City Joints is the new blog

Why buy Uncle Lou that $15 wallet from Daffy's just to give him a present? Screw that. Head across the bridge to Moore Bros and pick up a case from their Bon Marche Collection (mixed, 6 white / 6 red) - $125. As you make the rounds to Mom and Dads house, Aunt Lils and Grandma Betty's bring along a bottle. A real no hassle gift that, of course, benefits you as well - "pull the cork, dad". Speaking of cork pulling, D the Pig Eating Jew, swears by the Screwpull Table Model - $29. While you wander around Moore Bros you may want to think about your friends who love sushi, especially Sagami, and get them a bottle of Jizake sake (it's the blue bottle) - $49. Still think your wine obsessed foody friends have everything wine related? Head over to The Pour for some great reviews of the latest wine books. Stay tuned for more holiday gift ideas for the foody in you (and, hell, in others as well).

Has anyone else noticed that bacon has become sizzling (gag - another pun like that and i am sure to be fired from guest blogging) hot as of late? It's everywhere. First, nyt had a travel article about Philly and one of the first places they head to is John's Roast Pork in Deep South Philly. Not technically "bacon" but close enough. I cannot believe i haven't ventured a stones throw from Tony Luke's to hit this joint. That is sad. Next, last week i stumbled across a review for Seduced By Bacon, which my wife said "would be the perfect birthday gift[1] for our friend (Jewish) who loves bacon (and i mean loves the pig - all parts. He even refers to himself as "(name withheld) The Pig Eating Jew"[2]. Then i run across an interview in the Metro (don't ask) with the author of said book who quotes James Beard, "Nothing is quite as intoxicating as the smell of bacon frying in the morning.". Napalm, Bacon? Look how far we've come. To top it off, this weeks New Yorker has some gift ideas and there they drop the bomb - Bacon of the Month Club. Wow. I know of at least one Jew who is drooling on his keyboard right now.

[1] Damn! Snap! Will have to find another gift.

[2] The first time we had PEJ and his lady friend over for dinner we made a bacon, swiss shard, butternut squash and pasta (topped with fat slices of Parmesan) dish. This was one of the first times meeting PEJ and, obviously, we didn't know his propensity for pig mastication. I firmly believe that bacon has alot to do with our long lasting friendship.

Bottom-line: if you are running out of Hanukkah (or Satan Clause) gift ideas look no further. The pig is in.

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving and had some wonderful home-cooked food.

In between making turkey and stuffing, I rebuilt the search box for a faster and, more importantly, better search feature. It's now correctly returning things like Cafe Spice on top when you search for, say, 'Cafe Spice'. There is still some tweaking to go, but I think you'll be pleased.

Also, it's not official, but you may have noticed a little button on top that says 'Change City'. We've loaded up the data for New York (Manhattan) and are getting rid of some bugs before we officially go live there. However, if you've got some friends in the city let them know that they can start rating and finding new places to eat.

And, finally, yet another shout out to Foobooz. We might tell you where to eat that you haven't been, but he'll get you the best deals in town.

--friedman

So, while reading my new favorite food blog, Foobooz, I came across Daniel Rubin's post from today at philly.com. I'm not really sure why we're the only mention without a link, but it's good to see our name in print.

Also, congrats and thanks to Philaguerilla for his amazing contributions to the reviews. I think he may be the first person to hit 100 reviews in under 2 days. And the best part? I feel like I know his wife now.

--friedman

I was reading the Foobooz blog today getting the lowdown on a joint called 'Solefood' and when I scrolled down I noticed a post about CityJoints. Plus, we're now under the food links on Foobooz.

Thanks Foobooz!

You can checkout Foobooz ratings on CityJoints here: http://cityjoints.com/users/foobooz.

Labels: cityjoints, food blogs

I stumbled across this interesting article in the NY Times yesterday and got to thinking how CityJoints fits into this picture. We're already doing a lot of the Web2.0 stuff--mashups with google maps, integration with a few search APIs to suggest restaurant address details after you input a restaurant name--but we're also trying to bring you something beyond this.

Markoff cites as a typical Web3.0 question: "'I’m looking for a warm place to vacation and I have a budget of $3,000. Oh, and I have an 11-year-old child.'" Basically, the input here is bunch of information about what a particular user is looking for in addition to some personal information particular to his situation that's going to affect what kind of results he wants to see.

At CityJoints, the whole idea behind our prediction algorithm is to take into account the specifics of your personal tastes to refine your search results. You may be looking for a new Italian BYOB joint to try, but your tastes typically differ from those of the masses. So sorting a list of Italian BYOB joints by highest average rating is not going to help you.

Our algorithm takes into account every restaurant that you've rated, and uses data from every other user on the site about every restaurant each of them has rated to generate personalized predictions for you.

So while our maps and tagging is cool and probably familiar to you, take another look at your recommendations page and see what's suggested. We think you'll like it.

Labels: cityjoints development

Another long day of programming is done, ending with a few delicious gruburgers. This week, not too much happened on the front end, but we cleaned up a lot of stuff on the backend, made some tools to handle the deletion of duplicate restaurants, streamlined some of our MySQL tables, and fixed a few bugs.

We also added a new featured Philadelphia food blog, foobooz.com. We noticed a user named foobooz earlier in the week, checked out his blog, and liked it so much we added it to the side of the pages for CityJoints Philadelphia.

This is a good opportunity to mention that you can now put additional information on your profile page on CityJoints; namely, you can post a little bio about yourself and epicurean preferences and you can also post a link to your website (or food blog).

Hope you guys like the new features.

Labels: features, updates

Since the write-up at philly.com, traffic has definitely been up. The ratings are coming in steadily and everyone is seend changes in their recommendations. As we collect more data, it's exciting to see it all come together into a meaningful site.

A special thanks to Messay & Picky for including us on their site. You can find them here under the username Albert.

Also, thanks to Marisa (whoever you are!!) for giving us some PR on metblogs.

Finally, don't forget about our contest - Win a Dinner For Two. Ok, so we're really giving out at AMEX gift card, but it's for $250, so that should get you a really nice dinner. Tell everyone you know!