Near and far: stuff Facebook can help you find

While Facebook is primarily a social networking tool, its uses have expanded to provide other functional services as well. For example, you can use Facebook applications to find things in or near your hometown. Here’s a few I found useful:

Cribot

This is a simple bot that searches Craigslist apartment listings based on search criteria you specify. Rather than obsessively refreshing Craigslist every hour, you can just log into Facebook at the end of each day and see what results the bot has collected for you. Of course, those of us who live in cities where there’s deadly competition for good places might not be able to wait until the end of the day before a listing gets snatched up, but in general this looks like a useful tool.

Local Picks

Local Picks is an app from Trip Advisor. This is what started this post; my dad’s coming to the city to have lunch with me and I was looking for someplace new we could go. Local Picks compiles more than 200,000 user-submitted reviews and recommendations of more than 170,000 restaurants in several different countries.

Action Sports

The developers put it best: “If you snowboard, ski, skateboard, surf, mountain bike, bmx, motocross, or wakeboard, this is the app for you.” This app lets you list the places that you go to play. It also provides handy side stuff like snow reports, videos and ratings.

And, of course, you can always turn to local groups to connect with fellow enthusiasts. For example, if you live in my town, you can check out Gardening in the fog to share tips with other growers on what and when to plant in this climate; The Wine Tasting Group, which offers reviews of local wines; or I Want Things to Do In San Francisco, which offers activities and sight seeing suggestions.

Or go global, if you prefer. Groups such as Support the Monk’s Protest in Burma, Protest against huge student loans interest rate hike, or Pro-Test – Supporting Animal Research offer wider views of what people are up to.

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