Urbanspoon

Ok, so I had too much caffeine today and don't seem to be able to stop writing (it served me well at work though). I did a whole big update on the iPhone last night and was not surprised to see some new icons. I'm a bit of a luddite so usually I just ignore them and brush them to the second page but I decided to play around with the new apps and down loaded a few. The first is the NYT app that looks shockingly like the ones that they originally used to sell the iPhone to snobby New Yorkers like myself. The NYTs access had been pretty piss poor and you could basically only look at it as a webpage. The new NYT app seems like it was made for the iPhone format and you simply scroll down and you read through the page. It also take much less time to load.

The second app is too embarrassing to talk about.

The third app is one called urbanspoon. Like hopstop.com, this seems like an tool that I can use all the time. It finds you (only in major cities) and will suggest different restaurants based upon type and price. I still haven't figured how to scroll through say all of the Thai places in Park Slope but I'll work on it. You shake it (like a magic 8 ball) to get your suggestions which seems a bit gimicky and the GPS + suggestion makes my "1984" Big Brother radar go off. The NYTs app already runs new advertising so I can't wait until I put in UWS, French, $$$$$$ and get an ad for TGIF along with the suggestion for Aix. But for now, cool.