Compare Cities Instantly With VERSUS IO
From Mashable:
Comparing major cities is an apples-and-oranges kind of game.
Sure, New York's got Times Square, but London has Piccadilly Circus. The Colosseum in Rome is no doubt a historic, must-see landmark -- and so is Paris' Eiffel Tower. It's all a matter of preference. But what if you're just looking to compare two cities based on straight-up, unbiased stats?
A new comparison engine called VERSUS IO, launched earlier this year, lets you pull up side-by-side analogies of 240 cities from around the world. The website uses a natural language algorithm to pull stats from across the web, comparing more than 100 criteria, and presenting it in a plain, pros-and-cons format.
Ramin Far, the site's founder, says VERSUS is an ideal way to cut out the middle man if you're looking for a new place to travel or relocate to.
"If you're trying to decide between two things, whether it's what phone to buy, what restaurant to eat at or what city to move to, it usually takes a while to sit down and search both," he tells Mashable. "With VERSUS, you can just type in the name of the two you want to compare. It's a very, very simple approach, but you get results and data immediately."
When comparing New York City to London, for example, you're presented with a list of pros (or "reasons") for each -- in this case, 17 for New York and 28 for London. Criteria like "number of airports," "cost of public transportation" and "population density" are listed with a brief explanation and a reference to the information's source.
Whatever city has the more favorable data, then, gets the "reason." (One of London's pros, according to the site, is its significantly lower murder rate compared to New York: 2.1 to 6.4 murders, respectively, out of every 100,000 people).
It's important to note that VERSUS' comparisons are strictly based on hard data. If you're wondering about a more cultural aspect -- say, which city has the best music scene or cheapest dumpling restaurants -- you're still better off asking a local.
VERSUS was originally launched in July as a comparison engine for tablets, cameras, apps and other tech products, using the same algorithm to pull data into a list format. The city feature was added this fall. Far says he plans to keep adding cities to the site and, down the line, maybe even people.
"For people, we'd compare celebrities, entrepreneurs or politicians," he says, "and probably look at data relating to net worth, number of startups, education, CVs -- things like that."
