Block Party

For the longest time, the easiest way to keep track of what was happening on your block was to spend an entire day positioned at your front door gazing alertly through your favorite pair of binoculars, giving you precious little time to handle personal matters and frankly making your neighbors a little nervous. Thanks to the advent of Everyblock, a site dedicated to giving you the most local version of the lowdown, you can put those binoculars down and think about skipping your neighborhood watch shift. The site which currently only covers the hood happenings in San Francisco, New York, and Chicago alerts residential readers on matters ranging from building code violations and business reviews to crime reports"¦and that's just the tip of the iceberg. The site also offers a forum for lost and found items and a missed connections section. It's like if Craigslist came right up to your front door.