While I made some claim that I would be blogging about writing software, I seemed to have gotten consumed with merely writing that software and not blogging about it.

Here's what came out of it: A restaurant recommendation service that taps your social network.

It was really a fun project to work on, went quite quickly and let me explore some aspects of Twitter and social graph development.

Cory absolutely blew me away with the typography and layout of the site.  I think it is beautiful, and really looks nice.  I hope that it is a useful property, but we'll have to see and get feedback before we really know.

The way it works is quite simple.  If you have a Twitter account, click on the "Login with Twitter" link and complete the application connection process.  This identifies the service with you, and lets us broadcast the toEat query links.

Simply ask a question about what type of food you want, and a location and people can then come in and vote on restaurants.  You get a nice display that lists what everybody recommended, which can be filtered based on your friends or show all voters.

It still needs a bit more work, some data feeds for what is recommended and a better notification system I think.  I'm still really happy with it, and would love some feedback!

Continue reading The Where to Eat soft launch.

As you may not have heard, because it was never announced, CHC is slowly taking over control of the toEat.com domain and property.  toEat.com, LLC will slowly be absorbed in its entirety to CHC and ran as a Cold Hard Code, LLC business.  Yay.

That doesn't really affect anything, but at the moment we do have something that does exist.

Our new property is entitled where.toEat.com, and centers around finding recommendations from your social network.  Initially, we're only supporting Twitter but we'll add in other social networks as it evolves.

The way it works is you ask a general cuisine type (Pizza) in an area (Vancouver, WA).  A query is then created that is sent out over Twitter (and a link you can send people directly).  People then visit that link and recommend restaurants in that area.  The final results page then shows all the restaurants that have been upvoted, and capabilities to filter based only on people you have befriended in your social network.

 

I've been very bad about keeping up with the blog since being back from Japan.  It's been difficult to keep my momentum going, and we have a new project about to launch (any... minute now... oh, one more bug).  I switched my focus to that, and work, so the blog was pushed backwards a little bit.Now that things are nearing a more serene level, I can peek my head out.  I celebrated my ability to get to this point by taking a stab at something I've wanted to do for a while now: Racing Simulation.  As many know, I'm a big fan of auto sports.  However, it is very difficult -- especially in Portland -- to get quality track time in the way I want it.  NASA'S HPDE is the best I've seen, and sadly not available here.So, racing simulation.  I need a wheel.  In all my years of bachelor living while earning more than I should, I never bought a good wheel.  I just used whatever Playstation or Xbox controller was handy.  Dumb.  So I had a decision to make over the weekend:

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Logitech MOMO		Logitech G25
< $100		> $200