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Drug Travel / iPhone Travel Apps / Yelp / Medical Travel / → All Tags

Yelp's iPhone App Can Help You Score Some Good Weed

It might not be Amsterdam, but San Francisco is peppered with Cannabis Clinics...for medical purposes, of course. These are legitimate business in California and so why shouldn't they get listed like any other business is—on Yelp? As a matter of fact they are, a discovery we recently made while digging deeper into our Yelp iPhone app, where a category specifically for "Cannabis Clinics/Evaluations resides.

Searching around us in New York it finds nothing, but going to the other side of the country changes all of that. What's more is that Yelp reviewers actually take reviewing their favorite Cannabis clinics seriously. We've even learned a new word from this category: "budtender."

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Yelp / Events / Beach Travel / New York City / Review Websites / → All Tags

Yelp Rewarding New York Reviewers With Free Beach Party

To you and me, the crowd-sourced review site Yelp is just one of many stops on the information superhighway before we decide on a restaurant for dinner, but for others it's a lifestyle. No matter how earnestly you use the site, you're welcome to Yelp's big beach bash at Water Taxi Beach in Long Island City, NY, with the Manhattan skyline and East River as a backdrop.

True to the yelping tradition, this won't just be a barbeque and beer shindig; guests who RSVP will enjoy "Hula Hoop girls, popsicle purveyors, sunscreen, masseuses, a shaded relaxation lounge, games, prizes, a Yelp photobooth and much, much more." Not to mention that everyone will be able to share their choicest review vocabulary during a sampling and judging of ten drinks in The Ultimate Summer Cocktail Competition.

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Travel Websites / Bumblehood / Wikitravel / Yelp / → All Tags

Bumblehood To Be Yelp Without the Community, Like That'll Work

Another community-driven travel resource is entering the fray, and this one seems to be a cross between Yelp and WikiTravel. Bumblehood's goal is to provide full, user-generated travel guides. They're not exactly Yelp because they have "economy" and "history" sections that go beyond Yelp's urban business focus, but they're not WikiTravel either if only because their interface is slicker. Bumblehood is trying to be the best of both worlds, combining WikiTravel's focus on travel guides with Yelp-style business reviews.

There's something refreshing about a business review site that goes beyond Yelp's obsessive focus on friends, user profiles, and "Elite Status." Bumblehood's emphasis is instead on content, which is particularly helpful for travelers who need access to uncluttered information quickly.

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Yelp / Review Websites / Websites / → All Tags

Top-Ranked Travel: Businesses (Do Not) Heart Yelp

That "intimate," "romantic" cafe looked like the perfect place to take a first date until you Googled it and discovered it was "way too jammed with tables" and "serves everything congealed."

As the popularity of San Francisco-based review site Yelp grows, businesses are starting to criticize its amateur reviewers--because they're cutting into profits.

While the Yelp founders defend the site as giving power to the masses who comment on coffeehouses and rate restaurants, owners of the businesses under review claim an untoward relationship between the tone of reviews and the amount of advertising they've purchased on the site. One shop owner told The New York Times, "Yelp does not respect us as business owners," since users submit rankings without consequences.

We've always regarded Yelp as Citysearch minus the pop-ups, but occasionally it gives us bright ideas. How much stock do you put in "crowdsourced" review sites like Yelp?

Related Stories:
· 'The Coffee Was Lousy. The Wait Was Long.' [NYT]
· Websites coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: Yelp Store]