Here are this week’s highlights from the TKG blog, in case you missed any posts. Click below to read each post in full.
Stepup Alum Launches DriverSide, a Car Maintenance Site
There is a sudden glut of sites that allow people to register their cars and get specific service information and recommendations about them. First, there was …

There is a sudden glut of sites that allow people to register their cars and get specific service information and recommendations about them.
First, there was Autobytel’s MyRide. RepairPal launched last week. This week, it is DriverSide, which is being developed by Jad Dunning, an executive with StepUp through its acquisition by Intuit, and Trevor Traina. …

Idearc Media has made the decision to discontinue 28 competitive directory titles in Florida, Tennessee and Texas, and has eliminated 200 positions as a result. The company will also close nine sales offices, each associated with the independent directory titles being discontinued.
The company remains in the business of publishing independent directory titles and continues to …

The latest nugget of data from Palore examines the average number of restaurants by state that have reviews written about them. Looks like Massachusetts takes the cake (sorry, bad pun).
This is somewhat binary as it looks at restaurants that have at least one review. If a restaurant has one review or 100, it is counted as …

Some details have been released about Praized Media’s Local Conversations Organizer. Praized is a Canadian start-up launched by YPG vets Harry Wakefield and Sebastien Provencher, and Sylvain Carle, a longtime industry vet. Its tagline is “Trust Your Tribes.”
In a teaser announcement released today, Praized said its platform will be used by Yellow Pages Group in Canada …

Many market forecasts have attempted to size the U.S. online video market, which consists of ads that are tied to a growing subset of online music, sports and entertainment clips. These forecasts project the market will grow to between US$4 billion and US$7 billion by 2012.
A TKG forecast released yesterday specifically breaks out the local …

Inhabiting a small but potentially valuable corner of the local search world are geodomains — sites like Boston.com whose intuitive URLs give them a leg up in direct navigation traffic and branding.
Boston.com might be a bad example because it is the online home of The Boston Globe and a darling of the online newspaper world. …

The Huffington Post has a certain glamour about it and is able to attract an “A” list of contributors. There is always something interesting on it, and its readership is apparently between 3 million and 8 million unique.
Now it is going to go local, with a launch in Chicago this summer, and at least a …

TKG has learned that local online industry veteran Mark Canon has accepted the position of president-new media at Yell, the U.K.’s leading directory publisher. He will start in July and take over for the retiring Eddie Cheng.
Canon brings a varied background to Yell, having been an Internet Yellow Pages pioneer at Switchboard, with subsequent stints …

Yahoo! is set to place contextually relevant display ads with its newspaper consortium, which now represents 40 percent of all newspaper circulation. The new AMP program for newspapers begins by the end of 3Q at the San Jose Mercury News and SFGate.
Yahoo! and the newspapers are banking big on AMP’s success. Indeed, it has been …

There is lots of talk this week about the next generation browser, now that Firefox 3 has launched. On Friday I got the chance to meet with Ryan Sarver, Skyhook Wireless director of consumer products, who has some notable efforts in progress to bring the company’s Wi-Fi positioning technology to the browser.
Currently Skyhook has the …

To all the skeptics who thought that Zillow’s deal with newspapers would never roll out … next week, The Philadelphia Inquirer, San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury News and Richmond Times-Dispatch are selling featured listings for Zillow at the same time as they are placing their classifieds.
More newspapers will be added each week. The participating …

R.H. Donnelley announced today that President and COO Peter McDonald, a 35-year industry veteran, will retire in September. The company also announced that George Bednarz, its current senior vice president for enterprise operations, will take on the new role of executive vice president of enterprise sales and operations. Essentially, as McDonald retires, Bednarz will assume the sales …

Here are this week’s highlights from the TKG blog, in case you missed any posts. Click below to read each post in full.
MerchantCircle: 5,000 Paying Customers
MerchantCircle, which is partially owned by IAC, is apparently beginning to make some headway in selling search oriented services to small businesses. It reports that it has achieved a base …

MerchantCircle, which is partially owned by IAC, is apparently beginning to make some headway in selling search oriented services to small businesses. It reports that it has achieved a base of 5,000 paying customers, who buy services costing $30, $60, $100 and $250 a month. “Most of them are coming in at the lower end” – …

Urbanspoon is one of the first companies to announce a local search iPhone app (others are here). The application acts almost like a local restaurant eight-ball that lets users define cuisine, price or other factors, before shaking the device to see what nearby eatery pops up.
This takes advantage of the iPhone’s accelerometer (the thing that …

The frontiers of Web-based, self-serve advertising moved (a little) today, as Trulia introduced Trulia Pro, a new “starter” package for Realtors that provides unlimited “featured listings” and “Spotlight Ads” that Realtors use for branding. Trulia claims its featured listings capability boosts views by four to seven times.
Trulia Pro enables Realtors to place their ads on …

Adfare has joined the growing list of companies looking to work with Internet Yellow Pages in order to tap the sizable opportunity of video-enabling their advertisers (3.2 million small and medium-sized businesses).
But as Director of Business Development Frank Rocco reminded me this morning, the company isn’t new to SMB advertising. It primarily works with newspapers …

Is there room for a new, locally oriented social network if it is more practical than Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, LinkedIn, et al? That’s what Norwest Partners and Keynote Ventures are betting $6.5 million on with the launch this week of Center’d, formerly known as FatDoor.
The service is headed up by former Yahoo! Marketplaces head Jennifer …

Local.com today announced it has added the ability for users to write reviews directly on the site. This will include ratings (five-star system) and reviews that registered users can submit and track over time.
The question of reviews in the local space has evolved from “should?” to “how?” Ratings and reviews are table stakes and an …