Wednesday, March 11, 2015

Local Search with Opening Hours


For years one of the major cliches in the presentation of interactive maps has been the search for nearby pizzas. If you're releasing a new online map then the first thing you do is show how good it is at finding pizza restaurants.

The problem is that half those pizza restaurants might not be open at the time of your presentation. What we need is a new cliche in map presentations, a demonstration of nearby restaurants which are currently open.

This shouldn't be any problem for HoursOf. HoursOf allows you to search for local businesses and services and only shows you the ones which are open right now. Simply share your location with the application or enter an address and then select a category of business or enter a search term. You will then be shown a Google Map of the nearest open businesses matching your search requirements.


If you live in the USA, Australia, Ireland or the United Kingdom you can also use Localmint to search for currently open businesses. Localmint is an application to find the opening hours and place details of nearby businesses. Enter a search term (e.g. 'coffee') and an address into Localmint and you can view a Google Map showing all the nearby local businesses.

All the results are plotted on a Google Map and also listed in the map sidebar. The sidebar results show the opening-hours for each business and you can also select a business' marker to view the hours that it is open.

No comments: