5 ms·
Show HN: Eating Around, an iPhone app find restaurants nearby
- aarondf 12y agoHey guys, this is my first consumer app in the App Store, would love to hear what y'all think. Please feel free to ask any questions.
- shaunxcode 12y agoIs there a vegan category?
- aarondf 12y agoNot yet, but I'll take this as a vote for it
- saiko-chriskun 12y agoseconding support for a vegan category
- SyncTheory13 12y agoNeed this as well - it's the main reason I use Yelp.
- aarondf 12y agoOk, we'll be adding vegan in the next release! Your wish is my command
- shaunxcode 12y agoIf you can do it as well as your other categories and market it as such you will definitely become a "must have". There is an app for happycow but it requires a lot of sorting to find a) businesses that are still open (as in both not shut down and currently open for business) and b) worth dining at!
- revx 12y agoNice, Tinder for Food.
- hashtag 12y agoWhat does this do that Yelp doesn't currently. (On mobile so lazy to click through is the site explains it). I ask because I use Yelp for this a lot
- aarondf 12y agoGood question. I think if you click through you'll see the use case, but where Yelp is the Yellow Pages, Eating Around is a hotel concierge. We give you two inputs: food type & distance. That's it. Then we show you pretty pictures. In short: a better user experience.
- oldstrangers 12y agoIsn't finding a good restaurant the most important user experience here? And by that metric, Yelp seems better suited to my needs. Making a 'less Yelp, Yelp' doesn't automatically make it better.
- aarondf 12y agoYeah, it totally is the most important use experience. I'm glad Yelp suits your needs here, it didn't suit our needs, so we built this. If Yelp is better for you, please feel free to continue using it!
- dkd903 12y agoBut the thing is I will not choose any restaurant based on the pictures. I will read reviews about good n bad experiences of users who have been there before me.
- girinambari 12y agoThough I liked how professionally you concluded the thread, I think his/her point is very valid. It would have been great proof to people like me if you could have listed your app strengths and why those are important comparing with yelp, whether he/she will use your app or not secondary. Selling to tough masters is the key part of business, isn't it? Good luck!
- mdaniel 12y agoIs there some good reason why this is an iPhone app instead of using the seemingly widely supported Geolocation API in the browser? http://caniuse.com/#feat=geolocation http://caniuse.com/#feat=geolocation I would think the redeployment time alone would make the browser a compelling platform (seconds versus whatever the current appstore lag is ... two weeks?) This kind of thing always gets to me: apps that launch for iOS and then several years later realize there is this thing called "Android" and that it might catch on one day.
- aarondf 12y agoThere's not a insanely good reason, but "the App Store" is definitely a reason. It's possible that we'll do a mobile web version in the future. Android is planned before that though.
- piyush_soni 12y agoNice app for iOS. On my Nexus 5(Android), I use it like this: "Ok Google, show me [type] restaurants near me".
- aarondf 12y agowats an android? (kidding)
- webwielder 12y ago>we believe, more than anything, that food is visual. More than taste?
- aarondf 12y agoHeh, probably not.
- computerjunkie 12y agoI cringed when I read that phrase. What about smell? are you going to eat food that looks great but smells bad? The visual aspect of food is highly overrated, it mostly stems from pretentious restaurants that emphasis the importance of presentation. I agree that food is visual, but other senses such as smell, texture are equally, if not more important than the visual aspect. The idea for this application is not new and it seems to be only available for iOS (I'm on Android) only so I don't have much to say about it. When I want to find a nice place to eat food, word of mouth from friends or colleagues is what I use.
- fataliss 12y agoWell until you find a way to give samples for taste and smell to your mobile users (good luck with that), I think that the visual side is what's left of it. Even tho I agree with lots of other folks here about the fact that choosing a restaurant might require more data than just a couple nice pictures... as far as food itself go, a picture is what describes it best (worth a thousand words they say).
- computerjunkie 12y agoas far as food itself go, a picture is what describes it best (worth a thousand words they say). Have you seen those food related adverts? And then you actually go buy the product and it never looks the same as the adverts? A good photographer with low/mid range Photoshop skills can make a poor product into an appealing one.
- jaredstenquist 12y agoCongrats on shipping. I wanted to do something simple like this. I bought a domain for it, Radiyum.com (Radius + Food), but ended up shelving the idea for some of the reasons other folks have brought up. There's only so much time in the day! Good luck with the app. Looks well designed.
- aarondf 12y agoI'll let you in on a little secret, I didn't design it! I hired a very talented fellow[1] to do the design for me, because I suck so bad at it [1] http://thomweerd.com/ http://thomweerd.com/
- etjossem 12y agoFeedback: When sent a text message about the app, some Android phones (inc. S4) resolve the URL as 'http://www.eatingaround.com/download.' http://www.eatingaround.com/download.' - with a period at the end. I 404d when I clicked it. Worth addressing before you release Android.
- TheBiv 12y agoGig 'Em! Awesome looking site!
- aarondf 12y agohey, Gig 'em back! See you in College Station this weekend?
- TheBiv 12y agoI have a wedding that I am in the wedding party for (and they're an Aggie couple - terrible planning) :( Are you? Random: We actually graduated in the same class! I think we bumped into each other a few times in college...and now on HN! haha
- jedanbik 12y ago"Text me a download link", to me, to see that displayed prominently instead of a link to the App Store (on mobile) strikes me as a creepy way to collect phone numbers. That probably isn't how you want to come across (and you probably don't even care about the phone numbers), so I would suggest having a different version of that page for user agent: iPhone. Please don't interpret this critique as me calling you a creep!
- ijustwanttovote 12y agoI have been thinking about building something similar for the past year. More so after I opened a dessert shop. Good job and good luck.