Mobile, Love, Hub

Okay... that's a strange title, but it all refers to some things happening with Lopico right now.

First Mobile: I just started creating a mobile friendly version of Lopico, but only for the Akron area. It's not like traditional Lopico, it does not have voting or ability to add favorites. Lopico mobile simply lists the businesses listed on Lopico for quick access to phone numbers and addresses. The introduction is limited to Akron for two reasons: 1. I have the most content available for the service in Akron; and 2. I live in Akron so I have the best ability to track the functionality of the service if I'm actually in a location where I can use it.

Second Love: Although I'm not overly fond of online review sites, I'm internally testing a review system on Lopico tentatively called "Lopico Lovers." My problem with reviews has always been the content. There are currently two ways to have reviews done either through critics or through people willing to share their experiences. Critic reviews are often misleading in that they don't represent the traditional customer -- usually they are given extra attention and higher quality service in the hopes that reviews will be favorable, and even if they aren't catered too they still traditionally have a different perspective than what a typical customer wants. The next logical place to turn is to average customers, to ask them for their opinions. These reviews would be better, but with these reviews you tend to get polar opposites and nothing in the middle. People are usually only going to take the time to write a review if something really bad happened or something really good happened. With these two review models in mind I'm working to create a system that delivers quality reviews that are helpful to both businesses and consumers... and for geeks I'm using Ajax.

Lastly Hub: eHub listed Lopico on October 31st. It was exciting for me and there have been quite a few visitors from eHub as well as two or three other sites that syndicate the eHub feed. If you're not familiar with eHub, become familiar. It is a great listing of sites built for the next generation of the internet. A great resource for finding productivity tools and other cool things that you can now do with the internet.

As always, the more you add the better we get.