Rochester, NY, January 14, 2014 — Points Mentioned, the service that automatically maps community news articles, today released its mobile app for hyperlocal news discovery, News Bayou. Now available for download on iOS and Android, the app makes it easy for mobile readers to find community news about any location. News Bayou connects you to the 1.5 million articles in its geo-database, delivering a personalized news feed based on your location.

By collaborating with over a hundred community news publications, News Bayou has created a radical way to discover and access local news. It’s all made possible with Points Mentioned, a geocoding plugin that automatically identifies locations in the text of news articles. An interactive map is then embedded on the story to help visualize its events and can be enlarged to reveal points linking to other articles about the area. With thousands of new points added daily, News Bayou can connect readers with over 5 million locations identified in community news articles across the country.

“We’re reinventing how people discover and access local news by indexing and serving the news based on the user’s current location,” explains Matt Larson, director of business development for Points Mentioned. “For the first time, readers can use a single platform to discover local news and events for any location because we’re aggregating them from such a wide range of community publications.” News Bayou aims to personalize the news by directing you to stories about your community or any location that you care about. By default the app identifies stories about where you are, but the location bar allows you to search for local news anywhere in the country. The feed can be further customized to view the stories closest to your selected location, or those published most recently; by adjusting the “space-time” slider, you control how the stories are filtered to fit your preference.

Knowledge has increased exponentially over the last few years; the problem is how to obtain pertinent information that is needed for a particular area. Whether it is news blips, cultural events, or to learn about the area you’re traveling through, News Bayou is a simple way to find valuable information about your surroundings.

You can download News Bayou on iOS, Android, or access the web app on your smartphone or desktop at www.NewsBayou.com