Since launching in the iTunes store two weeks ago, the outside.in Radar app has steadily grown in the rankings. We now have the #3 paid news app in all of iTunes land. Wow! As Steven pointed out over on Boing Boing, there are lots of great uses for the app. We have some improvements to push out over the next week or so, and the updates will be seamless so keep those downloads coming, send us great use cases and leave some testimonials in the store!
Posts Categorized as "Development & Features"
22
Jan 09
Jan 09
StoryMap WordPress.org Plugin
For all of you bloggers using the WordPress.org platform, you can now get a StoryMap right in WordPress with our nifty new plugin. With very clear directions, the plugin expedites the process of getting the StoryMap embed code on your blog. Try it out and let us now what you think.
We’ve already started to get some great press on our StoryMap plugin. For instance, BlogHighlight.com totally understands how to use it:
Those blogs that focus on news, travel and photography will get more exposure from this nice little plugin. The world can easily search their blog post by location.
Of course, we think StoryMaps are useful for a much wider variety of blogs, but we’re pleased to get the plug from BlogHighlight.
If you want to use our plugin on WordPress.com, email widgets@wordpress.com requesting that they accept the outside.in StoryMap widget. In the email, be sure to include this link: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/outsidein-storymap/.
16
Jan 09
Jan 09
App-tly speaking
As you may have read in John’s post below, we released our awesome location-aware iPhone app this week, which gives you the ten most recent headlines within 1000 feet of your actual physical location (cool, right?!). Well, a few blogs took notice, as well.
Mashable: “…there’s an option available to iPhone owners looking to simplify the process and turn to a single source for the complete local picture: Radar, powered by outside.in is a brand new iPhone application that uses the devices’ GPS capabilities to locate you and display nearby news, blog posts, discussion threads, and tweets happening within 1,000 feet of your location.”
TG Daily: “…Enter Radar, a new iPhone application that taps outside.in‘s premium location-based news content to deliver relevant news and real time discussions based on your current city, neighborhood or within up to 1,000 feet of your current location. It is the Maps’ missing killer feature that greatly raises the standard for location-based applications you can find today at the App Store.”
GPSObsessed: “It’s a really handy app if you’re a media junkie, providing constant news and blog updates, Twitter tweets, Yelp reviews and other new content pertaining to your location.”
And! We’re pleased to report that we’ve just released some performance optimizations that will speed up our fab app’s response time. No update required if you’ve already downloaded the app–it’s all on our end. See for yourself! Download from the iTunes store and take it for a test drive yourself–but maybe not while driving…
If you already have it, how are you liking it so far? Have you made any great discoveries while out and about? Let us know in the comments!
13
Jan 09
Jan 09
Outside.in’s Radar Now Available as iPhone App
Since the very beginning of time, people have walked around thinking to themselves, “I wonder what’s going on around me right now?”
It is a basic human instinct to want up-to-the-minute information on your immediate surroundings. And this desire has always gone unmet by commonly available media and communications systems.
But no more.
Today, Outside.in launches its new Radar app for the iPhone. The app, now available in the iTunes Store, tells you what’s going on right around you, delivering the most recent headlines from newspapers, blogs, twitter, yelp and more about places nearby.
Load Radar for iPhone up, and it immediately gives you the ten most recent headlines within 1000 feet of your current location. Click through those headlines and you instantly get a snippet of those stories to see what they’re about. Click through again, and you get the full story, from the original site.
Or bump Radar out a notch, and you can read all of the most recent stories from the web about the neighborhood you happen to be in at the moment.
Bump it out one more level, and Radar shows you the most recent stories from the entire city around you.
Radar on the iPhone presents a whole new way of engaging news and information online. The experience becomes not so much one of browsing the web, as much as browsing the world directly around you. Wherever you go, you gain access to the information on the web about that specific area. And that information is likely to be relevant, or at least interesting, by virtue of the fact that it is about stuff that is happening literally right next to you.
The iPhone Radar app is another step in Outside.in’s quest to bring location to the web, and the web to location. We think it’s a pretty exciting one. Give it a try and tell us what you think.
12
Jan 09
Jan 09
Ruby Gem for Radar
One of the great things about creating an API is that it gives developers a chance to use your service to do the things they want to do with it. When we launched our API we did so hoping that it would give folks the opportunity to build the things that we haven’t had a chance to do on our own or haven’t thought of yet, and we’ve already seen some interesting stuff come out of it like near.ly.
As of last week, it’s gotten even easier to consume our API if you’re using Ruby, thanks to a neat wrapper gem called Radarb that the folks at Viget Labs have created. You can check it out on github.
17
Dec 08
Dec 08
Outside.in API Results Now Available Up to Two Miles From Any Location
Last month we announced the launch of our API, which gives developers access to our database of local content including news stories, blog posts, and Twitter tweets within 1,000 feet of any specific location.
Amidst all the excitement, we noticed that some folks wanted to to grab results for a larger area.
You asked for it, so we’ve added an additional parameter to the API that allows you to enter a custom radius to get results for any distance up to two miles. Sweet!! Check out the documentation for instructions on how to use this new feature, and let us know if you have any questions in the outside.in API Google Group.
previously: API Developer Video
9
Oct 08
Oct 08
The Future is Here: outside.in Radar Now Powered by Mozilla Geode
Two days ago Mozilla Labs announced a cool new plugin for Firefox named Geode. Geode is a simple tool that makes your Firefox browser location-aware, allowing it to know where you are at any given moment. Mozilla built Geode to fit their vision of the future of web browsing, which they describe like so:
You’ve arrived in a new city, a new continent, a new coffee shop. You don’t really know where you are, and are looking for a good place to eat. You pull out your laptop, fire up Firefox, and go to your favorite review site. It automatically deduces your location, and serves up some delicious suggestions a couple blocks away and plots directions there.
We at outside.in thought that sounded like an exciting idea, so we decided to integrate Geode into Radar to complete the other half of that picture. And now it’s done, live on the site, and the future that Mozilla imagines is here. As of today when you use Firefox with your Geode plugin installed, Radar immediately picks up your location and plops you in that exact area, showing you the latest headlines and stories around you.
Now you don’t even need to know where you are to get the news around you.
Love that web – keeps getting better and better. We’re looking forward to more great stuff like this from Mozilla.
You can download your Geode plugin here.
9
Sep 08
Sep 08
Radar Email Alerts. New!
We’re happy to announce that you can now opt to receive email alerts for your Radar. You’ll get an email anytime someone publishes news happening within 1,000 feet of your selected location, or about any topic or favorite place you’ve added to your Radar.
How To Activate Radar Email Alerts:
- Go to outside.in/radar
- Sign into your neighbor account
- Click the “Alerts: Off” button in the upper right hand corner
- Select “Immediately”
- The button should now say “Alerts: On”
- Kick back and enjoy the knowledge that if anything important happens down the street, you’ll won’t even have to leave your computer to find out about it.
4
Sep 08
Sep 08
That’s So Tweet
Did you know that Outside.in’s Radar can now capture Twitter tweets?
Your local Twitter messages become a valuable broadcast to your neighbors within 1000 feet. You can think of your rave review of a new coffee shop or your report on a long line for a new movie as a mini blog post.
In order to have your tweet show up on your neighbors’ Radar, you’ll need to include either the name of the place you’re writing about and the neighborhood name, or just the neighborhood name:
Grabbing a most delicious slice at Ian’s Pizza in Wrigleyville
or Just saw John Malkovich biking down the Santa Monica promenade. Whoa!
(note: only tweets with a neighborhood show up, not those occasional “IRM WASTED” posts).
Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/outsidein
31
Jul 08
Jul 08
GeoToolKit Skipped Stories Can Now Be Brought Back to Life
Ever have GeoToolkit skip over a story you wrote? Wish there were a way you can get it back into our system? Well now you can! GeoToolkit now has a feature that brings skipped posts back for your review. When you notice we’ve skipped a story, you have the option of adding geotags so that it gets picked up. You’ll see a notice that says “Did we miss geographic information in this story? Click here to import the story from our archives.” This will pull an excerpt of the story into the edit window and you can add places and neighborhoods to it.
Why do we skip some stories? Sometimes the Feed Editor in GeoToolkit can’t find a mention of a place or a neighborhood. For example, if there is a photo with no place in the title, or if you use a nickname of an establishment instead of its actual name (Shorty’s place vs. Shorty’s Diner), or if there is no mention of a place or intersection at all in your post.
