Here at Resturant.com we are always interested in anything that makes life and eating easier for busy people. Urbanspoon is an iPhone / iTouch application aimed at enhancing the dining-out experience for people (like most of us) who are overworked and short on time. It can help you find the right place to eat in your own hometown or somewhere unfamiliar out on the road. Urbanspoon can also help you select the restaurant that’s right for your mood at the time, or it can select one for you. The Urbanspoon iPhone program is derived from Urbanspoon the Web site, where a compilation of restaurant reviews from newspapers, Blogs, and individual diner’s experiences are published to help users select good places to eat.
The Urban Spoon app is free at all Apple App Stores, and once installed it asks only that you first register as a user in order to enable the nifty features it contains. One of the more entertaining features is called the “Shake” screen. The Shake screen looks sort of like a slot machine display. Three vertical rows containing your locations and locations near you are displayed on the left, the center row is filled with different types of cuisine, and the far right is occupied by different price categories. Simply “shaking” the phone in your hand will activate the “reels” and start them spinning, and when they stop a restaurant has been chosen for you. You can preview the selection the app has chosen by pressing on the restaurant name on the display. If you want another random selection, shake your phone again, that’s all there is to it.
Of course, the Urbanspoon app is not just about random choices, the program also allows you to lock in any or all of the parameters displayed onscreen and more narrowly define your search options. Selecting and locking-in “Mexican” on the center reel will cause the app to select a nearby Mexican restaurant for you. If you lock-in your location and a price range, Urbanspoon will select a restaurant in from the random cuisine list, but in the location and price range you specified. Any combination of the three parameters can be utilized or disregarded, and makes the app totally customizable for each user.
Urbanspoon knows your location through the iPhone’s built-in GPS function and allows you to go restaurant-exploring in other states and cities when traveling too. It is a handy and entertaining little app that lets you search restaurants and recommendations online while you’re on the go. Urbanspoon is compatible with any iPhone or iPod running iPhone 2.0 software.
Comments on this entry are closed.