InsiderPages Widget

Although most businesses have an official website you can visit, where do you go to find out what customers think about their service? If you need a plumber or carpenter, how can you make sure you are getting one that is fast and reputable?

InsiderPages to the rescue! InsiderPages is one of the most interesting Web 2.0 community websites that have sprung up during the last years. It provides hundreds of thousands of reviews on local businesses, such as dentists, plumbers and day care centers.

I have developed a Mac OS X Widget for InsiderPages.com that was just made available today. It lets you search for businesses in your city, and rank them per rating, number of reviews or distance. For the technically curious, the results are received in JSON format with the help from XMLHttpRequest. Thankfully, the Widget HTML engine does not strictly follow the "Same Origin Policy" so you can freely pull from any host. However, I hope the browser makers will get going and implement the necessary JSONRequest proposal to make our lives a little bit easier, not to mention more secure.

Anyway, the InsiderPages.com Widget is here, and free for you to check out. So if you want to make sure that you find the dentist that caters to cowards, grab a copy today and let me know what you think!