InHawaiiNow.com, a new Web site by my very good friends Shane Robinson and Roxanne Darling of Barefeet Studios, tries to answer that question using real-time Twitter updates from users in Hawaii who generally cover specific topics.
Example: Want to know what is going on in the music scene tonight in Hawaii? Check out the music category. By doing so I found out via Dr. Trey that tonight, from 6 to 9 at Jimmy Buffet’s I could have listened to Mailani Makainai.
Too bad I’m not on Oahu at the moment. 
As more Twitter users that are in Hawaii added to the site its value is sure to skyrocket. I think the real time searches of the entire Twitterverse add even more value. Such as anyone that has recently mentioned Hawaii on Twitter. I’d love to see more geographic areas and keyword searches added to the list. This way when you’re out and about you can find on what is going on in the area you are, rather than just in Hawaii in general. With a little hacking of the URL you can do this yourself. I did a quick hack for Hanauma Bay (one of my favorite places on the planet). But imagine if you could quickly find out where everyone was surfing today. Valuable, marketable, and useful stuff.
I’m sure Barefeet Studios has many more ideas for InHawaiiNow. I’m glad Hawaii has a service like this and I think many travel destinations should definitely consider doing something similar – perhaps somehow even on their official sites for their area.
A more geeky reason that I like this site is because Shane used Code Igniter, a PHP MVC framework, that I rather adore. More on this later.
I wondered if you and other smart people would modify the /tag url to show other keyword searches… Bravo!
It’s a simple direct API call for the keywords versus the topics which are pulled from our database. I’ll be fixing that soon. Have to be mindful of the Twitter API call limits.
Thanks for the great post and suggestions. We already have columns in the database that will be used to display specific Island tweets. That and an actual Directory coming soon.
Your ideas for other specific keywords rocks! Definitely discuss that with Roxanne.
What can I say Shane, I’m a hacker! Looking forward to the updates! (Any thoughts on making it a platform that other cities/locations could use?)
You GET IT Colin. Thanks so much! See you and E soon!
But you guys make it easy to get!