THE Net may enable you to reach people around the world, but that may not be what you have in mind. After all, if you're looking for a good fish restaurant, you'll probably want to find one in the nearest city, rather than 5000 kilometres away on another continent. It's presumably similar reasoning that has led to the burgeoning number of Web services providing local information.
The newcomers come from a variety of backgrounds: directories such as Yahoo are putting together local "views" of their global indexes, while database companies such as http://www.bigbook.com/ combine American Yellow Pages information with maps and travel guides. America Online (AOL) and the ubiquitous Microsoft both plan to work with existing local partners.
The Microsoft project, codenamed Cityscape, is due to begin early next year, and the AOL one, Digital City (http://www.digitalcity.com), should get going in a few weeks, covering San Francisco, Atlanta, Philadelphia and ...
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