Tuesday Poll: Which App Do You Use?

I recently published a post on the relatively new Near+now app for the iPhone which acts like Pandora but for dining establishments near you. Today I installed Where onto my iPhone and am beginning to figure it out. The poll for this Tuesday, the first day of September is: Which iPhone app do you use when it comes to finding places to eat?

I personally use a few: OpenTable, Urbanspoon, AroundMe, Near+now, and WHERE.

What do you use? And though for me this is a question of iPhone apps it doesn’t necessarily have to be for everyone else.

Near + Now: Pandora meets Urban Spoon

Now living in an iPhone culture we have many apps to choose from when trying to find a place to eat. Some of my all time favorites include Urban Spoon, Around Me, and of course Open Table’s app. But recently there is a new player to the field of restaurant sleuthing in the urban jungle and that is Near+Now. From what I can tell this app has a fairly extensive database of restaurants, bars, entertainment venues, and cafes. But what makes it a step above the rest is its ranking system. It operates just like Pandora does; the more you rank, the better it becomes at offering recommendations.

Near + Now home page

Popover Cafe on Near+now

The interface utilizes all that the iPhone has to offer providing for each listing a link to view it on a map, call or visit the website, and view reviews.

Even more interesting is the company behind it, SORTUV, whose goal is to pandora-ize search engines. Here they are in their own words:

We build search technologies that make it possible to discover information that is difficult to describe.

Words like cool, modern, hip, romantic, retro and timeless mean different things to different people. So until computers can read your mind, Keywords don’t always work.

With Sortuv technologies you discover places, events, products, people, ideas and experiences that matter to you by comparing and connecting them to things you already know and like.

-From their “About Us” section.

I don’t know much about their other operations but this app has greatly help me find new restaurants in my own neighborhood as well as avoid getting restaurants I hate as options.

Sent from my iPhone

Just a quick update!

The Coffee Straws team is hard at work at revamping the site and preparing it for is full opening this summer. You won’t see much action around here in the weeks to come but check back in April for official updates and possibly our return posts.

For now I will send this post from my iPhone because from within the tranches of restaurant and food reviewing comes the flexibility to publish from location.

-Huysmans out.

iPhone = iFood?

***STRAW GOSSIP***

According to a blog, you can now download a program called Urbanspoon to your 3G iPhone that will randomly find you a good restaurant in the area when you shake the phone. It uses the new iPhone’s GPS capabilities and motion sensors. Pretty cool. Here is a demo of it, which explains it much better than I ever could: DEMO.