I love Foursquare almost as much as I love food. And my love of food means I’m always up to try the best recommended dishes at a new restaurant. The problem with Foursquare is that it will tell me what restaurants are around me, but once I get there I have to dig through the tips to find out what looks good, which can be a bit awkward if you’re on a date with a non tech-reporter.
A new Foursquare hack launched in New York City today called BonApp, which sends you a SMS with the most popular dishes every time you check-in to a restaurant on Foursquare. They built their information extraction engine entirely on Foursquare, which determines which dishes are being mentioned most in tips. BonApp says they plan to expand their reach beyond Foursquare and provide information for more cities soon.
This is a taste of something a lot bigger. We’re building a service that will change the way people decide where and what to eat. In a world where most of us use a mobile device first to access information, there is no seamless and quick way to find a meal catered to one’s tastes.
-Kavin Bharti Mittal, Founder and Ceo of BonApp
In theory, the app sounds awesome. But as you can see from the image to the right, aside from the cute intro message (ego stroked), it wasn’t even able to recommend dishes from Le Pain Quotidien, which is an extremely popular restaurant chain. But again, in theory, the app sounds great and I imagine after a few weeks of feedback and future builds it will be able to one day provide me with a few life-changing epicurean experiences.
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Check out the beta build of BonApp here. Other Foursquare hacks you’ll enjoy: A sweet Foursquare hack lets you know where you checked-in one year ago each day [here] and Use Foursquare to track local transit times [here].
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