RADAR

This link and this one both speak about “Radar”.

Radar is our new feature that places you at the center of things and shows you the news going on around you as it happens. Like a Facebook feed for local news, it delivers stories near you in simple, one-line snippets, letting you see everything going on nearby easily, and letting you then click off to the individual stories that interest you.

Radar, as the name would suggest, organizes the news in dynamic, concentric circles around you. First it looks for news immediately around you, within 1000 feet. Then it searches for stories in your neighborhood. Then, in your city. And if you’re out in the middle of the desert somewhere, where there are no neighborhoods or cities, it will just keep on going until it finds something, then will ping it back to you. Just like the real thing.
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Add to this the neighbor alerts feature, which allows everyone to write directly and immediately to the pages of people in their area, and Radar becomes a total readable/writeable local content solution.

Interested? Here’s the link

I like this from the point of view of being a semantic news web. We all want news that it relevant to us (just as much as we don’t mind adverts as long as they are about the things we actually want). It’s US based at the moment (and I’ve had some issues with connecting) but they say things are going to be improved all the time.

This is just one more service which is going to use location-based tracking in order to inform and educate. Location-based services are going to be the big thing this year, mark my words.