DexKnows launches Mobile Platform

DexKnows rolled out their mobile platform yesterday, allowing consumers to add DexKnows People and Business search to a variety of mobile platforms, including traditional cel phones, a mobile browser, text message search and of course, an iPhone app (which is the only one I've tried). The iPhone app looks like it has all the basic functions and works fairly well, allowing you to easily search for businesses or people by name and providing a somewhat fun, wheel-based ability to select your category (within Food, Entertainment or Travel/Transportation), combine that with a geo location (of which you can save multiple, which I haven't seen before in an iPhone local app), and get results for that combination. It has the other standard features as well, like saving businesses and returning to previous profiles viewed. All in all, a fairly solid app that covers the basics. It would be great for them to add some interactivity to the next version, allowing users to upload business data, reviews and images, to really utilize the iPhone as a 2-way device.

Dex® Mobile

Yelp 2.0 for iPhone on its Way

According to Greg Sterling, the next iteration of the Yelp iPhone app is coming. The first version is by far my favorite local app on the iPhone, and it sounds like this one will only improve on it, offering more information, more search options and some other fun things on top of it. These guys definitely get how to build an iPhone app.

Yelp 2.0 for the iPhone Coming Soon | LocalMobileSearch

Yahoo Launches Fire Eagle

Yahoo's advanced research division, called Brickhouse, has released a highly anticipated platform called Fire Eagle. This platform allows developers to receive geo-location data from their users to easily integrate into their sites.

As GPS-enabled devices like the iPhone continue to proliferate and users start to see more value in providing their locations to websites, in order to get customized results, see who's nearby, etc, platforms like this will be key. This will allow the web to do some of its transition from a "pull" platform (ask for what you want and it will be shown to you) to a "push" platform (it will show you things you will be interested in without having to ask for them).

Yahoo Fire Eagle Launches Geo-Location Platform To The Public

Local Shopping on a Mobile Phone and What It Means

One area where there have been relatively few iPhone apps that have launched is the Shopping space. TheFind just launched what I believe to be the first shopping app, and while it's still in private Beta (which means I haven't gotten to test it yet), it got me thinking about what shopping on your phone will be about.

I'm sure sites like Amazon and others will have nice little apps you can use to buy products that are available on their websites (basically just extensions of their sites), but I think the real impact of these kinds of applications will be on brick and mortar prices. When shoppers go into stores and see prices now, they often don't have any basis for comparison (although many do check the price online before they go into the store). Some stores have kiosks in the store where you can browse their inventory, but a few (Best Buy comes to mind) have a different website for in-store purchases which may have prices that are different from their websites.

That's where mobile shopping could be really powerful. As a consumer, you can now enter a store with a mobile device that will show you prices for an item from all retailers. You will now have immediate transparency to whether you are getting a good deal from a retailer or not. As this gets more user penetration, if the prices at retailers are significantly different from online (taking into account things like sales tax and shipping), users will shift even more purchases online. So, this will force retailers to make their brick and mortar prices more competitive with online and should cause price parity across sources (of/when consumer penetration and usage is achieved). Could be the start of something big.

Local Shopping Coming To A Mobile Phone Near You

iPhone Apps - 4 of Top 5 are Local

There are now over 1000 apps in the iPhone store and if you look at the top 5, 4 of them are local applications:
1. Google (the only non-local)
2. UrbanSpoon, with its cool "shake me and get a surprise result" feature
3. BoxOffice, with an easy to use local movie time application and Rotten Tomatoes critic ratings
4. WeatherBug
5. Yelp, which in my view has the nicest local implementation, with the ability to easily search near you, a map view, and the ability to read every review in detail (so many apps do shortcut reviews, including the iTunes store, which doesn't give you anything beyond the star rating

It really seems that the iPhone is the platform that will finally drive broad acceptance of mobile applications and mobile search. Approx 10MM iPhones are out there in the US right now and with their ease-of-use and full-time access to the Internet, they will become the local platform of choice. And they're just scratching the surface of what they can do.

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