Local Matters has added content partners to its AreaGuides.net. Here are the details. The site is a bit cleaner since LM took over, but it needs a major redesign.
InfoSpace is making FindIt free for 60-days to encourage consumers to download and use it. Here’s the release. I used FindIt and it’s a good application (although I have some criticisms of course). The problem is that it has little visibility in the market. InfoSpace’s brand is not anywhere near as strong as Google, Yahoo! or the carriers and Sprint (one of InfoSpace’s FindIt partners) just did a big deal with MSFT.
Here’s what I would do if I were InfoSpace: roll out voice search (in full) as fast as possible on top of FindIt and market the hell out of that feature. That would be a truly differentiated product and would potentially get consumers’ attention (certainly it would get media attention). I’d also provide deep desktop-mobile integration (personalization, saved locations, etc.)
The risk otherwise is that FindIt, as good as it may be, just gets lost among the larger brands taking up shelf space.
And see Nuance Releases Mobile Speech Platform. Voice, though imperfect, helps solve some of the usability problems of keying in characters on mobile devices. See more.
Screenwerk 
December 4, 2006 at 3:15 pm
AreaGuides is definitely cleaner than the last time I looked at it, but in the couple of searches I performed it appears to be powered entirely by Dex and Superpages. Nothing wrong with that, but from a unique content perspective…
Internal URLs are cleaner, but external searches indicate that organic search results aren’t where Perry and Jeanette would like them to be.