<![CDATA[Gizmodo: opentable]]> http://tags.gizmodo.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/gizmodo.com.png <![CDATA[Gizmodo: opentable]]> http://gizmodo.com/tag/opentable http://gizmodo.com/tag/opentable <![CDATA[The Week In iPhone Apps: Deliciousness]]> Finding restaurants, learning recipes, hunting down local food, eating with a conscience, feigning culinary expertise, and everything else food: Welcome to this week's Friday iPhone apptacular, Taste Test edition.

People who don't really care about The Victuals, what's wrong with you? don't worry!: I've still trawled the App Store for non-food downloads this week, and there are plenty—just scroll waaay down. Everyone else? Commence feast...NOW.

Eating Out

Yelp: If by some bizarre circumstance or mental tic you can't download more than one restaurant finder/review app, you should probably make it Yelp. User reviews are plentiful and generally helpful, the database is huge, and its new augmented reality tricks are pure bliss. Free.

OpenTable: OpenTable does the review thing pretty well too, but this app is less about finding restaurants than it is finding a table at said restaurants. Granted, it can feel silly making an online reservation on a telephone, but there's a certain antisocial appeal in replacing a maître d' with a piece of software. Free.

UrbanSpoon: This one tries to do everything: It's city-specific, and it'll feed you reviews, menu and location info for all kinds of restaurants, and in some cases let you make a reservation. It's free too, and the food-finding tools (shake the app for a surprise, within your parameters) are kinda fun, I guess.

VegOut: It's hard to be a vegetarian (I hear), not just in terms of diet, but socially. Where do you go with friends? Where do you tale a date? VegOut spits out a list of nearby meat-free establishments, with reviews and contact information for each one. By its nature it's not going to be much help outside of a big city, but in a metropolis? Priceless. Well, ok, three dollars.

Michelin Guides: Available by region, these are premium restaurant guides, thank you very much. I'm a fan of crowd-sourced reviews, but Michelin reviews are historically reliable, and if you really need to find a three-starred meal to blow your month's pay on, now, this is your best bet.

Global Eater Food Dictionary: When you're eating above your weight, figuratively speaking, you'll run into some terms you've never seen before. Global Eater Food Dictionary will tell you exactly what kind of cow glands those sweetbreads are before you order them, and it's faster than Google, which'll minimize your chances of being outed as a food moron. The price of your snob cred: a buck.

Wine Enthusiasts Guide: Same as above, for the inscrutable world of wine. Five dollars, but that comes with the territory.

Eating In

Epicurious: A beautiful, wonderfully curated recipe and shopping list app that's been perfected with time. It will make you a better cook, period. Free.

BigOven: Another take on the recipe app, this time with more of an emphasis on personal recipes and crowd-sourced ideas. Backed by a fairly huge recipe database. Free.

Allrecipes: Another recipe app, closer to BigOven than Epicurious in concept. It's a bit better at spontaneous recipe ideas, with a slick dish discovery interface. Free.

Locavore: For more discerning and/or conscientious and/or guilty shoppers, Locavore figures out where you live, and spits out a list of local foods that are in season, as well as guides as to where to get them. It's tied to Epicurious for recipes, which is brilliant. Four dollars.

Non-Food

Because some other stuff happened this week, too:

TextExpander: A massive timesaver on Mac OS X, TextExpander gives you immediate shortcuts to your commonly-typed phrases, which is great if you write with a lot of complex jargon, code or HTML tags (hey, bloggers!). Since the kind of deep integration it'd need to behave like its desktop counterpart is impossible on the iPhone, it's more of a glorified clipboard in this incarnation. It does let you pull your shortcuts from your Mac, though, which is pretty helpful. 2bux.

US Open App: Hey, tennis nerds: Live streaming US Open radio coverage is pretty great on its own, while a predictable-but-useful set of news and photo tools will keep you as attuned to the goings-on New York as you could ever want to be. Free.

Girlfriend Keeper: Want to make sure you don't lose your significant other because an anniversary slipped your mind, or because you don't text them enough? Would you like to manage these issuew while simultaneously condescending to them with automated text messages and email? You can do that now, thanks to technology!. As far as joke apps go, you've got to give these guys credit for following through. A dollar. [via TheFrisky]

TUAW: Single-source news apps are by nature kind of dumb, but TUAW's new app deserves a special mention because a) their news is obsessively relevant to iPhone users and b) because it's a surprisingly polished app. Free.

Madden NFL 10: This one isn't technically out yet—it's due in a month or so—but we thought we'd give you a peek. There are other football games around, but this is a real Madden title, meaning it'll have team and player names licensed, and an outsize budget, which looks like it's manifested itself in some pretty amazing graphics. The control scheme is the obvious wildcard here, so we'll let you know how it works once we've had some hands-on time.

This Week's App News on Giz:

Nobody Wants to Be Judged Based on the Apps on Their Phone

Augmented Reality Yelp Will Murder All Other iPhone Restaurant Apps, My Health

Apple Actually Approves Awesome Streaming Service Spotify's iPhone App

Panelfly iPhone Comicbook Reader Is Crying for the Apple Tablet

Your Childhood PC, Perfectly Simulated on the iPhone

Sirius XM SkyDock Not-So-Magically Converts Your iPhone Into a Satellite Radio

iHungry?

How Your Favorite iPhone App Was Designed

Chipotle iPhone App's Super Convenient Burritos Are Going to Make Us So, So Fat

Being a Creepy Stalker? There's an App For That

The Most Racist App Apple's Approved

The Best iPhone Navigation App: TeleNav vs. Navigon vs. TomTom

Qik iPhone Video Sharing App Now Allows For Video Uploads Over 3G on iPhone

This list is in no way definitive. If you've spotted a great app that hit the store this week, give us a heads up or, better yet, your firsthand impressions in the comments. And for even more apps: see our previous weekly roundups here, and check out our Favorite iPhone Apps Directory and our original iPhone App Review Marathon. Have a swell weekend everybody.

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<![CDATA[Zagat To Go '09 Hits iPhone App Store]]> Maybe I'm just writing this because I'm hungry, but damn if I'm not excited about the Zagat To Go app for iPhone that launched this week. Zagat may sometimes offer too many suggestions, but I find it useful when I limit geography, or as a resource for validating my own foodie guesswork. This version shows photos of the restaurants, links to their sites, and even lets you make reservations with a click, where available. It's $10, a hefty premium over free alternatives OpenTable and Yelp, but I'm gonna go snatch it up anyway. If you've already tried it, hit us with a comment or two. [iTunes Store via IntoMobile]

Related: Gizmodo's Essential Iphone Apps

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<![CDATA[OpenTable iPhone App: Easiest, Most Soulless Restaurant Reservations Ever]]> Are you a socially awkward individual that loves eating out but hates talking to real people on the phone? Then you probably already know about OpenTable, the awesome online reservation site. Now they've got a free iPhone app that's even slicker and easier to use than their actual (or mobile) site. It'll find the restaurants closest to you and throw 'em on a Google map along with their available times—a few presses later, and you're booked (even if you don't have an OpenTable account).

I did find one persistent crash though—every time I tried to look up my expired points, the whole app went own. Other than that though, it performed flawlessly. Sure, since you're doing this on your iPhone, you could almost as easily find a phone number and call. But who has time (or wants) to talk to actual people nowadays? This is faster, easier and yes, better, even if you can't slip the maître d' a Franklin or six to skip the line. Now if we could just get a Momofuku Ko resy app. [iTunes]

Related: Gizmodo's Essential Iphone Apps

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<![CDATA[OpenTable Mobile Lets You Book Restaurant Reservations From Your Phone Without Dealing with Humans]]> OpenTable is a great website that lets you reserve tables at restaurants without having to deal with calling and being put on hold and, you know, talking to another human being. You simply choose your restaurant, the date, and the time you want, and it'll tell you when the closest available reservation is available. Presto, you've got a reservation. Now, they're making it more convenient by releasing a mobile app that'll let you make restaurant reservations from your phone (without calling anyone). As someone who uses OpenTable relatively frequently to get reservations at restaurants, this is pretty sweet news to me. Hit the jump for the presser.

OpenTable Unveils New Mobile Site for Booking Restaurant Reservations Online

Free Mobile Website Facilitates Last-Minute, On-The-Go Reservations

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (June 30, 2008) — OpenTable, Inc. (www.opentable.com), the leading provider of free, real-time online reservations for diners as well as reservation and guest management solutions for restaurants, today announced the beta launch of the OpenTable MobileTM service, enabling consumers to find real-time table availability and book restaurant reservations through their mobile devices. Now it’s even easier for people who are away from their computers to enjoy the convenience and ease of booking their restaurant reservations online.

Users can access the mobile-optimized website by pointing the browser on their mobile device tohttp://mobile.opentable.com. The OpenTable Mobile site is designed to mimic the simple, streamlined reservation process offered on OpenTable.com®, enabling users to quickly identify restaurants with available tables and narrow their choices by neighborhood and desired times.

"With OpenTable Mobile, we can now deliver the convenience of online reservations to diners who are on the road or out on the town," said Jeff Jordan, chief executive officer of OpenTable. "Now mobile users can take the power of OpenTable.com with them wherever they go, to instantly find and book available tables at more than 8,500 restaurants."

OpenTable Mobile is currently available to book reservations at all OpenTable restaurants in the United States. In order to take advantage of OpenTable Mobile, users must have a web-enabled mobile device and subscribe to a data plan with their carrier. OpenTable does not charge users to access the site or book restaurant reservations; however, standard data and text messaging charges from users’ mobile carriers may apply. For more information on the OpenTable Mobile beta please visit www.opentable.com/mobile.

[Open Table Mobile]

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