BooRah - Inside the Buzz

As promised, Google opened up the Android Market to third party applications this morning. You can now download and install our “BooRah Restaurant Guide” directly from the phone.

Please navigate to Market > Applications > Lifestyle  on the G1 phone and you should see the app there. Select it to install. So far ~1000 people have downloaded it and seem to be liking it so far. Please provide any feedback here or using the Android Market and we’ll address issues as soon as possible.

We are pretty excited to announce the alpha launch of “Restaurant Search” application on T-Mobile G1.

Please see BooRah’s Android G1 webpage for instructions to download and also a demo video.

If you are browsing this page on a T-Mobile G1, the you can install our application by downloading it from here

You can see additional screen shots of our application on flickr here

We are still waiting to load our app on to the Android Marketplace which should make it simpler to install.

Here is a quick description of some of the features that may entice you to download our app and use it for restaurant search on the go.

• Viewable Map Area Search - You can zoom-in/zoom-out or drag the map to any area of the search and just hit the “Refresh” button and see top restaurants within that area. You can then filter the restaurants by using the search option to filter  by cuisine, menu item, name or any other keyword.
• Comprehensive Search - You can use the search option to find restaurants by city, zip, neighborhood, point of interest, street/cross street and your current location.
• List View  - The list view is a convenient way to browse all the restaurants quickly to see their cuisine, ratings, reviews and other relevant information. You can easily tab navigate back and forth between the map and list views.
• Detail View - Each restaurant is rated for  food, service, ambiance. We also show a brief summary of the reviews and a list of  top sentiments extracted from those reviews. From this view, you can
  • Call the restaurant directly
  • Get a street view of that restaurant to see the surroundings and neighborhood.
  • Write a review of the restaurant

As with any alpha release, we’re hoping you’ll let us know of any issues you come across; we’ll fix them as soon as possible.  If you have any questions or feedback, please leave a comment here.

[UPDATE] - GPS acquisition seems to be an issue in many areas, we’re configuring a few additional map settings to provide a graceful workaround.

As T-Mobile launches the G1 phone, It’s a great feeling to see how well organized their logistics are. And most of all their customer service people are just amazing. Our development of the Android application wouldn’t have been nearly as easy if it were not for the really helpful folks at my neighborhood T-Mobile store in San Jose.

T-Mobile also did a great job of designating people to manage the online forums and the information was really timely and helpful. When you launch a new product with a new platform such as Android, things can get out of control but from logistics to planning and execution, T-Mobile seems to have done an awesome job. I’ll be in the line for my personal G1 bright and early tomorrow morning. Thank you folks for your help.

The first Android-powered phone, the T-Mobile G1, is launching Wednesday. We’re releasing an alpha version of Restaurant Search Application for you to find the best restaurants on the road. Android is a slick platform and we’re excited to let consumers  experience BooRah on the phone using a native client. We had an opportunity to load our application on a G1 phone this weekend and here are a few screen shots:

List View of a set of restaurants based on Search

Ratings & Summaries for the selected restaurant

Map View showing top rated restaurants based on GPS

In testing the G1 phone for the first time,  it is exciting to see the power of a platform that could change the world of mobile computing. We plan to have our alpha version ready for you to download when the T-Mobile  launches this Wednesday. Await our next blog post on instructions to download the application.

We’re happy to announce the launch of our  free, location-enabled Web Services API for Web sites and businesses looking to offer online restaurant reviews and ratings to their visitors. This web search API augments our existing syndication platform which is used by multiple newspaper and local destination websites. The key features of BooRah’s Web Services API are:

• Restaurant Search – Search for top rated restaurants across the US by City, Zip, Neighborhood, Point of Interest, Address, Street/Cross-Street, and Geo-Coordinates
• Restaurant Ratings – Get detailed ratings for Food, Service and Ambiance
• Restaurant Features – Get links for Discounts, Menus, Coupons, Takeout and many other valuable features

We are thrilled with the developments in the area of location-based services and recent announcements by Mozilla’s Geode, Loki’s browser-plugin and Iphone/Android platforms. We believe that BooRah’s semantic technology is uniquely positioned to deliver necessary content for mobile applications. The release of this API is a first step in supporting development of location-enabled restaurant applications are we are eager to drive the adoption by enhancing based on requirements from the community.

Here is the link to access our Restaurant Search API documentation.

Kosmix.com, a popular Internet destination that organizes content by topics,  is already using our API to enable consumers to search for favorite local restaurants.

We look forward to engaging with the developers to drive the adoption of this platform and enhance it further. Please send any questions regarding the API to api@boorah.com

Building on our previous post, “Location Aware Restaurant Search,” sometimes you don’t JUST want to see the “closest” restaurants, you want to see the Best Restaurants that are Close.  And how near or far “close by” is can depend greatly on where you are, whether you’re walking or driving, and what kind of food you want.

So here’s another clever BooRah application that shows you the Ten Best Restaurants on a Map — that is, we show you your 10 top choices as determined by the area shown on the map.  Zoom in tight on the map, and we’ll show you up to 10 very close-by choices; zoom the map out a bit, and we’ll choose the top 10 based on a broader selection of choices.

Location aware services are the wave of the future.  Built-in GPS chipsets & cell tower triangulation technologies have made Location Based Services (LBS) possible on smart-phones.  But, don’t underestimate your browser on your WiFi enabled laptop!  With technologies like Skyhook’s Loki and Mozilla Geode, you can inject location awareness into your everyday browser.

Today’s Techcrunch article reminded me that I hadn’t finished coding up a tiny Javascript bookmarklet that I had thought of a few months ago.  So, here it is: Your very own browser based location aware Restaurant Finder:

1. Install Loki browser plugin from their website
2. Drag this link to your browser’s bookmarks toolbar: Find Restaurants Nearby
3. Restart your browser & then simply click the new bookmark you created

This should come in really handy for the business traveler arriving at a new hotel late at night who needs to find a place to eat, or when you’re looking for a nearby good place to eat after a convention or conference.

JupiterMedia is hosting the Web3.0 event in San Francisco on Oct 16-17. The conference will explore  the strategies, tools, technologies and the big ideas necessary for building impactful, socially relevant, and profitable Web 3.0 products, services and companies. 2008 has already seen a rise in  prominence in the area of semantic technology and it’s application in multiple areas.

I’ll be moderating a session that will include demos from companies that are prominently featured in any semantic discussion.  Here’s the information on that session T4: Demo Hour - Semantic Search Solutions.

There are some other sessions that should be pretty exciting too. Mark your calendars and see you there.