Here's an interesting bit of news: the founder of PayPal has backed Yelp!, a service which helps you organise recommendations for local services.

I've been thinking a lot about local services recently, in relation to mobile (of course). Why doesn't Vodafone Live! or OrangeWorld have a "My Brighton" or equivalent menu on it - containing local event listings, the front-page headline from the local newspaper, classifieds I might have demonstrated an interest in, information from the council about my area (when the bins are being collected would be nice), other demographic information?

All this stuff is out there, and (gasp) it's relevant to me even when I'm away from my desk, or TV. And, tying in with the long tail... whilst information on Brighton might be of little value to someone in Liverpool, working out a way to deliver location-specific info to (say) residents of the largest 50 towns and cities in the UK would be incredibly useful. I suspect that the answer lies in doing deals with local newspaper syndicates, centralised sources of information, and local councils...

We're trying to push this along, of course. But I can't help feeling that it's more important that this gets done, than that we get to be the guys who do it.