Currently Google Latitude users can check-in via their iPhone and Android apps, and view check-ins via their Google Latitude web app and dashboard.

I went through the Google Latitude API to see if an endpoint was added for check-ins, but currently you can only work with a users current location as well as location history.

So for now its just an application feature, but I’m sure its only a matter of time before recording check-ins and pulling a users historical check-ins will be available via the API.

Foursquare has dominated when it comes to local check-in, even remaining on top when challenged by Facebook check-ins.

I’m curious to see what the new Google Latitude feature will do to change Foursquare’s game?

Hyperpublic provided a places API allowing you to search for local businesses, restaurants, points of interest, and landmarks as well as a deals and events API.

Hyperpublic will be shutting down their data services on 3/2/2012, and recommends CityGrid Places API as a replacement for their service.

With SimpleGeo and now Hyperpublic, its becoming clear that running a businesses providing places and business data is hard, and acquisition is often the future for these startups. This can create lots of problems for developers who are trying to build applications and sustainable businesses around places data.

If you are building a local web or mobile app, I recommend using CityGrid Places API. CityGrid is owned by IAC an established company, ensuring our Places API will not be going anywhere.

Not only can developers depend on the API being around tomorrow, they can generate revenue inside their application using Places that Pay or web or mobile advertising.

Another lesson I take away from the Hyperpublic and SimpleGeo acquisition is that the space is hot! Local is definitely a good space to be in 2012.

CityGrid has some great iOS and Android software development kits (SDK) available for building local, mobile applications.  I’ve also built some samples and starter kits for building local web applications in PHP, Python and Ruby.

WordPress seemed like the perfect next step to reach a larger audience, so I took the PHP Hyp3rL0cal directory that uses CityGrid Places API, and deployed it as a WordPress Plugin.

Now you can launch a quick section on your WordPress blog or site that allows you to display businesses for your area, in whatever category you wish.

This CityGrid Hyp3rL0cal WordPress Plugin is meant to be a project that developers can learn from and even deploy their own local WordPress Plugins that use CityGrid APIs.  However its completely functional and could be deployed by any non-developer as well.

Right now you can download or fork at Github, as I stabilize it further I will publish to the CityGrid developer center code samples page.

If you have any questions or need help, visit the CityGrid Developer Forums or ping us on Twitter via @citygridapiteam.

There are now PHP, Python and Ruby code samples you can download or fork.  There is also a local web directory I built using Twitter Bootstrap, which is available in PHP, Python and Ruby.

I developed the local directory starter kits, and code samples on an Amazon EC2 instance running Linux.   After I make any changes to the samples or starter kits, I just create a new AMI for each language, and make it public, for anyone to use.  You should take one of the AMI for a test drive, and let me know if you want to see any other APIs or tools on them, I will consider adding to the bundle.

I will keep working on new code samples and starter kits.  After I get them published to the CityGrid Github account, I will update the code samples page in the CityGrid Developer Center.

• local news
• news local
• local newspaper
• local weather
• local new
• local jobs
• local business
• local job
• jobs local
• local search
• local newspapers
• local paper
• local businesses
• local papers
• local food
• local listings
• buy local
• local sales
• local marketing
• local clubs
• local produce
• local ads
• local ad
• local girls
• local advertising
• local chat
• local music
• local market
• local temp
• local deals
• local weather forecast
• local girl
• local bars
• local shopping
• local bands
• local pages
• local classifieds
• local women
• local sports
• local dining
• local deal
• local singles
• local dating
• local directories
• local hotels
• local farms
• local harvest
• local pubs
• local business marketing
• local pizza

Of course this represents a conscious search using the word “local” and not just typing pizza and relying on their location to localize the results.  But it still gives good insight into what people are looking for when searching locally, and hopefully we can work to build more local web and mobile applications that deliver these results for user.

You can search for businesses using a RESTful API using three parameters:

• what
• where
• publisher

Here is an example call:

• http://api.citygridmedia.com/content/places/v2/search/where?what=pizza&where=94102&publisher=test

You can add format, to change from xml or json:

• http://api.citygridmedia.com/content/places/v2/search/where?what=pizza&where=94102&publisher=test&format=json

You search for “what”-ever you want, and the “where” is flexible, letting you search six different ways:

• Cities
• Neighborhoods
• Zip Codes
• Metro Areas
• Addresses
• Intersections

It doesn’t get much simpler than that. You can pull business and places listing us a URL, and tweaking 4 values to get the desired results.

If you want to get more complex you can. There are plenty of other ways to fine tune your search, including a longitude and latitude places search.

When I was in Philadelphia, New York and Boston a couple of weeks I kept stumbling across amazing old buildings, but knew nothing about them. I would check-in using Foursquare in hopes of using the location to find more information about the place, later when online.

I was thinking it would be nice to have a Foursquare like check-in app, where I could look for sites around my location, check in at them and either get more textual information for reading or tap into some sort of audio podcast for listening to historical stories as I walk.

In my research I’ve come across APIs InfoChimps, providing access to Wikipedia articles associated with geographic information, and I’m sure if I looked harder I could find more resources. It would take several APIs like CityGrid for places, Foursquare for check-in, InfoChimps for Wikipedia, and a couple other tools for text to audio and other richer places data to augment what CityGrid offers.

A historical stories mobile app would definitely take some engineering, but its something you could find a wide audience of history buffs to use, and easily monetize using CityGrid mobile advertising. Wish i had more time–let me know if your interested.

Of course CityGrid Places, Offers, Reviews andAdvertising are first in that stack, but I want to identify other APIs, tools and platforms that can also assist you in quickly building your mobile app.

As I add items to this stack. I will showcase them one by one here on the blog. The next one on my list is Parse, which offers a pretty impressive data storage, push notifications and user management platform for your mobile backend.

Parse is looking to provide a single platform for your mobile backend, providing a single cloud interface for:

• Data Storage – Providing native SDKs for iPhone and Android ORM data storage platform, allowing objects to be stored and retrieved as needed.
• Push Notifications – A standardized push notification platform across iPhone and Android, overcoming the headaches of each individual platforms notification system.
• User Management – Nobody likes having to rewrite your own user management system, so parse provides one that securely allows you to sign up, login and manage users across multiple devices.

At first glance I thought Parse was just another back-end for iOS or Android mobile applications, but I see they have a robust REST API, that can be used in mobile web apps as well. This means you can access the same users, data storage and take advantage of push notifications in your mobile web, or just the web version of your applications platform.

The REST API opens up the playing field and lets you interact with Parse from anything that can send an HTTP request, some examples they provide are:

• A mobile website can access Parse data from Javascript.
• A webserver can show data from Parse on a website.
• You can upload large amounts of data that will later be consumed in a mobile app.
• You can download recent data to run your own custom analytics.
• Applications written in any programming language can interact with data on Parse.
• You can export all of your data if you no longer want to use Parse.

Native app usage is definitely growing with more smart phone usage, but bridging the worlds between multiple devices as well as on the web is critical. Parse making the decision to provide a REST interface to your mobile back-end is smart.

Parse seems to be truly about making mobile app developers lives easier, with constant improvements coming down the pipes, like syncing, realtime push, and analytics soon — all without having to develop, maintain, and deploy complicated server code.

I’m adding Parse to the CityGrid Local, Mobile, Social Stack and will be weaving more of their services into what we offer here in the CityGrid Developer Center as well as our hackathon tools.

One of the first items I’m working on is enhancing my local search listings page with the CityGrid Custom Ads API. The CityGrid partner account management team said:

So I added a method to the CityGrid Advertising PHP Class I wrote for making calls to the Custom Ads API. The API call returns back XML or JSON parts and pieces of a local ad I can list at the top of the search listings page.

I’m able to format the advertising to appear with my CSS styling, and I used the image, name, tagline, description and address if they are available, and provide a link to the advertising destination URL.

I like the way I’m able to blend the custom ads into my local search listings. It definitely seems like users are more likely to click through when presented with a sponsored link that is relevant to their local search.  I’m working more on how to lay out the reviews, ratings and offers part of my local sponsored listings next.

When you are building your application, the default set of styles may not be have exactly the fonts, colors and other characteristics you are looking.

To help you in your development, I found the Twitter Bootstrap Generator, that you can use to quickly choose colors, fonts and other styles your looking.

Another time saving tool to help you rapidly build local web applications.