A new local upstart, called Locality, has been developed to facilitate the discovery of local only content. According to Locality developer Lee Sturgess, the project “is all about promoting genuinely local content at a content provider level, and the absorption of such content at a consumer level.”<\/p>\n
“Local content is significantly less expensive to access than content which is hosted internationally. The problem with such a scenario is that no such services have existed to help unearth such content, nor has any effort been made by search engines such as Google to help filter such content,” explains Sturgess.<\/p>\n
“As such the development of a web application like Locality is a response to a problem which I’ve experienced myself, but so too do almost all broadband users in South Africa.”<\/p>\n
The Locality project consists of various resources to assist consumers, including a local only website directory, twitter feeds, a content aggregator, an API and a Firefox toolbar.<\/p>\n
Sturgess says that the two most important features in the current release of add-ons are site locality detection and overlays for sites that display linked results — such as Google & Live Search. <\/p>\n
“This means flags are placed near URLs indicating whether the link is accessible locally, or via international only — great for when you want to determine whether you’re saving money,” says Sturgess.<\/p>\n
“Supplementary to this the add-on provides Alexa and Stumbleupon like functionality for the discovery of fresh local content. Also included in the current release are feeds from our Spiral content aggregator, which lists trailers, podcasts and downloads, as they’re published — all accessible via local only bandwidth.”<\/p>\n
The Locality add-on is completely free and Sturgess reassured consumers that no personally identifiable user information is gathered other than an IP address, which is used for analytical purposes.<\/p>\n
The locality project can be found at http:\/\/locality.co.za\/<\/a><\/p>\n