I've been eyeing up the Deck of Secrets City Guides and wishing I could find some excuse to dash off to Melbourne just so I could buy and use them. They are miniature guide books in the form of cards covering all the coolest places to eat/shop/experience Melbourne. I haven't seen the hard copy versions for Sydney in the shops but it appears you can buy them online at the Deck of Secrets website for $9.95. Apart from Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, international cities are available - covering Asia and Europe/UK.The great news is that several of the Melbourne guides plus EAT.Sydney are now available for the iPhone. For a mere $4.99 I have now Sydney's Dining Secret's and I'm thinking of starting a little challenge where by the end of the year I can say that I have been to every single establishment. They all look divine.
There is a beautiful photo of each restaurant/cafe along with a review. This is an example of how an application can be so beautiful and so very useful at the same time. Shown here is a screenshot of 'The Book Kitchen' - a place I've been dreaming of going to with my book club for so long it's not funny! Why haven't I done it you might ask? I sort of forget it's there because it's over the other side of town. I don't remember the exact name of it so I don't have the phone number or details whenever I'm with the book club to suggest it.... Well the problem is solved. Now at my next book club meeting (they will hate me but love me at the same time) I will whip out the iphone and when I click on the 'venue' button at the bottom of the review I will be able to click on 'phone' and immediately be connected to the restaurant to make a booking.
As you can see the one-click simplicity of this application is exquisite. I particularly like the 'Add to contacts' feature which as shown below adds a photo of the restaurant into the contact field! Here is what happens when I 'add' Alhambra, my local tapas bar into my address book.
If you click on the 'directions' button at the bottom of the review you the application asks you if you want directions from a specific location, your current location or just to see where the venue is on the map. Clicking on any of these buttons will launch Google Maps and the appropriate instructions on how to get to dinner.
All in all it's a great program and I'm so looking forward to Deck of Secrets providing the iPhone versions for all of their guides. I'm eagerly anticipating eating my way around Sydney with friends. I'm now considering going to Melbourne to do some workshops or talks just to give me an excuse to buy the Melbourne lot. All offers of work down there will be given favourable consideration :-) and as for the testing each one out challenge.. hmmmm that's a very attractive and exciting proposition & probably the material for another blog I suspect!
Improvements? Only three that I can think of.
1. When I click the 'Tell a Friend' button the only thing that seems to happen for me is a blank email is delivered with the subject "Join me for a bite to eat at such and such". I would have thought there would be more details extracted from the database and inluded in the email. Perhaps that is a bug which will be fixed.
2. I'm also thinking that some kind of quick 'search' facility would be good rather than having to scroll through them all to find the one you are looking for.
3. It also might be good to have an option in the settings that takes you back to the last venue you were looking at. After you have looked at the map you might want to go back and read more of the review but you have to open up the application again and scroll to the restaurant (this is where the search option would be helpful as well).
These issues aside I still give the program 5 stars and urge you to give it a try at the iTunes store.
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