There's no doubt Yelp was going to add a local events and calendaring functionality to their popular user reviews service, and today they've done it with a new feature called Events. Coincidentally, last week brought about a refresh of Yahoo's Local service, which finally integrated Yahoo's own events service Upcoming.org.
Not surprisingly, Yelp Events is quite similar to Upcoming.org, with a landing page for each event, a comment board, and a list of yeses and maybes from community members to say whether they'll be attending. The main difference being the way user profiles matter. For Upcoming it's all about the events you've gone to or are going to, whereas Yelp's profiles center around your reviews and list of favorite places. That being said, Yelp has also integrated your track record of events into your user profiles, although the focus remains on reviews.
Another key difference is integration. Despite the refresh on Yahoo's part, Upcoming and Yahoo Local are still separate services. For instance, say you want to catch the Beastie Boys show at the Greek Theater tomorrow night in Berkeley. Upcoming can tell you about the venue, but first it'll have to spit you out to Yahoo Local. Yelp on the other hand, has their review ratings integrated so you can quickly tell if the venue is hot or not (sometimes literally) without making you feel like you're being jettisoned to a different Web service.
The one thing Upcoming still has is coverage. Yelp has only rolled out the events features to 10 major cities in the US including San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Seattle, San Jose, Austin, Chicago, Washington D.C., and San Diego. Don't be surprised if this makes its way to the rest of the Yelpified cities before the year's end.
Keep an eye on events in your city with Yelp's new events feature.
(Credit: CNET Networks)
Tomorrow night, legions of Harry Potter fans will be gathering at bookstores all across the world to pick up the final installment of the series. If you haven't already preordered it on Amazon, or hunted down the digitally photographed pages of the leaked copy--tsk, tsk--your best bet is to exercise patience, or give in and pick it up with the throngs of other fans at one of the midnight release parties.
But where do you find ones worth going to? Short of browsing your local paper's A&E section, there are some handy tools online for either securing a copy in style, or finding something to do in the painful hours of waiting that lay ahead. Either way, you'd better batten down the hatches and read it in time to avoid the inevitable plot spoilers you'll hear at work or around the Web come Monday morning.
Potterparties.com offers a simple search by zip code to track down book release parties, complete with maps. I found the results to be a bit off, listing mostly Borders Book locations over local establishments. The site also features party descriptions, although those, too, were incomplete. The site's real draw is its recipes and games section, which gives you instructions on making such delicacies as jelly slugs, squid shooters, and troll toes. Delicious.
Scholastic, the publishers of the Potter series have their own party finder for retail locations hosting midnight soirees. The results don't show what's going on at each location, but they do list the start time so you don't show up too early. Like Potterparties, Scholastic has a smattering of Potter-themed activities, such as user forums, desktop wallpapers, a handful of games, and a countdown clock you can stare at.
Upcoming.org is one of the best resources for finding out the specifics of each Potter party. I found several different stores listed around my neighborhood, including times to get there, an attendee list, and store-specific information such as preorder discounts and parking tips.
Eventful.com has a surprisingly large number of listings for Harry Potter parties. Like Upcoming, it lists good things to know, like presale discounts, costumes, and activities to keep children busy and/or awake.
Related: The Harry Potter virtual spells app for Facebook, listed in our 5 Absurd Apps for Facebook post last week.
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