Hi Larry, we have considered the "open now" feature and it is in the pipeline. Really keeping it simple to start with. Search by area option should always be available? Doplaces looks great. Best of luck!
Say you are looking at grcery stores in SF and pop open categories and select bookstores, instead of seeing bookstores in SF you see a list of all the bookstores... Categories in area view I think would work better as a filter. or at least have a way to pop back to your last map view with that category from the businesses page.