The LiveVillage Philosophy

Simplify

By design, LiveVillage is very simple. It does not answer questions. It does not give directions. It does not ask where you’re going, tell you what it likes, try to read your mind or pretend to be a butler. It is just a map that shows everything, and then gets out of the way so you can decide for yourself what interests you. It gives you a starting point, and the rest is for your discovery.

Follow nature

The things in a neighborhood are already naturally related by geography and time, and it’s how you experience them in real life. Traditional directories have always tried to "let your fingers do the walking", but it’s really nothing like walking, is it? If you find something interesting in their alphabetical listings, you still have to mentally translate a cryptic address to a physical location before you can go there. If you want to know what’s nearby, or if the shop or restaurant you found is open for business right now, forget it. Web-based directories just tack on a search function that will only overload you with more geographically befuddling information. By using a map interface, and a time criterion, LiveVillage breaks these constraints. Once you find something interesting, the first things you'll notice are where it is and if it's available.

Don’t get lost
And it's easy to find something interesting, because LiveVillage combines the serendipity of walking with the power of a search engine. That means you don’t have to know in advance exactly what you want, because you can just browse with your mouse. But if you do know what you want, you can still search for specific places and categories just like any web-based index. Since whatever you look up leads directly to a clickable map, you can instantly switch back and forth between either mode of exploring. You always know where you are no matter what you’ve discovered.

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