Allow people to review, fave, or star individual menu items.
Here in San Francisco, Yelp is indispensable. In NYC, I used Menupages all the time. Both are great for simple, honest, user-generated feedback of places to eat.
Often, I’m visiting the page for a restaurant I’ve already tried, just to skim through the reviews and decide what to order. Case in point, my favorite sammy shop in the whole wide world, Ike’s Place, has a ton of amazing vegetarian sandwiches on the menu. My favorite is their “Going Home For Thanksgiving” sandwich, but sometimes I want to try something new.
Wouldn’t it be neat-o if you could just look at the menu and see reviews for each item? Maybe even sort by popularity or rating? I think it would.
One of the rooms in my apartment just opened up, and I’m considering either finding a new roommate or making the room available as a share for people who visit SF often and would prefer to have a furnished room in SF that they can use a few days to a week a month for less than they’d spend on one night in a hotel room.
If that’s of interest, or if you know someone looking for an apartment, read on…
If you or an equally awesome friend is looking for an apartment in San Francisco (starting mid August to Sept 1), a room is about to open up in my apartment. It’s a three bedroom in San Francisco that I share with two other people, and one of them (Jenny) is starting grad school and moving into school housing.
In Duboce Triangle (seriously great, super walkable neighborhood with tree-lined streets, and lots of places to eat.) A quick walk to the Lower Haight or Castro. 2 blocks from Duboce Park (swell dog park — and the apt itself is dog-friendly.) Within 3 blocks, you’ll find burritos, burgers, vietnamese and chinese, bars, a gym, and a 24-hour Safeway (grocery store)
Washer and Dryer in unit.
Shared Kitchen + living room + bathroom
2 blocks from the Church St. MUNI (K,M,T) and N-Judah, J-Church, F-Market, and 22.
$550/month. (Yes this is the insane part. It’s rent controlled because my other roommate has been there for a while.)
p.s. If you’re interested in the share idea, drop me a line. I have one person interested so far, and it’d be around $100-200/month.
I have a post up on Rohit Bhargava’s site, The Personality Project, about how we messed up last Mother’s Day. I’ve gotten good feedback on it, but reading it still gives me the chills.
Just a quick note: I’m back from India and I’ll be at Jelly tomorrow in midtown Manhattan. I hope to see many of my NYC friends there as well as some new faces.
I’m in India for a couple weeks and I just starting my second day in Delhi. Here are a few initial observations:
The malls have arrived. It was clear it was coming last time I was in India two years ago, but now it’s ingrained in the way of life in Delhi (and I assume, most Indian cities.) The chaotic, sprawling, lively markets always defined my experience of India. They’re still around, and for the moment I think they’ll coexist with their more modern counterparts.
There are new cars everywhere. And air conditioners, and snazzy Reebok shoes. It’s been years since India opened up its trade policies so something other than the Fiat and Ambassador could claim the streets, but it’s still a shock that you can go a whole day without seeing a single one, when they used to be *all* you could see.
Corollary to the above: people used to *really* customize their cars with all sorts of add-ons, stickers, colors and stuff. Probably because all you could get was a Fiat or an Ambassador, in a few select colors. The customization trend appears to have died now that more brands are available.
Delhi still sees daily brownouts. Usually at night, but sometimes in the morning. People have large tanks of water on the roofs of their homes and generators or backup battery power and inverter systems to supply water, and power lights and ceiling fans during outages.
Wi-fi is not omnipresent. It’s odd to open up my laptop and not see a single hotspot when in a pretty densely-packed residential neighborhood in a major city. Very different from the U.S., where the list shows a dozen pretty much anywhere in New York or SF, and at least a handful in even rural areas in CT. Bandwidth is also slow.
My iPhone isn’t hooked up yet. Everyone here has a cell phone. (We passed not one, not two, but four cell kiosks on our way out of the airport after getting our luggage.) But there’s still confusion around data and how to get GPRS/Edge activated. Hope to have it figured out today.
Someone I don’t know sent this email to me today. The project sounds interesting… reminds me of those ones where mail around a disposable camera.
But it’s not for me. Posting with permission in case anyone else is interested in helping Austin.
From: Austin Sprenkel To: me Date: Feb 23, 2008, at 12:29 AM
So the other day I was thinking, I want to do a ‘project’ where we take 1 white macbook. We then send this macbook to various people around the world (Creative Professionals) rotating people each week or so. At the end of the project, say maybe after about 4 months, we get the macbook back and find on it a compilation of work, documents, music, internet browser history, bookmarks, movies, photos, downloads, messages etc. etc. that have all been on this computer from a diverse group of people that have worked on it. When it is received we will have compiled a ‘personality’ if you will on the computer, after collecting a ‘piece’ of each user. We will document the amount of time the computer has spent with each individual, as well as record their name and address.
This is just a fresh idea that needs a bit of planning and polishing, so let me know your thoughts and opinions. The reason I am contacting you about it is I have been following some of your site, like photojojo, your blog and specifically Jelly! and it seems to me you are quit the ’social networker’, which I believe is the category the project falls under. Please let me know your thoughts and ideas! I would like very much to work with you on this project if you are interested! My contact info is listed below, and you can reach me any time!
Austin Sprenkel
Williams+Asti Creative Studio
937.409.4954
asprenkel@mac.com
www.astilifestyle.com
Brian Oberkirch asked me to help spread the word about BarCampNOLA. It’s a cause worth supporting.
From the wiki:
Let’s get a bunch of Gulf Coast geeks together and build something for someone who needs our help.
Maybe it’s time we do a BarCamp here in New Orleans. In addition to connecting digital folks, sharing what we know and what we’re working on… I’d like to find a struggling small business we could help immediately with a new site or enhanced Web services. Spend a weekend cranking as a team and launch the thing at the end of the weekend.
It’s coming up next weekend, and I think it’s a great idea. Attend or sponsor if you can, and if you’ve got a worthy project or know of one, let ‘em know.
I’ve long wanted to see Steve Jobs deliver one of his fabled keynote addresses and experience his Reality Distortion Field first-hand. Today’s the day!
If you’re in town for MacWorld drop me a line… especially if you’re standing in the long line for they keynote this morning.
One of the annoying things about Safari if you’re a web designer is that it uses the system-level Webkit rendering engine, meaning that it’s not possible to use the same machine to see how different versions of Safari will render a website.
His latest project is Photojojo. If you like photography, you will like Photojojo.
Before Photojojo, he was a founder of The Daily Jolt, an online community on 100 college campuses, helped create a non-profit called ChangeThis with Seth Godin, and brought the technology un-conference BarCamp to NYC. He also started a weekly casual coworking session called Jelly.
And he's consulted for companies such as Pearson, Apple, and Creative Good and co-authored The Big Moo, a WSJ best-seller, with Seth Godin, Malcolm Gladwell, Guy Kawasaki, Tom Peters, and others.
Quick note: I’ll be at 
