Giving Away Community Secrets

Shopping for shower heads may not be high on most New York City tourists’ wish lists. But along with a description of a $54 model at a hardware store called George Taylor Specialties, the New York edition of the online guide Sidewalk confides that the same Franklin Street neighborhood includes the restaurant Zeppole at the TriBakery, where the menu features “heavenly balls of fried dough” and “Harvey Keitel, Juliette Binoche and Martin Scorcese have all been spotted eyeing up the tiramisu.”

Microsoft’s Sidewalk (https://www.sidewalk.com) is one of the newest and most ambitious entrants into an increasingly crowded arena: World Wide Web sites that emphasize community news, arts, entertainment and dining.

Aimed squarely at residents rather than visitors, these services are short on hotel and standard tour information. But they promise (and often deliver) the kind of up-to-date, inside skinny missing from general online travel sites. Some even allow you to customize information to your interests, from Indian restaurants to reggae, and receive that information as an e-mailed update.

“In some ways, they’re the online equivalent of local alternative weeklies,” notes Michael Shapiro, author of “NetTravel: How Travelers Use the Internet” (O’Reilly, $24.95). “Unlike most national or global online directories, the better local services have a voice, sometimes even an attitude, and tend to reflect the personality of the city they cover.”

Sidewalk, which started this spring in Microsoft’s own bailiwick of Seattle, launched its New York edition in May. Boston and Minneapolis will be online by September, with a total of 10 to 15 cities expected by the end of the year.

Sidewalk’s chief rival is Pasadena-based CitySearch (https://www.citysearch.com). It covers Austin, Texas; Nashville, Tenn.; New York City; Pasadena; Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill, N.C.; Salt Lake City and Park City, Utah; and San Francisco, with Portland, Ore., and Toronto slated to come online by the end of summer. Both services have sizable local staffs, but the information they gather and the way it’s presented can vary considerably.

While Sidewalk concentrates on leisure activities scheduled the upcoming weekend, CitySearch encompasses everything from school lunch menus to where to get a haircut. Well-organized, easy-to-navigate CitySearch provides more lodging information, but because it’s advertiser-driven, it isn’t comprehensive. The Pasadena section, for example, lists 49 choices--but only two include more than an address and phone number.

Sidewalk does a good job on regional getaways; the “Places to Go” section on its Seattle site includes travel tips from a local tour operator and reviews of area bed-and-breakfast inns. And Sidewalk’s New York restaurant reviews are shepherded by Bryan Miller, former restaurant critic for the New York Times.

Unlike Sidewalk and CitySearch, Denver-based DiveIn (https://www.divein.com) doesn’t provide original reporting on the cities it covers--Atlanta; Chicago; Denver; Detroit; Jacksonville, Fla.; Los Angeles; Minneapolis; Phoenix; Portland, Ore.; and Seattle. But DiveIn does supply staff-written reviews and ratings of local Web sites in eight categories, and encourages residents to voice their opinions about what they’ve read.

Alarmed by potential competition from such online newcomers, many newspapers have boosted content on their own Web sites. To find them, try American Journalism Review’s Newslink (https://www.newslink.org), which lists more than 1,500 daily, alternative and campus newspapers around the world.

At their best, newspaper sites provide the same immediacy and insider feel--with a depth the interlopers are hard-pressed to match. Case in point: the Washington Post (https://www.washingtonpost.com), whose irreverent “Destination: D.C.” section gives visitors a “glimpse of Washington’s seamy underbelly” on a scandal tour. Along with descriptions of such landmarks as Gary Hart’s Capitol Hill townhouse and the Jefferson Hotel (site of a tryst between Clinton advisor Dick Morris and a $200-an-hour call girl), the site links to Post stories that give an even juicier context.

Bly welcomes reader comments; her e-mail address is Laura.B[email protected]. Electronic Explorer appears monthly.