Everyone at outside.in has been working hard this week to put the finishing touches on Radar 1.0, and it now looks like a general beta launch is just around the corner. On Monday morning, if everything goes as planned, you should be able to jump out of bed and rush to your computer to try out our newest, coolest feature. (or stumble out of bed, get some coffee, hop in the shower, and log into Radar at work).
I wrote earlier today that Radar is my favorite part of outside.in now. It’s the first part of the site that really operates in the first person – it’s about what’s going on around me, where I am now. All of the other views on the site are plenty interesting and useful, but when you see a story pop up right around the corner from your home, about a place you walk by every day, it’s a totally different feeling, and it brings a different meaning to the notion of local. Local is what’s around you – Radar is built with that in mind.
We’re all happy to see Radar launch, and we’re excited about the improvements we’ve made to it since our limited alpha launch two weeks ago (among other things, we’re now tracking Twitter in neighborhoods, we’ve added instant alerts for items in your immediate area, we’ve improved the neighbor status feature). We’re also looking forward to getting other interesting ideas into the feature as soon as possible. This is, after all, a 1.0, and is a pretty simple rollout. We’ve got some good ideas for ways to make it better, and you’ll be seeing those soon. If you have any ideas yourselves for things you’d like to see, please tell them to us at feedback@outside.in.
See you on Monday, on Radar…
