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Archive for the ‘New features’ Category

New features you may have missed

In New features on 15/09/2009 at 11:26

We’re way, way behind on our posting on this blog, we know, we’re sorry. Summer was spent insanely busy tweaking and adding new things to the site. Here’s a quick overview for now—we’ll go into the details in later posts:

  • New algorithm calculates review averages in a more fair way, gives more weight to majority opinion.
  • On special days like Christmas and New Years, we show opening time information only for those restaurants who have explicitly added special opening times to our site. Everything else shows as “information unknown”. This should make it easier to find the places that are definitely open.
  • New social features: follow reviewers you like, see what they’ve been reviewing and favoriting. Get restaurant recommendations based on your taste (which is based on the reviews you write compared to the reviews other users write), and suggested reviewers to follow.
  • Twitter integration: Use Twitter? Send selected tweets to your Eat.fi profile for your followers to see! Click on “edit my profile” on your profile page, and add your Twitter username there. After that, anything you tweet with “#eatfi” in it will be visible to your Eat.fi followers as well. Can be used for jotting down a mini-review from your phone while you’re at a restaurant, seeing if anyone wants to join you for lunch, or just ruminating about food and restaurants in general.
  • Clearer review voting: That little + and – under each review is a tool for you to indicate if you think a review is good enough for Eat.fi. Any review with more than -5 votes is immediately deleted, and if a particular restaurant gets a lot of – votes, we investigate. + votes are currently just good karma, but we have plans for those as well.
  • AdMessages for restaurants: You may have noticed some orange-colored messages on the main map. We are offering restaurant owners the chance to let you know about special deals, menus, or events on our site in a way that we hope you will find useful and informative. These messages are meant to be the virtual equivalent of messages you often find taped to restaurant windows: “Our asparagusmenu is in season again” and so on.
  • Better admin tools: This is mainly for us, but you benefit as well as it lets us keep a closer eye on potential abuses of the site.
  • Bug fixes and polish: We do this all the time. Little details around the site that we try to improve. Bugs bug us. We hope they will bug you less and less as time goes on.

Eat.fi mobile, iPhone & S60

In New features on 25/05/2009 at 20:51

We’ve been a bit slow to update this blog, but in case you missed it:

We’d been asked over and over again: “When will you have a mobile site?”

As with everything else on Eat.fi, we didn’t want to rush and make just any old thing. We wanted the mobile version to be screamingly fast, clean, and easy to use, while containing everything it needs yet not a thing too many. A haiku, or bouillon, if you will, of the big Eat.fi. This took time to figure out, but we hope it’s been worth the wait.

1. You can find the mobile site at http://m.eat.fi

Features:

  • Search by restaurant name, location, or type
  • Filter by type, price, lunch, and open/closed
  • See instantly which places are open/serving lunch
  • Reorder your search results by rating, distance, name, and most recently added
  • See the restaurant’s basic information and reviews, and where it is on a map
  • Find nearby alternatives

2. iPhone app:

The iPhone version of the mobile site lets you take advantage of GPS to locate restaurants near you as soon as you open the application. It’s currently the most popular free Lifestyle application in the Finnish App Store, and was the most popular free application in general for a while as well, with over 5000 downloads.

3. Nokia S60 Widget:

Our S60 Widget also makes use of the GPS in handsets that have S60 Web Runtime with Platform Services installed. It’s available in the Ovi store starting today!

Small fixes you asked for

In Geek details, New features, Plans on 26/02/2009 at 08:08

We’re delighted so many of you have taken the time to send us feedback. Here are a bunch of changes we’ve made recently in response to your requests:

  1. Remember me! We agree, it was incredibly annoying to have to re-login all the time. We’ve added the “remember me” checkbox to the login form, so this shouldn’t be happening anymore.
  2. Re-order search results. Another tiny yet powerful tool. There’s a drop-down menu at the top right of the search result page now which lets you reorder your search results. So for example, if you can’t remember the name of that new italian place, search for “ital” and reorder by “most recent”. Best japanese restaurant? Search for “japan” and reorder by “food quality”. Ta-dah!
  3. Clearer map filters. People used to forget filters “on” and wonder why certain restaurants weren’t appearing on the map. If all filters are showing all possible results, the text on each one is now in brackets and greyed out, like so:
  4. See all reviews on Eat.fi. We’ve added an “All of Eat.fi” tab to the “Reviews” section, so you can follow all reviews across the country at once, to help you find restaurants in other cities that you may want to bookmark in case you visit later.

And yes. We are working on the mobile site. There’s a functioning beta already, but it’s still missing a bunch of features that we’d like to add before you all start using it and wondering where those features are. If you really really want to start using the beta already, while being fully aware that it is very much still under construction, send us an email and we’ll send you the link.

Vegetarians and families with children!

In New features on 30/01/2009 at 20:40

We’ve finally found a solution. You see, there are only a handful (literally) of totally vegetarian restaurants in all of Finland, so making a category only for them seemed a bit of overkill. There are, however, many restaurants with a variety of good options for vegetarians, but there’s a lot of grey area between having a few leaves of iceberg lettuce in the salad bar and offering a range of vegetarian main courses that really satisfy.

No one person can really list all the places that fulfil this requirement. So we are leaving it up to everyone at once. Every restaurant page now has a voting box in the bottom right hand corner:

As long as more than 50% of the people voting are of the opinion that the restaurant is child friendly or vegetarian friendly, it remains in those categories on the main map page. As soon as the “Yes” votes drop below 50%, the restaurant is removed from the category. This takes into account the fact that restaurant menus, etc can and do change.

In the example to the left, three people believe the restaurant is child friendly, and three believe it is not vegetarian friendly.

We also added the child-friendly category because families with children, like vegetarians, often have a hard time going out to eat, and it is largely the staff ’s willingness and ability to accomodate the family’s needs (the pram, the screaming children, and so on) that makes all the difference. Again, this category is another grey area of opinion, so it is our hope that the combination of for and against votes will result in the greatest accuracy.

We may add other categories later, if demand is high enough. At the moment, we want to be very careful about which categories we add, because each one adds more clutter and makes the site more complicated. As a result we have also set up a category-voting forum, where you can add your wishes for the future.

Recent reviews, old reviews, and new cities

In New features on 28/01/2009 at 23:21

Some updates we forgot to mention:

1. If you are a registered user, you can now vote on the quality of individual reviews directly on the “recent reviews” page, instead of just on an individual restaurant page. If a review gets over -3 in votes, the system deletes it. We will probably increase this limit later, once voting becomes more frequent.

2. Reviews older than two years are no longer counted in the averages, but remain visible(though greyed-out).

3. We reorganized the city menu to reflect the increase in new cities once we had so many they no longer fit. This included adding a city search field and dividing cities between the largest ones and the rest.

Partial search is totally awesome

In New features on 15/12/2008 at 21:50

We did another round of various updates, but this one deserves a special hilight.

Partial search: It’s easy to miss, but it’s a big, big deal and was quite tricky to get working right with the amount of data we’ve got. Now you can search for just parts of restaurant names and descriptions. We’re talking about this field, found at the top right of every page:

Previously if you were looking for, say “Villetta” you would have to type:

Now you can just type a part of the word, like so:

You’ll find both “Villetta” and “Villa Maria” that way. Exciting, no? You can also type “ital” if you’re looking for “italian” or “italy”. It’ll find both. Powerful stuff.

Hot pro tip: Type the name of a city into the search field to go directly there!


Swedish, Slush Helsinki, and other updates

In New features on 01/12/2008 at 17:54
Eat in Swedish

We’ve been busy! You may have noticed that the site is now in Swedish as well (choose “SV” in the top left corner), and the wiki-like editing tools have been updated and clarified thanks to lots of useful feedback from users and the attendees of BarCamp Helsinki. (Thanks, guys!)

If you are a Swedish speaker and notice any translations that seem silly, please let us know.

Wiki-tools: Instead of the little menu shown in the last post, we’ve added little “Add missing information” markers to restaurants with no information, and then tucked all the rest of the editing tools under a prominent “Information missing or wrong” link on each restaurant page:

infomissing

This should make the tools easier to find, and also used more often. The results speak for themselves–we’ve had far more updates to information since we made these changes.

Slush Helsinki was an event for internet startups last Monday at Korjaamo organized by ArcticStartup, which is looking to help promote internet entrepreneurship in the North. Other organizers were Zipipop and Floobs. We intended to post about this before the event, but unfortunately forgot to while we were preparing for our participation in it! (We also forgot to take photos of our demo space there…arg!) In any case, we did attend and demo the site, which was fun and well worth it. It was really nice to meet many of you users and hear your feedback in person, as well as to share experiences and information with the other people in the industry. Let’s do it again next year!

Other cities, wiki-like editing tools

In Geek details, New features on 26/09/2008 at 07:49

You may have noticed that we now list Tampere and Porvoo in addition to Helsinki in our “choose city” list, and may be wondering, “Why Porvoo? Why not some other big city?” There is a method to our madness. Since we introduced our wiki-like editing tools, any registered user is able to add/edit restaurant information.

This means that if you live in an area that doesn’t have much information on Eat.fi yet, but wish it would get more visibility, you can do something about it. If we notice a lot of activity in a certain city, with most of the information (opening times, categories, and contact information for restaurants) filled in, we’ll display that city on the front page. Since Porvoo now has a lot of information on it, we gave Porvoo some of that front-page love.

What wiki-like editing tools?

On every restaurant page, at the top right, there is now a link that says “Update information.”

If you’re logged in as a registered user, you’ll find all the tools you need to change opening times, contact info, etc. in this menu. In order to prevent vandalism, we log all user changes in a public “history” log, which can also be found at the bottom of this menu.

If a restaurant owner has “claimed” their restaurant, ie has logged in and indicated that he or she is in charge of this restaurant’s information from now on, you won’t see these tools, but rather a message field which will allow you to report wrong information directly to the restaurant owner.

We believe that by giving users and owners direct and free access to restaurant information, the site will stay far more accurate than if we tried to centralize upkeep. No one knows better(or sooner) than the restaurant owners or local customers themselves when a restaurant is undergoing renovations, or has changed its opening times. Try it out and let us know what you think!

The new Eat.fi is finally here.

In New features on 22/09/2008 at 16:34

We have launched. We’re live. There’s no going back now. Here are some things that have changed since the last beta update:

  1. We imported a database of all Finnish establishments that serve alcohol. This unfortunately includes a lot of bars that will have to be weeded out, but it also covers most restaurants all over the country.
  2. We included wiki-like editing tools for registered users, so if you see a mistake, you can easily fix it. This also allows impatient users to get Eat.fi started in their own area without having to wait for us to get to it–we’re going city by city, starting with Tampere. The most active cities will get a spot in our “Choose a city” drop down menu.
  3. In general, we’ve increased and improved features for registered users. Log in and see!

Do let us know if the map seems slow, or if you encounter other problems. We’ve done our best to test every conceivable configuration, but there are always surprises…Please note, though: If you’re running IE5, there is nothing we can do to make a service like this one, with a dynamic map, load at any forgiveable speed. If you have IE6, speeds should be tolerable but we still recommend you upgrade to IE7 (which will make browsing other sites a much nicer experience as well) or even better, get Firefox.

Updates to the Beta

In New features, Plans on 22/08/2008 at 11:47

We’ve updated the beta! This’ll be the last update before we make the site live.

Some of the new features:

  1. Internet Explorer compatibility.
  2. A Community page, where you can finally see who the real top reviewers are (yeah!), and browse recently added photos.
  3. If you’re registered, you can add photos to your reviews, and rate other people’s reviews. The profile pages have also been improved.
  4. If you click on “Helsinki” on the map page, you’ll find presets. Registered, logged-in users can save often-used search settings for one-click access.
  5. At the bottom of each individual restaurant page, we’ve added “Nearby alternatives.”
  6. Each restaurant has its own “Community” tab to show that restaurant’s fans, and the pictures users have taken of its dishes.

As before, please note that any content you add to the beta will be deleted before the site goes live. But go wild, kick the tires, etc…and let us know of any bugs you may find! We’re almost there, we swear.

http://beta.eat.fi (username “eat” and password “better”)

Ladies and Gentlemen! It’s a…Beta!

In Geek details, New features, Plans on 09/07/2008 at 20:27

Yes, the beta version of eat.fi is finally public.

Eat.fi beta

I developed the original Eat.fi in 2005 because I really like good food, but was usually too busy or too lazy to cook, and tended to forget to eat until most restaurants had already closed. I couldn’t find a site that could tell me what was good, still open, and not too far away. Over time, as Eat.fi grew more popular, it became increasingly obvious that I had a choice to make; keep it as a little Helsinki-only site, or give it a chance to grow into something more robust and mature. So after a year of development, we finally came up with this, the original Eat.fi’s shiny new big brother, built entirely from the ground up to look better, work better, and be far more expandable in the future.

But please note: THIS IS A BETA SITE. Not beta in the endless Web 2.0 sense. We mean beta in the “testing phase sandbox not live yet” sense. This means:

  • Do not add any real content to this site, and do not count on the information on it to be accurate or up to date. Any reviews, accounts, profile data, or other content that you put on this beta site will disappear in a month. It will be deleted. Gone. Not retrievable. Therefore, feel free to play around as much as you like, push the site to its limits, but if you have a real review to write, write it in the old Eat.fi site. Once beta testing is over, we will port everything from the old Eat.fi to the final new site.
  • The beta site is not yet optimized for Internet Explorer. It will be, but we’re doing initial testing in Firefox and Safari first.
  • The beta site is only in English. The final site will also be in Finnish and Swedish, but we want to hone all the texts in English first before we hand the files over to a real translator.
  • Please tell us about any bugs or problems you find. Be critical, be honest. This is what the beta site is for–to run the site through its paces, kick the tires and beat it up before we let it go live to thousands of impatient people.

With all of the above in mind, here it is: http://beta.eat.fi (username “eat” and password “better”)

Thank you in advance.

–Tina Aspiala and the rest of the Eat.fi development team

Table reservations, plus small tweaks

In New features on 12/11/2007 at 11:35

We’re happy to announce we are partnering with Varaukset.fi so we can offer table reservations on the site! We’re still ironing out the kinks, but if you’d like a preview, here’s an example: http://www.eat.fi/tapasta

Also added a bunch of minor tweaks to the site:

  • By popular demand, the search box is higher, and includes a help text. Try searching for exactly what you’re looking for, ie “sushi”, “vegetarian” or whatnot!
  • Removed pagination in comments, so you don’t have to look at that useless string of 100+ pages.
  • Snap popups now only popup if you touch the icon. Nothing happens if you touch the link.

Olemme nyt yhteistyössä Varaukset.fi:n kanssa, jotta voimme tarjota pöytävarauksia suoraan Eat.fi:n kautta. Ensimmäinen esimerkki on tässä: http://www.eat.fi/tapasta

Teimme myös pari pienempää muutosta:

  • Yleisön pyynnöstä hakukenttä on nyt korkeamalla, ja siihen on lisätty aputeksti. Kokeile hakea siitä täsmälleen mitä etsit, esim. “sushi”, tai “kasvis” tms.
  • Eliminoitiin arvostelusivujen numerot arvostelusivusta. 100+ sivua oli vähän turhaa esitellä.
  • Snap popupit ilmestyy nyt vain, jos koskettaa hiirellä ikonia. Linkki ei avaa popupia enää.

You’re in charge now

In New features on 25/05/2007 at 15:39

Sorry for lack of posting recently–we’ve been busy with version 2. However, we do have news!

Some of you have maybe noticed that “Eat.fi recommends” now says “The critics recommend.” This isn’t simply a change in terms–from now on, we have nothing to do with which restaurants get recommended and which ones don’t–it’s all based on an algorithm based on your reviews. This means you, the users, determine which restaurants are the best in Helsinki. To be included in the algorithm, a restaurant must have at least five votes, so scan the restaurant list and see which restaurants you’ve left unrated!


On vähän kestänyt, kun työstetään samalla uutta eat.fi versiota, mutta nyt on taas kerrottavaa:
Ehkä olette huomanneet, että “Eat.fi suosittelee” on muuttunut “Arvostelijat suosittelelevat”:iksi. Tämä ei ole pelkästään nimellinen muutos–tästä lähtien meillä ei ole enää mitään tekemistä sillä, mitkä ravintolat pääsevät “suosittelee” listalle. Kaikki on nyt teidän käsissä–teidän arvostelunne määrittelevät, mitkä ravintolat ovat Helsingin parhaita. Ravintolalla pitää olla ainakin viisi arvostelua, jotta pääsee mukaan. Eli tarkistakaa, onko vielä ravintoloita, joita ette ole vielä arvostelleet!

User logins updated

In New features on 29/04/2007 at 17:15

Alpha version 2! Now with easier registration, for those of you who like playing with the new stuff: Click here to get an eat.fi registered critic account–and hereby declare that you won’t be upset if everything isn’t perfect.

P.S. For the stuff that isn’t perfect, the features you find pointless, the details you wish were there but aren’t, etc, please leave your comments after this post so we can take them into account for Eat.fi version 2.


Lisäsimme pari uutta toimintoa eat.fi rekisteröityneille arvostelijoille. Jos haluat mukaan tähän alpha versioon (missä kaikki ei ole ihan valmista, mutta toimii kyllä), kirjaudu tässä:Haluan eat.fi rekisteröidyksi arvostelijaksi, enkä välitä siitä, ettei kaikki ole vielä täydellistä.P.S. Jos on asioita, jotka häiritsevät, jotka et käytä, tai jotka puuttuvat, ym, jätä kommenttisi ja toiveesi tähän, jotta voimme huomioida ne kun rakennamme Eat.fi versio 2:ta.

Snap to restaurant’s own pages

In New features on 27/03/2007 at 07:26

We just installed Snap Preview, which lets you see the site you’re going to before you actually click on the link.

For example, put your mouse on this link, and hold it there for a moment without clicking.

See?

We think this will make it faster to get an impression of a restaurant on eat.fi. Let us know what you think!


Lisäsimme juuri Snap Preview toiminnon eat.fi:hin, jolla voit nähdä ravintoloiden kotisivut pitämällä hiiresi hetken kotisivulinkin päällä.Esim: Pidä hiiresi hetken tämän linkin päällä.

Kätevää, eikö vain?

User login alpha version

In New features on 24/03/2007 at 13:45

suomeksi

screenshot1.jpeg

We just installed the new login system, still in its alpha-stage infancy, but if you’d like to try it out and tell us what you think, your hopes and dreams, etc, send us an email(infoATeatforumDOTcom) with:

Your name, year of birth, email and preferred password(all of this will be private) and your preferred username (public, and you won’t be able to change it later).

First come, first served. We’ll send you an email letting you know you can start logging in.

Cool benefits: Your username will appear beside your reviews, along with the number of restaurants you’ve rated. You’ll also be able to gather a list of your favorite restaurants and restaurants you plan to go to (bookmarked), and see only those on the map. Once this gets going, more features will obviously follow–these are just the beginning.

screenshot.jpegRavintolaasiakkaiden kirjautuminen alpha vaiheessa! Jos haluat kokeilla tätä toimintoa ja antaa siitä palautetta, toiveita, ideoita, jne, lähetä meille(infoATeatforumDOTcom):Nimi, syntymävuosi, email, ja toivottu salasana (pidetään piilossa)Toivottu käyttäjänimi (joka näkyy julkisesti, ja jonka et voi myöhemmin vaihtaa)

Mitä saat? Voit keräillä listoihin lempiravintolasi ja ravintolat, jossa haluat joskus käydä, jonka jälkeen voit nähdä ne erikseen kartalla. Käyttäjätunnuksesi näkyy kommentisi vieressä, ja siinä lukee myös, montako ravintolaa olet arvostellut. Lisätoimintoja tulee toki vielä, ja tästä aukeaa kaikenlaisia mahdollisuuksia–mutta jostain pitää aloittaa!

Back from off the grid

In New features, Plans on 08/03/2007 at 10:40

Borneo foodBack from my trip, hello again. Had a little chat about the future of eat, had time to think, etc, and have decided that it’s time to really overhaul the site. This again will take time, hopefully done around May-June. Sorry about the vagueness, but I don’t want to promise anything until the features have been beta tested at least…

Features that are already in the testing phase: User logins. What this means is you’ll be able to login and mark the restaurants that are your favorites, as well as those you’ve always wanted to go to but never remember to follow up on. You’ll be able to only see those on the map if you want, essentially giving you your own custom restaurant map.

We’re also designing an eat.fi mobile widget with the help of Widsets. More on this later.

Hei taas, olen palanut sieltä missä pippuri kasvaa ja nettiä ei ole, ja nyt suunnitellaan ihan uutta eat.fi versiota, joka on varmaan vasta kesäkuussa valmis. Tällä hetkellä testataan asiakkaiden kirjautumista, mitä tarkoittaa sitä, että ravintolaasiakkaat voivat kirjautua sisään omilla tunnuksillaan ja valitsemalla lempiravintolansa sekä ravintolat, jossa joskus haluaa käydä, voivat rakentaa omaa eat.fi karttaa.

Olemme myös kehittämässä eat.fi mobiili widgetin Widsets:in avulla.

New logo, header

In New features on 08/12/2006 at 11:07

eatminilogo.gif We’re redesigning the titlebar for better clarity, to show our new logo, and to put the login fields top right where they can more easily be found. After the Christmas season we’re planning customer user logins as well–watch this space!

Uusi ulkoasu, toivottavasti selkeämpi ja helpompi käyttää. Ravintola-asiakas kirjautumista suunnitellaan joulun jälkeen!

New Timebar

In New features on 01/12/2006 at 12:30

We’ve redone the timebar, and added it to the Restaurant Search list as well, so you can look for a category/recommendation AND check if it’s open at the same time.

Olemme muuttaneet ajanvalitsemistyökalun(?), ja lisänneet sen Ravintolahaku sivulle. Nyt voitte siis hakea ravintoloita sekä arvostelujen että aukioloajan mukaan, ja myös määritellä alueen ja tyypin niinkuin ennenkin.

No more dirty urls

In Geek details, New features on 28/11/2006 at 17:21

From now on, each restaurant has its own “clean” url. What does this mean? It means that this:

http://www.eat.fi/?str=2&restaurant=476

is now this:

http://www.eat.fi/espresso_edge

Easier to read, no? Also easier to remember, to use in marketing, and easier for Google to find. Restaurant owners, this is for you!

Meidän vanhat “likaiset” URLit (kuten http://www.eat.fi/?str=2&restaurant=476) ovat nyt selkeämpiä: http://www.eat.fi/espresso_edge
Eli jos olet ravintolanomistaja joka on käyttänyt eat.fi sivuja omana nettisivuna, voit nyt antaa asiakkailesi selkeän osoitteen.

Jos haluat muuttaa sitä jollain tavalla, ota meihin yhteyttä, info@eatforum.com

Clarifying the map

In New features on 28/11/2006 at 10:02

Things getting too crowded on the main map? You can always zoom in, but now you can also hide all the closed restaurants by clicking the checkbox on the right under Eat.fi recommends, and then clicking Update Map.

Onko kartalla liian kova tungos? Klikkaa kartan oikealla puolella olevaa “Piilota suljetut ravintolat” täppää, ja sen jälkeen “Näytä valitut”, niin kartalle jää vain aukiolevat ravintolat.

Mobile updates

In New features on 26/11/2006 at 21:50

Eat.fi mobile now has:

A lunch checkbox on the first page, so you can search for restaurants open for lunch at the time you have chosen

Per-person prices on comments, so you can see how much other people paid before you go. (We forgot to add that before, but now it’s there)

We also fixed a problem concerning the mobile site not noticing restaurants open past midnight. It sees them now. Sorry about that.

Eat.fi:n mobiiliversiossa on nyt uusi “Lounas” täppä, jolla voit rajata ravintolahakua vain niihin ravintoloihin, jotka tarjoavat vielä lounasta. Ja nyt kommenteissa näkyy myös hinta, ja bugi jonka takia ravintolat auki keskiyön jälkeen eivät näkynyt on korjattu.

Short descriptions on search page

In New features on 27/10/2006 at 08:09

Since we’re pretty much done with assigning short descriptions, we have now replaced the “Area” column on the Restaurant search page with a “Description” column, so you can see what kind of restaurant you’re looking at.

You can still see all the restaurants in a particular region if you use the “region” menu beside the search button.

RSS feed for reviews list

In New features on 16/10/2006 at 18:33

The RSS feed for the reviews list is live! The feed url is http://www.eat.fi/rss.php . Have at it.

See the latest restaurant reviews

In New features on 11/10/2006 at 14:45

If you click on the blue “Restaurants and ratings” link at the top of eat.fi, you’ll find we have added a reviews list. This means you can see all the latest reviews for all the restaurants in one list. We know the RSS icon is already there but doesn’t work–we’re working on the RSS feed, and hope to have it up soon.

Short restaurant descriptions(pseudo-tags)

In New features on 09/10/2006 at 17:01

mouseover.jpgWe’re in the process of adding short restaurant descriptions to each restaurant mouseover, so you have a better idea of what you’re looking at. We were considering tags, but decided that most users are still too unfamiliar with the concept to allow for any simple implementation. (We’ve noticed several sites where people have tagged things “I, like, this, thing”, effectively creating four useless categories to clutter up a tag cloud.) But as users get more comfortable with tags, we may use these as a starting point. As with everything else, restaurants may edit these descriptions themselves, free of charge. And the number in blue brackets–(4) in the above example–is the number of comments that restaurant has.

Swedish version public

In New features on 21/09/2006 at 19:48

We decided that since the Swedish version is fully functional, we’d open it to the public now and get feedback about potential translation mistakes from all users. We’re still in the process of translating the FAQ, Feedback, and About pages, and hope to be done with that soon, but in the meantime, you can already comment on restaurants in Swedish, and restaurant owners can add info in Swedish as well.

By doing this we hope the site will better serve the entire Helsinki population by, among other things, allowing all opinions to be heard in the language the user is most comfortable with.

Eat.fi mobile version out of beta!

In New features on 20/09/2006 at 19:27

Go have a look with your cell phone, or check it out with your computer first. www.eat.fi/mini

The minisite is designed to be light and fast with a bare minimum of graphics, so you won’t have to load so many kilobytes to find what you need. Possible uses:

  1. You’re at a bar late with your friends, and want to know what places still offer food.
  2. You’d like to review a restaurant you’ve just been to, or would like to read what others have said about it. Type its name into the first text field and click “search”.
  3. You’re out, and can’t remember where that good Chinese restaurant was. Do a general search, or type its name into the first text field. Click on the address to see a map.

Enjoy!