FAQ | Outside.in

What is Outside.in?

Outside.in is a hyperlocal news platform. Our main site (you're here!) helps you find news from the places and neighborhoods you care about. We're also working to create an entire news ecosystem through our tools for bloggers and other publishers: Bloggers can use the maps, stats, and widgets from GeoToolkit to get traffic from Outside.in and our network of partner sites. Outside.in for Publishers allows publishers of all sizes to create customized, curated Neighborhood News Pages, maps, and headline widgets for their site.

What does hyperlocal mean?

Hyperlocal means news and information on a more granular level than traditional media provides. Previously, most "local" sites didn’t actually get more, well, local than cities or towns. They assumed that just because you live in a specific city or town you are looking for the same news as everyone else. Hyperlocal content gives you the news and information for the area right around where you are, like the block around your office or the neighborhood where you live.

How to use

Where is...?

For Bloggers

Geotagging

Etc.

How can I get news around me?

Outside.in has news in 57,830 neighborhoods across the country. You can search for your city, your neighborhood, or even your address from our homepage or from the bottom search box in the sidebar of any page. To see all stories about your favorite places, you can also search for the name of the place you're interested in (for example, Grauman's Chinese Theatre).

Once you're on a page about a city, neighborhood, place, or address, you can find nearby neighborhoods in the dropdown menus in the breadcrumb. The breadcrumb is the little list of links in the upper left-hand corner that shows the neighborhood, city, metro area, and state of the page you're looking at. Some of those links (mostly the ones representing cities) have arrows. If you click on an arrow, you'll see all the other neighborhoods within the city.

A third alternative is to navigate directly to your city, town, or neighborhood by typing its URL into your browser. The structure for the URL is outside.in/{neighborhood-name}-{city-name}-{state-abbreviation}. For example, the URL for Andersonville in Chicago is http://outside.in/andersonville-chicago-il. To navigate directly to Chicago, go to http://outside.in/chicago-il. For city or neighborhood names that are more than one word, insert a hyphen between each word. For example: http://outside.in/new-york-ny).

How do I browse stories by subject?

You search for news about a specific topic, such as food, crime, or education by entering your topic of choice in the top search box (labeled "topic") in the sidebar of any page to get stories on that subject in your area.

Don't forget that you must include your city, state, zip code, neighborhood, or address in the bottom search box for your search to work. We've pre-filled the bottom search box with the region you're currently viewing stories about on any internal page, but you can overwrite it to switch regions.

We also show topic tags beneath every story on our site. You can click on any tag below any story to see more stories about that topic.

How do I find out about places in my neighborhood?

Look for the "local places by category" box in the sidebar of every page on our site. You can click on the category (such as "real estate" or "arts and culture") and then browse places in that category within the neighborhood you were viewing listed alphabetically by name.

You can also search for your favorite places by entering the name of a place in the search box on our homepage or the bottom search box in the sidebar of any page.

Can I get updates on my search without coming back to your site?

Absolutely! Every page on outside.in has an RSS feed, including region pages (like our pages for Back Bay and Detroit), place pages (like our pages for 20 Jay Street and Voinovich Park), topic pages (like our pages for art at Five Points and crime in Pittsburgh), search pages (like our pages for stabbings in Queens and food in Atlanta), and stories within 1,000 feet of any address (like our pages for 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, CA and 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, DC).

Just scroll to the bottom of any page and click the link that says "subscribe to stories about ____" or the RSS icon. You can also just tack ".rss" onto the end of any URL to find its feed. Add our RSS feeds to any feed reader (like Google Reader or Bloglines) to see updates whenever your check your reader.

You can also sign up for near.ly to receive Twitter direct messages of news within 1,000 feet of any U.S. address. Near.ly was built using our API! Cool, huh?

Can I get news outside the U.S.?

We do plan to be an international site in the long term, but we've been really busy being as awesome as possible in the U.S. We promise to get to your country as soon as we can! Keep up to date with our new features by reading our blog.

How do I sign up or sign in to Outside.in?

You don't need to! Browse the site and local content for your area without logging in.

Can I get email alerts about news near me?

We've temporarily suspended email alerts for news within 1,000 feet of your address. They'll be back soon with more personalization and filtering options! In the meantime, you should sign up for near.ly to get Twitter direct messages for news within 1,000 feet of any U.S. address.

Where's my neighbor page?

You don't need an Outside.in profile to get hyperlocal news, so we're temporarily removing neighbor pages while we work on additions to our site. We saved your profile information and may reintroduce profiles as part of our improved, ultra-personalized news experience.

How do I submit a blog?

Submit any site that publishes an RSS feed at outside.in/geotoolkit. Once we've crawled your feed, your stories will show up on Outside.in for the neighborhoods and places you write about and may appear on the neighborhood news pages of our media partners. That means more traffic for you! You'll also be able to utilize our geotagging tools and grab our StoryMap widget.

If you receive an error while trying to submit your feed or you don't receive the confirmation email from us saying that we've crawled your feed, check to make sure that your RSS feed is linked from an alternate tag in the header of your site.

How do I submit a story?

For now, we've suspended the submit-a-story feature, but if you publish a blog or site, you can submit it at outside.in/geotoolkit. If you know of a great local site we should include, please send it our way: editor@outside.in.

How do I submit a place?

If you have a place to submit, let us know: editor@outside.in. Be sure to include the proper name, address, city, state, and zip, and category of the place (restaurant, park, place of worship, etc). If you notice an error in the name or address of a place on our site, please notify us at editor@outside.in. We'll change it as soon as possible, after double-checking that you're correct, of course!

How can I get my stories to show up on Outside.in?

Submit your blog at outside.in/geotoolkit. You should publish an RSS feed so we can scan your stories for mentions of locations, and you can use our Feed Editor to add any neighborhoods or places we missed.

Your stories will show up on outside.in when users search for the neighborhoods and places that you attach. They may even appear on the Neighborhood News Pages of our major media partners in your area! Either way, you'll be seeing more traffic from us.

How can I get a map of my hyperlocal stories?

You can grab code for a simple, fun, and useful map that displays your stories attached to places at outside.in/geotoolkit and paste it into your site template. You can also add new stories to your map by attaching places and neighborhoods in the Feed Editor.

How do I use my StoryMap?

Once you've submitted your blog to GeoToolkit, go to the StoryMap page and select the default time frame and size you'd like. Starting with a one-year range is recommended so we get as many pins on the map as possible! You can choose from several preset widths and heights to fit your template or choose "custom" to enter your own preferred size.

Only posts with places attached will show up as pins on your map. We'll attach places automatically when you mention them by name in your post, and you can add any we missed in the Feed Editor.

Learn more about geotagging your content.

How can I get the content I publish syndicated to Outside.in?

Make sure your site publishes an RSS feed that includes the full text of all the stories you publish. We need to see the full text of your stories in your feed for optimal place and region detection. Read more about why full text feeds are so important on our blog. The feed should be linked in an alternate tag in the header of your homepage so we can find it.
Submit your blog at outside.in/geotoolkit. We'll grab your feed and automatically attach places and regions to your stories.
Use the Feed Editor in GeoToolkit to attach any regions or places we may have missed.

Your stories will automatically show up on Outside.in place, region, topic, and search pages for the places, neighborhoods, and cities that were attached to your post—whether we attached them automatically or you attached them manually in the Feed Editor.

What can I do in my posts to help Outside.in automatically catch all the regions and places I write about?

When you write about places, mention them by their full name. Extra points for linking to the outside.in place page in your post.
When you write about a neighborhood, mention it by name in your post.
Use GeoRSS to indicate a specific location that your post is about. We'll attach that point to your story, plus all the neighborhoods, cities, and other regions that contain that point. (See more about GeoRSS below.)

How do I use GeoRSS?

GeoRSS Namespaces

In the tag that sets the version of your RSS document, add the following

xmlns:georss="http://www.georss.org/georss" xmlns:geo="http://www.w3.org/2003/01/geo/wgs84_pos#"

For instance, update this tag:

To this:

Latitude/Longitude Pairs

There are two ways to indicate a latitude/longitude pair associated with a post in your story:

1. GeoPoint

Before the </item> tag of your post, include a <geo:Point> that contains one <geo:lat> value and one <geo:long> value as follows:

<geo:Point>
<geo:lat>40.704110</geo:lat>
<geo:long>-73.986781</geo:long>
</geo:Point>

To indicate multiple lat/lng pairs, repeat the entire phrase:

<geo:Point></br>
  <geo:lat>40.704110</geo:lat>
  <geo:long>-73.986781</geo:long>
</geo:Point>
<geo:Point>
  <geo:lat>40.75570967636433</geo:lat>
  <geo:long>-73.98639678955078</geo:long>
</geo:Point>

2. GeoRSS Point

You can also indicate latitude/longitude pairs by including the latitude and longitude separated by a single space within tags:

<georss:point>40.704110 -73.986781</georss:point>

What if I don't understand these instructions?

If you still have questions, ask us for help.

How do I update something posted on the site?

If you see an error on Outside.in from a post in our system that was updated after we grabbed it, please send a note to editor@outside.in and we'll make the necessary changes. We do not create any of the content that we feature on the site—it all comes in from external sources. As such, we do not censor or edit other publications' words, but please drop us a note if you see something that should change.

How do I get my place or business listed on the site?

We're not a commercial listing site, but if you have a place to submit, send it our way: editor@outside.in. Be sure to include the proper name, address, city, state, and zip, and category of the place (restaurant, park, place of worship, etc).

Can I send Outside.in event listings?

Sorry, but we don't accept press releases or event listings. Our content comes from the great online publishers and blogs in our system, so we leave the events to them! However, if you have an RSS feed of events, send it to editor@outside.in, and we'll look into including it in our system.

What if I have a question that is not listed here?

You have two options: One, head on over to Get Satisfaction, a great customer service site, where you'll be able to see if your question has already been answered by an Outside.in employee. How's that for efficiency? You can also ask new questions, request features, and rate our site (but you love us, right?!) and one of us will post a response.

The second option, if you'd prefer to discuss something offline, is to drop us a line.

Frequently asked questions