Show HN: HotspotRobot.com - Discover the best restaurants

[rpweber]

Hey HN Community,

This is my first submission, so go easy on me. I'm launching Hotspot Robot (www.hotspotrobot.com) which provides a new way to find the best restaurants/bars near you. Right now, we're launching in NYC, Philly, DC, LA and San Fran.

Here is a 60 second video intro which hopefully makes it clear how Hotspot Robot is different than alternatives like Yelp: http://www.vimeo.com/18023901

For those of you who can't watch the video, basically Hotspot Robot works by aggregating professional content - specifically "best of" & "top 10" lists - from trusted sources (e.g. Zagat, the New York Times, Food Network etc) and shows you which restaurants nearby are on the most "best of" lists. Therefore, it focuses on showing you the favorites of the pros, as opposed to having you wade through both the good and bad reviews from random Yelp users, some of whom are legit, but many of whom are biased or clueless reviewers.

The goal of the site is to do a better job answering these types of questions:

* "I need to meet my friends over in another part of town. I'd like to recommend a really great place. Which place(s) are the most highly regarded in that particular area/neighborhood?"

* "I'd like to settle the debate about where in the whole city is the best pizza (or burger or steak or brunch etc). Which place in all of NYC (or SF etc.) is on the most "best pizza" lists?" NOTE: see why Yelp kinda sucks at this: http://blog.hotspotrobot.com/why-yelp-kinda-sucks and how we think we answer this question better: http://blog.hotspotrobot.com/best-pizza-in-ny-according-to-the-experts

* "My wife told me we're trying a new restaurant called Marea in NYC. What's it known for? Is it on any 'best of' lists and if so, what are those lists?"

As of right now, we have the highest coverage in NYC but hopefully the site is still useful in the other markets I mentioned. I'd love for any HN participants in these markets to give it a shot and let me know if they think the service is useful (or if you're not in these markets but still wanted try it out, I'd love your thoughts as well!)

Again, any feedback you could provide would be super helpful.

Thanks a bunch! Ryan

[nathan82]

Hi, some UI/Design feedback. Homepage:

* How can you not have a robot-eating-pizza logo! :)

* WAY too many different fonts and text styles. I count 12.

* Get some better/more appetising food photos

* The text boxes change size when selected, causing the layout to jump.

* Edit and cancel button icons jump 1px on hover.

* The cancel button has a text-selection cursor instead of a pointer

* The flat grey header doesn't really go with the wood panel effect.

* Wood panel bg repeats too soon with a visible join.

Results page:

* Overall very good, nice and clear

* The login pop-up needs proper styling

* I'd consider making the phone numbers always visible, rather than with the address expander. The first action if you're in a rush it to call a bunch of places to check reservations.

* The dollar signs to indicate price are a kinda ambiguous. How must is a $$$ meal compared to a $$$$ meal?

[rpweber]

Thanks for the great feedback. Some thoughts/responses:

* Robot eating pizza logo - Great suggestion! Definitely need a good logo, and will consider this when reaching out to a graphic designer / 99 designs.

* WAY too many different fonts and text styles - Guilty as charged. Will fix this in future updates.

* Get some better/more appetising food photos - Believe it or not, these are actually improvements over past iterations. But I will keep my eyes open for something even more delicious (although if you have food images suggestions, I'm all ears..er...eyes..er, stomach?)

* The text boxes change size when selected, causing the layout to jump. - Noted. Will add to list of things to address.

* Edit and cancel button icons jump 1px on hover. - Should be fixed now

* The cancel button has a text-selection cursor instead of a pointer - Should be fixed now

* The flat grey header doesn't really go with the wood panel effect. - Noted

* Wood panel bg repeats too soon with a visible join. - Fixed the visible join

Results page: * The login pop-up needs proper styling - Noted

* I'd consider making the phone numbers always visible, rather than with the address expander. - Interesting point. I've also had requests to make the entire address visible too. I go back and forth between making more info visible immediately versus keeping the results cleans and simple and providing more info on a need-to-know basis. Sounds like you think phone # is more vital to expose earlier.

* The dollar signs to indicate price are a kinda ambiguous. How must is a $$$ meal compared to a $$$$ meal? - Yes I can make this clearer. The system is the same as Yelp's for restaurants, but I should add a legend calling this out more or somehow make this more obvious.

Thanks again for all the great feedback. Super helpful.

[kerben]

I like the idea. However the results did not seem to be completely accurate for me. For example, I searched for Steak, Midtown, NYC. The first result, was Peter Luger (an amazing steakhouse) but it's located in Brooklyn (a real schlep from midtown). Other than that it would be great if you could incorporate the reviews in their entirety within your site, rather than pointing us to an external URL.

[rpweber]

Thanks. The area you search for (in this case, midtown, NYC) helps determine the visible map area, and then the returned results are the top ranked places within that visible map. If you don't want any brooklyn results, you can zoom in or pan on the map to only have the particular area of interest visible in the map. If you ensure you can't see brooklyn in the map, then Peter Luger should no longer show up in your results (but let me know if that's not the case for you).

As for including reviews in their entirety, I completely agree that would be valuable. However, we don't want to copy reviews completely (as that's likely copyright infringement). Instead, we try to make it (relatively) easy to jump quickly from Hotspot Robot to the original content creators if you want more details on reviews (or if you want menus from menupages, reservations from open table etc).

[PonyGumbo]

Looks great. If someone searches by zip outside of the area, maybe return a message saying that new areas are coming soon, and enter an email address to be notified? I skipped right ahead, entered my zip, and the first result that came up was Le Bernardin, but I'm 4 hours from NYC.

[rpweber]

Le Bernardin is pretty good, but probably not worth the four hour trek! :) Good point about collecting emails for people searching in areas that aren't covered yet, and alerting them when we expand to those areas. Thanks for the suggestion!

[rishi]

This is really cool. At first I was like whatever this can't be better than Yelp. But after playing around with it I like the way the recommendations work. Would be cool if you emailed me where I should go eat on a weekly basis.

[rpweber]

Yes, great suggestion. Added to the list.