A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.

Google Map Maker Goes Hyper-Local with Activity Stream (CNet)
Google’s Map Maker goes local by amplifying its service with information on neighborhood hot spots, cafes, gyms, and more. The Web giant announced today that it’s doing this with a new Map Maker feature called Activity Stream.

Sizing Up GrubHub’s IPO Prospects (Crain’s Chicago Business)
A report friday said that GrubHub, the Chicago-based online food-delivery company, selected Citigroup to lead an initial public offering of stock in 2013. If the report holds — in an interview with Crain’s, a GrubHub representative called the report speculation — GrubHub would become the second of the current generation of Chicago tech companies to go public, following Groupon’s November 2011 IPO.

Death of the Classified: Publishers Struggle to Ignite Old Ads in New Media (Paid Content)
Publishers reliant on classified advertising are getting hurt by the UK’s fragile local economy. Some are now desperately courting alternative advertising models, but our earnings round-up shows their growth is so far being wiped out.

Groupon, Daily Deals and the Complex Question of Business Failure (MIT Technology Review)
The task for analysts interested in whether daily deals cause businesses to fail is to construct a statistical model that allows for the hidden factors at work. The important question then becomes this: is there any correlation between the hidden factors that cause a business to offer daily deals and the hidden factors that cause the business to fail?

The Post Forgets to be Local (The Washington Post)
Patrick B. Pexton: The District and surrounding counties should be covered like the major metropolitan jurisdictions they have become. A loyal core of local readers, in print or online, is a Post franchise that no one can take away. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, remember, were covering local government and cops — not the White House — when they made history.

Why Plastic Cards Aren’t Going Away in Mobile Payment Future (GigaOm)
Google is reportedly poised to follow PayPal’s lead by introducing a plastic payment card. The moves show that payment systems can find value in plastic cards, which can be accepted everywhere and can get around hardware limitations that hold back some technologies like NFC.

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