Site Update 5/14/2009

By admin, 14 May, 2009, No Comment

We’ve update our site today with some minor, yet very useful changes:

  • Improved search ranges.  Now your personalized suggestions will try to stay focused in the area you specify only expanding to a wider range if necessary.
  • More Maps – We now allow you to map your wish list, personalized suggestions, and all of your ratings.  We also introduce a new custom map for the places visited on Travel Channel’s show Food Paradise.
  • Personalized Suggestions near real time.  Now we generate new personalized suggestions within minutes of you rating places.  We even pop-up a notification when you have new suggestions.
  • Updated the suggestibility score to include tags.

Also, check out our HubPage on how you can utilize sites like theSUGGESTR.com along with TV shows to find new and exciting places to eat and drink.

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Data Cleanup Leads to Improved Suggestions

By admin, 25 April, 2009, 1 Comment

Over the past month we’ve spent a lot of times to clean up some of the over 200,000 ratings we use to provide you with personalized suggestions. By making sure we don’t have multiple entries for the same business (e.g. John’s Pizza and Johns Pizza) we’re able to generate more suggestions and even more importantly more accurate suggestions.

This data clean-up along with our announcement of our move to a 100 point rating system puts us in a position to provide you the most accurate and fine tuned suggestions anywhere on the web.

We plan some more updates to our suggestion algorithm to continue to improve our suggestions to you.

If you haven’t tried out theSUGGESTR.com, all you need to do is register and tell us about your favorite places and we’ll make personalized suggestions so you can discover new places to eat.

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Updated Diner’s Drive-Ins and Dives Map

By admin, 22 April, 2009, 6 Comments

We’ve updated the format of our Diner’s Drive-In’s and Dive’s Map so that it’s easier for you to find the places near where you are that your favorite Food TV host has visited.  We also updated the map with some of Guy’s latest stops.  The best part about this news is that our new code will make it easier for us to create new maps for some of your other favorite FoodTV and Travel Channel shows.  Oh, and you can still check out our Rachael Ray map from her show $40 A Day.

Let us know what shows you’d like us to add.

Don’t forget to get personalized suggestions from theSUGGESTR all you need to do is login and rate some of your favorite places and then we’ll provide you with personalized recommendations.

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New Rating System

By admin, 6 April, 2009, 2 Comments

We’ve done a lot of work trying to improve our core value – providing you accurate and personal suggestions for local businesses like restaurants, bars and other local services.  One of the first steps we are taking is to move away from the traditional 5 star rating system and move to a more accurate 100 point system.

This 100 point system allows us to be more accurate with our suggestions as it allows you to be more granular with your ratings.  We believe that there are more than 5 levels of ratings that people have when they think of all the places they visit and thus the normal 5 star system ends up grouping places together that shouldn’t be.

For those who have contributed to our over 200,000 ratings we’ve already changed your ratings so that 1 star = 20 points, 2 stars = 40 points, 3 stars = 60 points, 40 starts = 80 points and 5 stars = 100 points.  You can now login and adjust your ratings if you desire.

As always we’d love to hear what you think.

theSUGGESTR.com

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theSUGGESTR & FireEagle – Together at Last

By admin, 23 February, 2009, 1 Comment

As we mentioned in our mobile site announcement we believe that one of the ways to make our personalized suggestions as useful as possible for you is to make sure they are available whereever you are. With that theme we’re please to announce our integration with Yahoo’s FireEagle. For those that are not aware FireEagle is a service that allows you to share your location with multiple applications. This is extremely useful so that websites can provide you location specific information even when GPS information is not readily available.

FireEagle provides two basic functions, it allows you to update your location and share it. With theSUGGESTR.com you can both update your location as well as use your current location to drive your searches. Once you’ve linked you’re FireEagle account to your theSUGGESTR.com account we will default your searches to your current FireEagle location. When you execute a search you can click the “Update FireEagle” link to update FireEagle with your new location. This way other sites can provide you location sensitive services without you having to update them.

You can find other FireEagle applications, including some simple programs that track your location and update your location automatically by visiting FireEagle’s website.

Once logged in, just click the Stay Connected link to get started with FireEagle and theSUGGESTR.

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theSUGGESTR Improves Personalized Mobile Suggestions

By admin, 11 February, 2009, 1 Comment

theSUGGESTR is all about providing you personalized local search based on your own personal tastes.  This eliminates the need for searching through 100’s of reviews but instead now we can suggest a place that meets your needs.  No where is this approach more beneficial than when you are away from home and only have your mobile device available to you.  That is why we are excited to announce improvements to our mobile site.

This new version of our mobile site makes searching easier than ever.  Just enter what your looking for (for example: pizza or lawyer or bar) and where your looking for it and we’ll do the rest.  We’ll provide you our unique personalized results letting you know which business best fit your tastes.  You also have available to you some of the sort options you’re used to from our regular site.  Sort by personalized score, # ratings or average rating.

Another new feature is the ability to see your personal wish list from your mobile device.  This makes it easy for you to find businesses you wanted to check out but haven’t had the chance yet.  Don’t forget to rate it once you’ve checked it out.  Speaking of rating businesses…

Our new mobile site allows you to rate businesses right from your phone.  So the next time your bored and have your cell phone handy you can spend a few minutes rating some local businesses and improve your suggestibility score – which means better local suggestions the next time you need one.

One last note, we decided to keep this site as simple as possible so it would work on as many phones as possible not just the fancy ones.  We’ll be working on some more advanced applications for iPhone’s and Blackberry’s in the near future.

Thanks for listening!

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theSUGGESTR integrates with Twitter

By admin, 31 January, 2009, No Comment

A few days ago we announced our integration with BrightKite, today we’re pleased to announce that we’ve implemented similar integration with microblogging giant Twitter.

We’ve implemented the same two types of integration for both Twitter & BrightKite. The first is our TwitterBot. This bot shows every rating that occurs on theSUGGESTR.com. Subscribe to this if you’d like to see all the ratings on theSUGGESTR.com.

Our other type of integration allows registered theSUGGESTR.com user’s connect their account with their Twitter account. Once connected we will automatically post a message to Twitter account for each rating you make so your followers can know what you think about the businesses you rate.

If you have ideas on how we can improve our integration with Twitter feel free to comment on this post. Also don’t forget for the latest on the development of theSUGGESTR.com you can follow us on Twitter.

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theSUGGESTR.com integrates with BrightKite

By admin, 29 January, 2009, 1 Comment

We’re pleased to announce that we’ve implemented two types of integration with microblogging site BrightKite.   BrightKite is very similar to Twitter but it also has a location based concept that allows to see what’s going on around you and check-in at your current location.

We’ve implemented two types of integration.  The first is our BrightKite Bot.  This bot shows every rating that occurs on theSUGGESTR.com.  This way you can use BrightKite’s features to see what’s going on around you!

Our other type of integration allows registered theSUGGESTR.com user’s connect their account with their BrightKite account.  Once connected we will automatically post a message everytime you rate a place on theSUGGESTR.com letting your BrightKite followers see what you think of various businesses.

If you have ideas on how we can improve our integration with BrightKite feel free to comment on this post.

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How-To-Use Search 3.0

By admin, 28 January, 2009, 1 Comment

With the introduction of our new Search 3.0 we thought a quick summary of how to best use it would be helpful.

To get started you can click on the Get Suggestions link or use the Search Toolbar at the top of any page. You have the ability to search in two different ways, “Search For” and “Search Like”.  These options give you the flexibility to control your own search, making it even more personalized.

Get Suggestions

The Search For feature will prompt you to enter in a keyword, category or tag that you wish to search for.  For example, you could search for:

  • bars
  • pizza
  • beer
  • Italian Food
  • Dry Cleaner

Based on what you type in we search our extensive database to match places that are described using that term.

The Search Like feature allows you to type in a place (one of the places on our site) and find places that are similar to that.  For example, lets say your favorite restaurant is Outback Steakhouse.  First select the Search Like from the drop down and then start typing in Outback Steakhouse.  Select the Outback steakhouse that you love and then type in where you wish to find another restaurant that is similar to that.  theSUGGESTR.com will then search and find restaurants that are similar in the area you searched in.  For each result, you can click the link to compare the two places to see why theSUGGESTR.com believes they are similar.

Once we have run your search you are then brought to our search result screen.  Our search result screen is split into 3 main components.

Search Result Screen

On the left you can filter and order your search.  You are able to filter by cost or by distance.  The order by section is different if you are a guest or a logged in user.  By registering and signing in we offer you the ability to sort the results by your predicted score or by the number of your friends that have rated a place.  To use the order by feature, just drag and drop the fields in any order you wish and we will sort in that order.  For example if you want to sort by Average Rating and then by Distance, you would drag the Average Rating to the top and then move the Distance right below it.  We let you determine any combination to sort your results.  Also on the left panel are common tags in the area you are searching and also similar tags to what you just searched for and you can click on any of these to search for that tag.

The center panel displays the results for each place.  theSUGGESTR.com provides you with the name, address and phone number of each place.  On the right hand side of each result you will see the average rating, total number of comments and category.  If you are logged in we will also provide you the ability to add the place to your wish list and also show you the number of comments/reviews by your friends.  A new feature that we recently added will also show you if a place is similar to another place you have already rated.  Just think about this, lets say you are searching for bars in Chicago, IL and as you are search a bar comes up and we tell you this bar is similar to your favorite bar in New York City.  Wouldn’t that be something you would want to know?  Well know you will and you don’t have to spend hours trying to figure that out.

The right panel of the search result screen displays the map of the area you are searching.  You can zoom in and move the map to any location you wish and run the search again just in the view of the map.

If you are already a member remember to keep rating places so we can continue to provide you with new and exciting places you will like.

If you are not a member yet, sign up today (its FREE!) and start rating places you have been to so that theSUGGESTR.com can give you a more personalized search experience.

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Search 3.0 – Improved Local Suggestions

By admin, 23 January, 2009, 2 Comments

theSUGGESTR.com is pleased to announce Search 3.0, a new and more intuitive way to find what you are looking for on our website. To get started either click on the Get Suggestions link from our menu or just type in what and where you are looking for it in our search toolbar at the top of any page.

Get Suggestions

You may ask what makes our Search 3.0 any different then searching for a place on google, yahoo, or other sites. theSUGGESTR.com takes search to the next level by predicting how well you will like places and telling you WHY you will like the place. As a guest our search is limited in what we can provide you, but by registering and becoming a member of theSUGGESTR.com (which is FREE to do!) we can offer you a much more personalized search that is tailored just for you.

Think about this…. when searching other sites for an Italian Restaurant in New York City you will be displayed with tons of reviews for each place and when looking through these will have no clue if you can trust the reviews you are reading. What theSUGGESTR.com does is let you know how similar a user is to you while you are reading the reviews. Also by being able to sort your results by the ones we predict you will like and even search the comments by users who are similar to you, this allows you to find a place that you can pretty much be sure that you will enjoy. Our map allows you to zoom in and pan to any area you wish to and then you can search and find places that are within the view of the map, this gives you the power to control the exact location you are looking for.

Personalized Recommendations

Search 3.0 was built to save you time and bring you results that are just for YOU! If you are a member of theSUGGESTR.com already just keep rating places to help us find more places you will like, if you are not member then sign up today!

Keep an eye out for our next post which will be a more detailed How-To Use Search 3.0 blog!

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