Hey Eric Yelp makes a decent stab at it sure, but I still can't ask my phone that. In fact even Yelp falls pretty short because I can look at a map but it doesn't do the routing time to each establishment. For example, on Mercer Island in the Puget Sound you often see bars which are across the water which are two orders of magnitude father away than the bar across the street because you have to go around the water.
Lending libraries - the very fact that you have to list 6 startups answers the question. None of them have found a model which works or has scaled yet. I'm not going to go log in to all 6 :-) Houses - like I say you can kinda sorta do it with zillow et. al. as you suggest. But it's really not that easy. My point was that there are these problems which affect people every day that we, "the experts" are supposed to be solving. I don't think a format is going to fix anything. Very happy to see arguments as to where it can help any of these, or other, practical problems. Steve On Apr 9, 2012, at 4:40 PM, Eric Wolf wrote: > These aren't really that hard to answer: > > * What is the bar within 30 minutes journey from me with a decent IPA, a good > atmosphere and free parking? > > Doesn't Yelp attempt to provide this information? Excepting the problems of > defining "decent IPA" and "good atmosphere", I can parse the rest from Yelp. > > > * Which of my neighbors will lend me their circular saw for $10 so I don't > have to buy one for $300? > > Here's one answer: > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tool-lending_libraries > > Here's another: > http://www.motherearthnews.com/Nature-Community/2004-04-01/Share-Tools.aspx > > Here are the startups: > http://www.rentmyitems.com/ > http://www.rentalic.com/first-visit > http://www.sharesomesugar.com/ > http://www.sharing-authority.com/ > http://us.zilok.com/ > http://neighborgoods.net/ > > Ultimately, I know while neighbors will lend me their circular saw because we > see each other when we are outside doing things like using circular saws. The > transaction implies a significant level of trust. Trust that you won't steal > my saw and trust that you won't cut your thumb off. That trust is built as > part of being in the neighborhood and not well suited to just a database > entry. > > > * Where should I live so that my kids have a decent school, the taxes are > good, the commute isn't too bad and the crime rates are low? > > You can do this with sites like Zillow and Walkscore. But largely, you'd do > this with the help of a realtor because there is a significant financial > transaction implicit in "where should I live". > > However, all of these things would be facilitated with better data > interoperability. > > -Eric _______________________________________________ Geowanking mailing list [email protected] http://geowanking.org/mailman/listinfo/geowanking_geowanking.org
