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Outside.in “+” Operator

Published February 27th, 2007 in Tech & VC

outsidein.gifUnion Square Ventures invested in Outside.in last week, but the lid finally came off the pot today. I’m really excited about this investment, but I certainly don’t want to sound like a broken record… my excitement is best reflected in the posts at USV and by Fred on his personal blog.

To keep things novel, I want to mention one of the cool, slightly hidden features of Outside.in, the “+” sign in the URLs.

I live in zipcode 10025 in New York. It’s one of the smaller/quieter sections of New York where Morningside Heights hits the Upper West Side. I like reading about what’s going on in my neighborhood (restaurant openings, apts for sale, controversy in the park) by going to http://outside.in/10025, but sometimes it’s a little too small. For example, there’s only a few small live music venues in my neighborhood, so this view of Outside.in doesn’t give me many nightlife stories.

I can expand my view of the world, but adding a “+1″ to the end of the Outside.in URL, like http://outside.in/10025+1. With the “+1″ I now get news for 10025 plus the zipcodes that are within a one mile radius of 10025 (If i put +2 or +3, the radius would be 2 or 3 miles). It turns out that Columbia and Harlem are within this “+1″ radius, so I can still get my local neighborhood news, but it’s also colored by stories and events that are a bit further off the beaten path for me.

I like this feature because the rule behind it is very simple, but out of this simple rule I get some very interesting results. Try it out with your own neighborhood. The highest number you can add after the “+” sign is 10.

Or, if you’re not into fun URL tricks, just go check out my profile at Outside.in.

7 Responses to “Outside.in “+” Operator”  

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  1. 1 Alex Iskold Feb 27th, 2007 at 4:41 pm

    This is an awesome, non - obvious feature! I think that this is really cool and needs to ‘pop out’. As a side note… There is ‘ ‘ operator extension in Firefox for Microformats, so not to be confused.

    Alex

  2. 2 mike Feb 27th, 2007 at 6:14 pm

    I have to say I’ve been meaning to try outside.in for a few weeks, but haven’t been compelled to do so - until now. This looks like a really cool feature, especially for us geographically-challenged New Jerseyans.

    Thanks!

    Mike

  3. 3 candice Feb 27th, 2007 at 8:05 pm

    Bonus points for actually covering N.O., and our little blogger community. Some friends are on its blogroll…

    Much of the time someone announces some new “local” web service and they don’t cover us. Zillow is probably the most annoying one I can think of. (Because not only do they not list much of anything, what they do list is very, very wrong.)

  4. 4 Andrew Parker Feb 28th, 2007 at 9:44 am

    Glad you all dig it as much as I do. Let me know if you continue finding value in a few weeks.

  5. 5 Lee Semel Mar 2nd, 2007 at 9:13 am

    This is really cool. I hadn’t heard of the service until I saw it in Fred’s blog entry. Just signed up.

  6. 6 Lee Semel Mar 2nd, 2007 at 9:18 am

    It would be neat if there were a Wordpress plugin so you it would give you a dropdown of ‘your places’ from your profile, or a zipcode entry field, and it would submit your blog entries to outside.in. If it could pull the addresses off of Google Maps/Citysearch when you submit a place.

  7. 7 Shawn Honnick Mar 12th, 2007 at 9:27 am

    I once lived at 99th and Riverside in your ZIP. Very nice area although a kid got shot right in front of my first floor apartment window one night. I had lived in NYC for a few years at that point but that kinda freaked me out for a while. Outside.in is a great idea. A plugin for Wordpress is an AWESOME idea.

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