craigslist is a free site on which you can find pretty much anything. people sublet their homes and apartments when they're on vacation, sell and buy things, advertise services, list job postings, arrange carpools with strangers, and more. craigslist varies by city/metropolitan area, and the idea behind it is that it's better or safer (and free) to interact with locals rather than people across the country. my favorite is the free part (craigslist doesn't take any portion of sales you make), the lack of shipping, and the fact that you don't have to create an account to use it. granted, it can be sketchy, but anyone with a dose of common sense should be fine.
yelp.com is also a local-based search engine-business-finder thing. you need an account to write reviews of businesses and restaurants, etc, but not to read the reviews. what's great is that there's a lot of smaller, non-chain restaurants and such that you'll find out about. and places that don't get good ratings are motivated to improve, because they know that their customers are their best advertisement.
in san francisco, I found an apartment through craigslist and yelp opened my eyes (or rather, my mouth and wallet) to many great known-only-to-locals restaurants and shops. going back to boston, i noticed that the number of postings on the boston craigslist was only a fraction of the sf craigslist. in dallas, it's pretty much not worth searching for anything on craigslist because so few people use it. the same thing applies to yelp. how are west coast (and even east coast) people so much more willing to use their voice, to participate in a democratic form of capitalism, than southerners? is it the coastal mindset? is it just because craigslist started out in california? is that trend changing? i sure hope so...
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