help me break down some restaurant/travel apps

[EvilMonkey]

This is partially (well, mostly) laziness on my part, but I find that I've accumulated a lot of apps that do similar things. I'm talking about all those "find cool stuff near you apps"

I would appreciate some feedback on which ones you guys use, why you use them, and more importantly, why you use them over some of the others.

Just some I have on my phone right now:

1. Places
2. Aloqa
3. Urbanspoon
4. Yelp
5. Gobi

I am also using Layar, which basically is cool to look at, but I find a bit cumbersome to use in real life for anything. Then of course there is also Google Maps with the nice voice search they have now....

Admittedly, I have only used them for a bit here and there so I'm not overly familiar with any of them...I went to St. Louis last week and mostly stuck with Places, but that's for no reason than I had a shortcut to it on my home screen and was too lazy to pull the other ones up (yes, I'm that lazy).

Just would like some pros/cons/features of why you would use one over the other...or if there's a better option than what I list above.

 

[takeshi]

I've found Yelp's reviews useful when traveling. It's not as handy in smaller towns IMO. I don't use the app that much since it can't sort based on ratings for some reason.

Urban Spoon IMO has a neat gimmick but the neatness wears off quickly.

Really, you just need to try them out and see what suits you best. You can read the opinions of others all day and still not know what the best choices are for you.

 

[HYDE]

I travel most weeks for work and use Yelp on a pretty regular basis. I like how easy it is to navigate through and it has a fair amount of user comments. I actually found Yelp to be very helpful even in small towns. Last night it found a great sushi restaurant in Victorville, CA and a few weeks ago it found an Indian restaurant in Chambersburg, PA that I loved. I have tried the others that you mentioned, but they didn't impress me as much as Yelp so I stopped using them after a few tries.

 

[stacyadell]

I like and use yelp most as well. You may also want to try the free app called "nru" from zagat too, it locates places around you and if you have a zagat account you can access even more information. I use opentable as well to easily book reservations.

 

[packerbacker]

I like Yelp as well, but I also like the generic Google Places Directory too. Urbanspoon was pretty, but I didn't like it as much. Like takeshi said, the neatness factor wears off quickly.