returned many of the same people and most of the users that I had already followed were displayed. Twubble realized that, though, and delivered a disclaimer saying it may not work as well the second time around if you follow many people.

Although the same results are returned multiple times, it's the first run-through that matters. If you want to find friends and colleagues quickly, Twubble offers a fine solution for doing just that.

Mr. Tweet

Mr. Tweet is similar to Twubble in that it analyzes your Twitter account to find other people that it thinks you should follow. But what it provides that Twubble doesn't is a host of stats with information about how you may know a particular person and how active they are on Twitter.

If you want, Mr. Tweet will even auto-follow all the people it finds for you, but it requires you to hand over your username and password to the service to do it--a major security issue, if you ask me. Regardless, it works extremely well and returned a nice list of people worth following.

I chose to follow them myself, though. I don't need any help from Mr. Tweet.… Read more

If you're not the type of person not to say 'no' to discounts, then Cellfire's mobile coupons application could potentially preserve your savings. The deals include local restaurants and retail services in the U.S., as well as national chains. Users can also save coupons for later use and participate in Cellfire's new program for cornering additional coupons by texting a keyword to 22888, Cellfire's short code. Unfortunately, Cellfire isn't always useful if your shopping habits don't mirror the offerings. Yet it's a broad enough service for us to lament that it hasn'… Read more

GPS vendor TomTom announced Thursday that it has launched an online mapping solution to compete with MapQuest and Google Maps. Dubbed TomTom Route Planner, the free service provides door-to-door route planning options to any address in the U.S. or Canada.

Using TomTom's MapShare technology, the service provides users with continued map improvements made by TomTom users that see flaws and correct them. According to the company, improvements are uploaded regularly to provide up-to-date driving conditions. TomTom's IQ Routes feature will offer more accurate arrival estimates by accessing average speeds for each road instead of employing posted speed … Read more

The Weather Channel is a free weather-monitoring application that provides many more features than Apple's built-in Weather app. You can find paid weather applications that are more specialized, but The Weather Channel (sponsored by the eponymous cable channel) offers a lot, including forecasts (hourly, 36-hour, and 10-day), quick access to Weather Channel local and regional video forecasts, severe weather alerts, and a dynamic map (which you can use to see everything from rainfall to "feels like" temperatures and the UV index). You can also set favorites and go back to recent locations which makes The Weather Channel … Read more

Local.com, a search site that helps people find places in and information about their community, said Thursday it will start integrating local video ads throughout the company's site in an attempt to increase ad relevance and revenue.

According to the company, it has inked a deal with Jivox, an online video advertising company catering to local businesses, to use its geo-targeted ads for now. Local.com hopes to sell its own local video ad units through its own list of advertisers at some point in the future.

"We believe that video advertising provides consumers with relevant, timely … Read more

You might remember Gigoit, a service we covered early last year. Much like Freecycle it's set up to let you get rid of, and browse through other people's, junk. The site is littered with things like old lawn mowers, television sets, and anything else that was once useful and is now taking up space.

Up until now the only way to get the directory was to go through the site or use the service's Facebook app; however, there's a new iPhone app called LocalReuse that lets you see which of these items is nearby based on … Read more

MapQuest will begin showing business reviews from start-up Yelp on Thursday, part of a plan to expand from just a mapping site into a go-to hub of local information.

Through the deal with Yelp, MapQuest will get better locally specific content, and Yelp will get more Web site traffic from beyond tech-savvy places such as Silicon Valley that currently are familiar with the site, said Christian Dwyer, MapQuest's senior vice president and general manager.

In addition, the AOL site will add sports information to its MapQuest local site, said Mark Law, MapQuest's vice president of product development. The … Read more