One of the more annoying omissions in Siri’s Australian incarnation is that it doesn’t offer directions. Apparently that’s because reviews service Yelp, which Siri uses to help determine useful places to recommend, wasn’t available down under at launch. However, while Yelp Australia has launched today, that doesn’t necessarily mean Siri will get clued up for directions any time soon.
I’m glad to be back home in Sydney, but Yelp is one of the few things that I still miss from living in the States. The restaurant tips site morphed into a feature-packed, heavily trafficked business review app for phones — and seriously craps on anything we’ve got here: I’m looking at you Google Places and TrueLocal. So we’re ripe for Yelp’s picking as they team up with Telstra-Sensis-Yellow Pages to open doors in Oz.
Did you know? Being a terrible person is the sole requirement to sign up for a Yelp account. The Yelp Elite collects and presents the worst of the worst of humanity.
What is your iPhone doing to dinner? When we obsessively track down a niche eatery on Yelp, are we excited because of the perfectly limed fish tacos or because broadcasting our discovery on Fourquare will just make us look cool?
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The nerds at Yelp who revolutionised the way 20-something girls could give their opinions on stuff and actually have it matter in the slightest, have turned their attention to beer. Namely, making an iPad and a keg work together.
Rest easy, territorial Yelpers: According to TechCrunch, a late-stage change of heart (or circumstance) led Yelp to walk away from a reported $550 million offer from Google this weekend.
Techcrunch hears that Google is in advanced talks to buy Yelp (supposedly for $US500 million), and that the deal, while not finalised, is very close to that stage. This could be a huge boon for Google’s mapping and mobile efforts.
The good news is that Android users finally have a Yelp app to call their own. The bad news is that it’s relatively bare-bones.
