toronto.ibegin.com — Reading their blog at www.ibegin.com/blog, iBegin claims 'local search done right.' Starting off from Toronto they intend on expanding to other cities. Very nice and slick packaging using lightweight graphics and AJAX sprinkled through. If you have ever been frustrated with other local searches, iBegin will be for you.
Mar 4, 2006 View in Crawl 4
rajioMar 5, 2006
good stuff
ahmedfMar 5, 2006
But it does use keywords - you add tags, and then those become part of the search index :)
plaxxMar 5, 2006
i dont care about this. im just testing out the new comment box. edit: awesome.
shmooMar 5, 2006
This is definitely a cool website. For some reason I'm actually excited about adding locations and photographs for my fellow Torontonians. However, for a social website it doesn't seem like there's much opportunity to interact with other users. Maybe a forum would be nice.
ahmedfMar 5, 2006
I don't see how you can compare a brand new website to one almost one year old :)
dajbMar 6, 2006
Like the site but the challenge to make it work will be getting the critical mass of participation (reviews, listings, adding photos, etc.) in all the localities in order to differentiate itself from Google. The beauty of Google's model is that they simply automate the organization of other people's data and the more other people create data the stronger they become. Google does not depend on people to edit content or otherwise enhance the user's experience. Ibegin without enough user buy-in is simply a technically slick city-only site, like boston.com run by the Boston Globe..