Localizing the Tablet PC
The bigger the Internet gets, the smaller and more local it’s becoming. And our Inter-net equiped tablet PCs can really bring the local info we want right to us on demand.
Take Yahoo!, for example, probably the Net’s oldest and biggest consolidator of information and consumer resources. It’s very friendly to the Tablet PC.
To call Yahoo! a search site is like calling a Harley Davidson a motor bike.
Or a Tablet PC just another computer.
Yahoo! is a way of life, a place to search for info but a community center with discussion groups, mailing lists, personalized news, maps and shopping info.
And it is in the later category that Yahoo! has been working hard to be as local as your neighborhood. This week, it launched a host of new services on a new local portal (local.yahoo.com) that aggregates information on a neighborhood level.
Plug in your zip code and up pops a map, either on the keyboard with a convertible Tablet PC or by the tablet’s stylus/pen. Then search by category for whatever you want, like restaurants, doctors, dry cleaning establishments, hardware stores and the like.
You get a Yahoo!-style directory list and a map with the locations highlighted and you can drill down or widen out, showing the places you want that are anywhere from within 1 to 50 miles of your neighborhood.
That’s not to say that there aren’t some informational gaps.
I tried restaurants for example, near my home. At the top of the list was what used to be my favorite restaurant – the Paint Creek Cider Mill Restaurant. That’s a problem as that restaurant has been out of business for about a year.
Still, the expanded localized features have a lot of potential and I especially like the fact that users can rate and review the establishments they frequent.
I posted my review of the Paint Creek Cider Creek Restaurant and let Yahoo! know its folded up.
Meanwhile, another venerable Net service has gone more local, too and is a favorite among Tablet PC owners looking for a quick info hit.
It’s WeatherBug Plus 6.1 (weatherbug.com), a $19.95 commercial download that is one of the first weather application to use the National Weather Service’s new National Digital Forecast Data (NDFD) technology. Instead of the previous county-level data, NDFD provides live, continuously updated forecasts and reports within a three-mile radius of the user’s location.
The software tracks the progress of a storm across a given area and displays lighting strikes, allowing users to watch the direction and progress.
WeatherBug has been around for several years and consistently ranks as one of the top 10 Internet sites for monthly traffic. The Website alone is pretty darn handy but downloading the software provides live streaming updates on a neighborhood level. The commercial software also is advertising free.
And that’s something we all appreciate, whether or not we use a Tablet PC.
The author is the publisher of the Tablet PC Scoop (www.tabletpcscoop.com), a directory of Tablet PC resources and Tech Tips Today (www.techtipstoday.com), a computer gadget help site.
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