[Review] iPhone app: UrbanSpoon

Website: www.urbanspoon.com
iPhone site: www.urbanspoon.com/m
App Store Link: [1]
Cost: Free
Uses: accelerometer & GPS
This was an app that I heard about before the release of the iPhone apps. And I WANTED it. You see my friends and I have a problem. The inability to make a decision when it comes to food. So this little app can come in handy. The GPS finds your location and will give a higher priority to restaurants nearer your current location. It also seems to pick higher rated restaurants more often. Just give it a shake (or push the button, but that’s not as much fun) to play the restaurant slot machine. When the name of the restaurant lands just touch it to get address & phone number. Touch the phone number to call the restaurant. Touch the address to launch Google Maps. Overall, pretty cool. You can also say that you’re in a mood for Chinese, lock it down on Chinese and it will limit the searches to what you have selected.
Already this app has had an article in the New York Times food section and has been “spun” over 2,000,000 times (Source: [2]) in the short time it has been available.
Suggestions for improvements:

• Tie into your UrbanSpoon profile so it can suggest your “Spoon Up” restaurants more often and avoid restaurants you give a “Spoon Down” to.
• More cities listed. (Check here for current city availability [3]) This is a website thing as adding cities & restaurants take time. When I first joined the website ATL was listed but not MEM. It was, however, added shortly thereafter.
• Another website thing, Hours. This is very important to me because I work nights. Does a place we’re ordering stay open until late enough for someone to swing by to pick up food? Currently we have to call and ask.

Links

• Review: Urbanspoon for iPhone and iPod touch