More questionable behavior from MerchantCircle

MerchantCircle, who has a history of questionable business practices (see here and here), now seems to be trying some more.  They're buying domain names with the names and locations of businesses for which they have (unverified) information.  The only assumption is that they'll launch websites for all of them, try to get traffic flowing to them, then use that to sell products to those businesses.  Chalk another one up for these guys, they're working hard on being search and video spammers.  They just keep coming up with semi-unethical ideas...

MerchantCircle Registering SMB Domains « Screenwerk

Superpages has an iPhone app too!

SuperPages now has an iPhone app too... Nothing too unique or new about it, although it does include movies, weather and wifi hotspots...

Kelsey Group Blogs » Superpages Gives a Thumbs Up to iPhone

Local Coupons Are Coming

There are tons of coupon sites on the Internet, but the vast majority focus on online retailers (though they have some offline as well).  What they don't have is local coupons.  The main issue with local coupons is that you need to have relationships with local retailers to get them and need to have scale to have an interesting destination site.  The logical routes to getting these coupons are through IYPs or the coupon mailers like Valpak.  Someone has finally started to aggregate these and put them online (Retailmenot), but their site is not optimized for local, so the user experience isn't great.  However, this is definitely blazing the path for other companies to do this in a better way or to integrate into existing sites with local focus.

RetailMeNot Launches Local Coupons « Screenwerk

Newspaper Lobbyists on the Colbert Report

John Sturm from the Newspaper Association of America was on the Colbert report. Colbert always does his job tongue-in-cheek, but it's still a rough time for Mr. Sturm.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Better Know a Lobby - Newspaper Lobby
comedycentral.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor NASA Name Contest

Yelp Improving their iPhone App Even More

Not content with having the best local app for dining and entertainment reviews, Yelp is upgrading their app once again, and in some really smart ways.  The real benefit of a local device like the iPhone with good customer penetration and wide distribution is not just in sending information to it in a one-way flow.  The real long-term potential is using all of those distributed users as a way to collect and share information.  Yelp had some aspects of that in their previous version, and CitySearch has done that with its app as well, but Yelp is now taking it one step further.  The new app uses GPS more heavily, to allow you to more easily find a business you are currently at and provide a review about it, and also offers a new, shorter review format called "quick tips", which gets past the barrier users have trying to leave long reviews with the iPhone keyboard.  I'm anxiously awaiting this app and think it's going to be a huge winner for Yelp.

Yelp Focuses On Mobile, New And Improved iPhone App Coming Soon