Archive for March, 2011

As prelude to the Interactive Local Media East (ILM East) Conference 2011 in Boston, David Weinberger, author and researcher at Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, explained, ”the real world is always local.” The three day conference, which took place just last week, revolved around local online-media.
About 500 participants listened in on lectures from local media experts like AOL, Constant Contact, Facebook, Foursquare, Google, LivingSocial, and other bosses of the scene. The speakers lectured and discussed the future and the success perspectives for the social and local internet branch. The Local-Media-Watch-Blog, whose carrier, BIAKelsey, host of the ILM, kept us up-to-date with a number of postings in the past week. We’re presenting a small summary of the most important information and updates in our opinion. Read the rest of this entry »

The online directory and ratings portal golocal is anxiously waiting for chatty, advice-seeking, and just plain communicative people to take advantage of their new features, which makes the exchange of information even more user-friendly.
The new user search, which users can find in the menu under “Community”, makes it easy to find other golocal users, according to the golocal team. Users can search using fragments of user names in the quick search option, but can also search according to city or postal code in the expanded search. Read the rest of this entry »

The French data protection agency CNIL has issued a fine of 100,000 Euro against Google. The reason is that Google Street View vehicles did not only record French streets, but also gathered data from WiFi networks, .
Investigations began at the end of 2009 and the beginning of 2010 into the allegations that Google had violated data protection laws. In May 2010, CNIL demanded that the internet giant terminate all collection of data without explicit permission from individuals, as well surrender the gathered information from France. Read the rest of this entry »

Despite the fact that a recent study shows that about one of every two online directories allow for image videos to be activated on their websites, many others are lacking. The best offering for company videos are the index medias, according to the study.
infotainweb AG analyzes image video offerings for 57 online platforms from four different categories: 28 webpages for daily papers, nine online directories, and about ten city portals and the top media firms from different categories. The central result from the study: online directories like Gelbe Seiten, Das Örtliche, or 11880 & Co. have the most elaborate offering with various formats, lengths, and media packages in comparison to other categories. Read the rest of this entry »

Groupon, the online go-to for anyone looking for a good deal, just seems to be getting more and more clever. The market is quite successful, proven by the fact that even Bloomberg is reporting that the two-year old company is in negotiations for an initial public offering (IPO) value of $25 Billion. But now with a potential threat from Facebook with their new gig Facebook Deals (we report), and of course Foursquare, Groupon is looking to raise the stakes. Read the rest of this entry »

The Searchteq GmbH and the TVG Verlag will be immediately integrating the ratings from the community golocal with their united local search engine for business email and internet addresses, webadress.de. In December, Searchteq had already integrated the golocal ratings in the local search engine suchen.de.
Not only will contact information, photos, and operating hours be found by users search for stores, companies, or service providers, but also their ratings from other users with extracts of their comments. More detailed information can be viewed through the direct linking of golocal. webadress.de users can also give ratings – just like by suchen.de. All users have to do is register on the site.

Facebook, the social networking giant, already announced in November of last year the launch of Facebook Deals, which is the service’s answer to Groupon’s deal search. But does Facebook’s attempt at the couponing market really stand a chance against the already powerful Groupon? We think it does.
Facebook has a natural advantage to Groupon simply because just about everybody uses Facebook. Heck, even grandparents have caught on to social media. Facebook does an awful good job at putting everything in one place: photos, videos, messages, chat, and now local deals. People nowadays are looking for efficiency, and having everything that you need the internet for right on one website is quite attractive to consumers, as numbers have shown. Read the rest of this entry »

The Das Örtliche app is now available for Blackberry after its launch for the iPhone, iPad, smartphones featuring Android and the Windows-Phone-7 operating system.
With the free local search application, private and business contact data can be searched for throughout Germany. So telephone numbers are always handy, and users can search for practical addresses on-the-spot – whether it be restaurants, cafés, hotels, or the nearest hair salon, or ATM. Read the rest of this entry »

popula GmbH has developed an app which makes it possible to discover over a million events in Germany. Users not only have the ability to view current events in the vicinity using the local search option, but can also use practical features like linking up with Facebook to use the news feed or calendar feature.
openeventnetwork.de delivers the data to popula, in a partnership which began in September of last year. Hosts can upload their information for free, which in turn will be displayed on other portals like the online-offering of the Kölner Stadt-Anzeigers, the Hamburger Morgenpost or the Frankfurter Allgemeinen Zeitung, as well as on popula.de. Users will also find events from popula’s ticket and content partners. Read the rest of this entry »

One of our favorites is back: Ö-Navi, the cellular navigation system from Das Örtliche will be celebrating its relaunch soon. The last year’s wait is finally over, with an array of technical problems that hindered the program.
The news that the program would no longer be offered in July of last year came as quite a shock for fans of the free software. The reason for the sudden termination was that the previous service provider was not able to continue operating the offboard-system. Read the rest of this entry »