The Downside

I’m taking a break from my usual criticisms tonight and actually complimenting someone. Ask.com of all companies. I must be coming down with something.

Specifically, I was impressed by Ask Local, or Ask City as they call it. Head over there and check it out. In particular, check out the following:

• When you first load the page, you’ll see several slots along the bottom where you can take a snapshot of the current map. This would be very useful to remember where places are, create routes, save your favorite restaurants in a visual format, and perhaps most importantly, allow you to share those maps with friends. Google’s tools are competitive, but not quite as polished, and I couldn’t figure out how to *clear* what I had created on my Google MyMap, so now I’m stuck with a bunch of self-inflicted gibberish on my Google Maps experience…oh well.
• They offer a solid setof tools for marking up a map (similar to Google maps), including text labels, shapes, lines, pins, etc. You can quickly save a set of locations, such as your favorite sushi restaurants, and easily save it and share it with friends.
• Something I never thought I’d go to a search engine for: Events. You can either look for genres of music, like local blues clubs, or see what events are coming to your area soon (you can choose how far in the future.)
• Also cool: movie times all in one list, with a map, sorted by distance from your current location.

While for restaurant listings, I’m still more impressed with Google’s Yelp integration, those guys over at Ask really seem to be paying attention these days. Well done, guys - it’s nice to see the underdog really trying make a statement.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 22nd, 2007 at 11:23 pm and is filed under Internet, Search, User Experience. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will appear immediately, but I reserve the right to delete innapropriate comments.