Outalot is For Those Who Go Outside a Lot

Written by Allen Stern - June 29, 2008

At the CN/Drop.io party last week I met Jesse Boyes. Jesse is the co-founder of a relatively new startup in NYC named Outalot. Outalot is a local search engine that's quick in and quick out. There are four content areas within Outalot: food, bars, movies and shops. Outalot is currently available in NYC and in San Francisco.

I did some tests on the food section and it found the locations I was thinking of - I tested in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. I found the movie listings to be easy as well. There's a mobile version for finding places while you are on-the-go. You can save places you like as bookmarks within the Outalot service and also see your friend's bookmarks. There is also a new mapplet which you can add to the normal Google Maps which adds an Outalot layer for additional functionality when browsing a local map.

This month they added Twitter functionality. If you find a location you plan on visiting, you can send a message to your Twitter friends letting them know where you will be heading to.

I guess what I don't get is why they didn't tie into Yelp or another reviews site for the locations? Also, what about showing the menus for the food establishments? It's great to find a restaurant but without reviews and/or menus, it's only halfway there. If they integrated more content, the site would feel more robust and not just a fancy yellow pages. The usability does seem a bit better than Menupages. What about directions? They are using Google Maps for integration but there's no link to get directions.

I want to like the service but there's just so much missing that I don't get why I'd use this over Yelp?

Other NY-based local directories include UpNext and Wikipages.

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Submitted by Natali Del Conte on June 29, 2008 - 12:05pm.

I like this. I bookmarked it in my phone. I think the movie listings are especially helpful but you're right, integration with Yelp would make it a lot better. I'm too committed to Yelping to start reviewing places on another Web site. Yelp could take some UI lessons from this site though.

Submitted by Jesse Boyes on June 29, 2008 - 11:24pm.

Thanks for the comments and the feedback. (And thanks for the great party!)

You're right - the data we provide is pretty spartan, mainly because we are very focused on the location-specific mobile experience: There's a time and a place for reading and writing long-form Yelp style reviews, but standing out on the street trying to use your phone to find a good bar to hop to isn't it.

We're looking at more good ways to help you make decisions about where to go while still satisfying our clean-simple-fast obsession. :)

Jesse

Submitted by Morgan on June 30, 2008 - 3:46am.

I'll look into that, is there an API? I consult with a mobile software provider providing connections between data like Yelp and applications that are location aware and can be put together for exactly the purpose of finding places ot go out, etc. Looks great. The data doesn't have to be anything special or some over the top API, we use are working with price data provider ItemFeed.com and it's just RSS-only.

Anyway I'll check it out.

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