While editing a position marker for a business that caters for fully serviced offices, I stumbled across something called Google Hotpot. This is a newly launched service which allows you to rate and comment on other google places entries in your local area. This includes restraunts, shops, museums or just about any business that has a google places entry. There are not many few ratings for places in the local area, but in bigger cities, there are a lot more reviews

It would be good if google published a simple javascript tool to allow you to put on your website a hotpot rating and buttons to submit your own review. Maybe it's just a matter of time before that service becomes available.