

Google Hotpot - abraham
http://www.google.com/hotpot

======
theli0nheart
I actually really like this product and think it's a genius move on Google's
part.

Yes, they're late to the party, but what really stuck out to me was the fact
that Google had a list of all the locations I'd asked for directions to in the
past, by merit of the fact that I have Web History turned on. I don't have an
iPhone or Android Device, so the fact that I had all the restaurants I might
want to rate placed right in front of me was incredibly appealing.

As minor a detail as this seems, I think this slingshots Google into the
venue-rating space. If I were Yelp, I think I'd actually be worried now.

EDIT: One thing that's a little weird, if you click on the comments area, it
takes you to a blank page. See
[http://maps.google.com/maps/place?cid=9906659489061041176...](http://maps.google.com/maps/place?cid=9906659489061041176&view=feature&mcsrc=detailed_reviews&num=10)

~~~
tyng
If I were Yelp, I _wouldn't_ be worried - reason: think Google's other failed
attempts: buzz, latitude, video (before acquiring Youtube) etc. Google is best
at Search, no doubt, but there are certain areas Google engineers just don't
get, which is more of the result of its corporate culture and strategic focus.
Especially since Google seemed to have failed at creating social-based
products many times in the past, whereas review sites like Yelp, is very
social.

Of course there are exceptions, like Gmail and Maps. But the mere fact that
Google is entering my market wouldn't make me worry. Keep calm and carry on!

~~~
sandipc
saying "there are certain areas Google engineers just don't get" doesn't
exclude Google engineers from "getting" an area in the future

~~~
tyng
Sure, but at least until now we haven't seen the tipping point for a change in
Google's product design approach.

In any case that wasn't my point, my point was that as an entrepreneur one
shouldn't be deterred by the mere fact that a big competitor is moving into
your market

------
cloudkj
I've been looking for a service that does this _exact_ thing. Give me
personalized recommendations on restaurants so I can stop trying to comb
through mountains of sometimes non-sensical, irrelevant Yelp reviews to decide
what new restaurant to try.

A lot of comments here have complained that this has been tried and done. My
question is, where? Does Yelp already do something like this? I went on Yelp a
few days ago looking for this exact service. I'm not a Yelp user, and I just
wanted something quick and lightweight that would give me recommendations
based on my preferences. Found nothing to that effect. In order to contribute
at all, I have to write a full review for a bunch of restaurants.

~~~
Raphael
If you refuse to sign up to sites, you aren't giving them a fair chance.

~~~
danshapiro
The only people who give a startup a truly fair chance are the founders'
parents. Everyone else skims, misreads, jumps around, and then tells their
friends about a verdict formed mostly on misconceptions.

Great consumer businesses optimize for this behavior.

~~~
dreyfiz
That was really insightful. Where's the Temple Grandin[1] of designing web
experiences and UIs for Joe Blub? Complaining about not getting a chance to
show off what you do is just complaining about your poor understanding of the
behavior of the internet herd that's trampling all over your website or app.
Stop whining, start designing. See also Luke Wroblewski's ALA article "Sign Up
Forms Must Die"[2] from nearly 3 years ago and compare[3].

1\. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_Grandin>

2\. <http://www.alistapart.com/articles/signupforms>

3\. [http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5271434/ns/business-
consumer_new...](http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5271434/ns/business-
consumer_news)

------
rms
Thanks for the link. This is the first Google product launch I can remember
where I have immediately liked the interface.

~~~
tectonic
Agreed. I've never bothered to write a review on Yelp, but this interface was
quick enough that I found myself writing a couple on here.

------
rodericksilva
I guess everyone has to have one of these too :/

Is it just me or is anyone else sick of seeing the same features being
developed on different platforms? Can't google and Facebook fill different
spaces?

Buzz was late. Hotpot is late. Where is the innovation Google? Slept on Gmail
unification. Wave was awesome but released the wrong way.

Google is starting to make the same mistakes Netscape made. They should stop
trying to be another Facebook and continue doing what they do best.

I already have Facebook and Twitter. Give me a better online office app and
keep kicking ass with Gmail and Search!

I'm just saying ;)

~~~
pavs
I guess they should have never done, gmail, chrome, search, advertising,
mobile OS because someone else have done it already.

As long as they are pushing things one step farther I have no problem with
them entering existing or even saturated market. It pushes everyone else to
innovate instead of settle for mediocrity. Chrome has done that to the whole
browser ecosystem, it shaked everyone up from their sleep. They might not do
it every single time, with every single product. But there is no way to know
if they will change the langscape, if they don't try it.

~~~
rodericksilva
Pavs, I totally agree with you. Gmail, Chrome, Search and iOS were late. I was
all over them when they came out too.

I was all over Wave and still think they should have slowly integrated its
features into Gmail.

I was excited to get my hands on those first releases but I'm just not feeling
any of their new stuff.

------
tel
Clever name. Hot pot is Chinese family-style fondue where everyone takes some
meats and vegetables and puts them into a communal boiling soup bowl, waits
for a while chatting, then pulls out _something_ delicious. I'm definitely
interpreting it favorably, but it fits the service very well.

~~~
ulrich
That was exactly what I thought of when reading the name. Hotpot is great,
lets see how well the recommendations will be.

------
trotsky
<http://www.google.com/support/hotpot/>

_Google Places and Hotpot isn’t just about telling others what you think. It’s
about discovering new great places based on your personal tastes and
preferences. Once you’ve rated places and added friends, start looking for
recommendations of new places to try on Google Maps.

Next time you’re looking for a new dentist, hair salon or restaurant search on
Google Maps to see what your friends have to say. Your Google Maps search
results will be prioritized according to your preferences. Then you’ll see
explanations from friends, so you can find the right place for you._

So like yelp, I guess. Was I supposed to know that already? The linked landing
page has only the barest hint about what it is, and you have to be logged in
to even see that.

------
sachinag
It's pretty silly that Hotpot doesn't use the geolocation feature in some
browsers.

Also, it's kind of bizarre that even with the non-standard design, you can
just _tell_ this is a Google product by the colors, font, and spacing of
elements.

~~~
rms
My first suggested search was my home address, which is set as my default
location in Google Maps.

------
mellis
There seem to be a lot of rough edges here.

Is there a way to load more items to review without reviewing five? Otherwise,
it's easy to get stuck if it pulls up a list of things you don't have an
opinion about.

When I click on the number of reviews, it loads a mostly blank page. I'm
assuming something going wrong because I would expect to see the reviews
there.

The Google Maps tie-in is also confusing. Now it seems to show the things I've
rated first, which is a bit weird, since I already know about them. When you
rate new things in the Maps search results, nothing appears or changes
dynamically to indicate that you've done so.

Also, my favorite restaurant seems to be missing, but maybe that's a good
thing. :)

------
shrikant
I like it that the "best ever" rating is limited to 10 (will possibly be
dynamic over time), so trigger-happy folk who tend to hyperbole will actually
have to think before going "BEST EVAR!!" indiscriminately.

------
edanm
This is unbelievable - the site isn't working for me!

I tried loading on Chrome and Firefox (Chrome says there's a redirect loop,
Firefox gives a similar error.) I've also tried clearing my cookies, doesn't
seem to fix it.

~~~
tnorthcutt
Try signing out and signing back in, loading in an incognito window, etc.
(especially if you have an apps account).

~~~
riobard
“Have you tried to sign out and in again” is the new “Have you tried to turn
it off and on again”!! :D

------
vkdelta
Dont know the reason, but I actually typed 5 reviews after seeing the link. I
have never done it on Yelp or Urbanspoon. I wish if they could display reviews
from other anonymous users, instead of just my friends.

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anto1ne
Am I the only one to get "This webpage has a redirect loop." ? even after
logging out from google accounts

~~~
nowarninglabel
If you are using Chrome you might try the "Remove cookies" extension. I found
this solved some Google Account issues in the past.

~~~
anto1ne
well, I tried that, and every variations of browsers, google accounts and
proxies I could think of, and redirect loop is all I got.

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listic
It says the page is not available in my language. Where does it infer my
locale from? I have set USA as my location in my Google account and preference
for en-us in Firefox.

Hey Google, I don't want all pages to be in my language. Show them in English,
please.

------
waterlesscloud
Hmm. Rated 4 places, but the counter kept saying I'd rated 2. Reloaded page
and only 1 rating showed. I clicked stars, wrote a paragraph, and rated the
subcategories, and "published".

If it didn't save all that, I'm never using it again.

~~~
CWuestefeld
It's properly counting the places I've rated, but it's constantly taunting me,
saying "Rate 4 more places to get new recommendations". Since 11 > 4, I think
they ought to eliminate that bad message.

------
c1sc0
I reviewed 11 places in maybe 10 minutes or so. The UI is simple, intelligent
& addictive. Brilliant approach to quickly catch up with the qypes, yelps &
foursquares of this world.

------
chrisbroadfoot
I _love_ the counters. It turns rating into a bit of a game :)

------
tjsnyder
This places the venues front and center and relies on a community of friends
to generate any real interesting recommendations. What made yelp so successful
was the community involvement.

This really feels like a recommendation engine based on your google profile
and not a place to really get a feel for restaurants in your area.

------
kaylarose
The problem I have with sites like this (and any restaurant review site in
general), is that they always include national chains in the
reviews/recommendations.

Really, do you need to read a review of the McDonalds on Main St. vs the
McDonalds on Park Ave., before deciding what you are going to eat at dinner?
Why not just group all McDonald into one place.

Not to mention that, due to limited palates, funds, or whatever, places like
Olive Garden, Chili's et.al. always end up in the top ten places to eat. Over
5-star restaurants, or even genuinely better local restaurants in the same
category/price range (in my city at least).

/rant

------
buro9
This is cool, though I still don't have a way to offer a correction to a piece
of data. One of my local restaurants has the address wrong in Google Places
and I've yet to find a way that I can help correct it.

~~~
abraham
On individual venue pages there is an "Edit this place" link.

Example: <http://maps.google.com/maps/place?cid=2313806217463839235>

~~~
buro9
Ah.

I was expecting a full read/write interface within hot pot.

------
melissamiranda
What I want is to email friends for their recommendations and have someone
parse their prose and put it on a map for me. Friends ask friends for recs all
the time and its tricky to google each place, put it on the map, figure out if
you're near anything recommended when you're on the go. So just take what
google already does with the survey forms, stick that in a simple email you
can send to friends, and their recommendations automatically get pulled
together into hotpot.

I wanted to build this but Hotpot has too much of a head start.

------
jamesaguilar
Dunno if it works that well. I rate two or three sushi places (along with
Chinese, Thai and American joints) and now my recommendations page has nothing
but Japanese restaurants. In IR, this is called a diversity problem.

~~~
pjscott
Wait a month or two. They'll have more reviews in their database, and they'll
have had time to tweak their recommendation engine.

~~~
jamesaguilar
Sure, or it will go the way that Wave and so many other products before did.
Or it will linger in zombie obscurity like Notebook did for so long. I'm not
too worried about it either way.

------
cnlwsu
holy crap I didn't want to and ended up writing up a bunch of reviews...
bravo.

------
sahillavingia
Hotspot would have been much better. What's a hotpot?

~~~
axod
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancashire_hotpot> ?

~~~
lancashire
Let's hope so.

------
acdha
Oh, goodie, another Google service I can't use until it works with a Google
Apps account. Looks like they really need to fix Google Profiles…

~~~
lallysingh
Generally I have two browsers -- chrome for google apps, and safari/firefox
for everything else. The latter is logged into my normal gmail account.

~~~
acdha
I've done the same: I'm just shocked by how badly broken the google apps
support still is (no profiles or youtube while logged in, even with multiple
accounts enabled?), given that they have actual paying customers using google
apps.

------
isani
Am I the only one who feels that six rating levels is too many? I'd rather
just say "go there" or "don't go there".

~~~
kin
Going to agree with you on this one. Viewing ratings is always questionable
considering one person's 3 is different from another person's 3. On the other
hand, the review system is supposed to be personalized, like Netflix. All it
does is map you to those with a similar taste and recommend to you restaurants
that you've yet to try that others with similar tastes have tried. The more
you use it, the better it gets.

------
kvs
Probably a dumb question: Are the reviews private (or only shared with
friends) or public like other sites?

~~~
travisp
The reviews are public, but you choose a nickname to identify you (you're not
identified by your Google account). The "friends" feature lets you get
recommendations from those people. In addition, a friend sees your Google
Profile name and picture, not just your review nickname.

------
g9
Does not work for me. <http://imgur.com/j6bta.png>

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maguay
Very funny ... HotPot is a Suki restaurant in Thailand -
<http://www.hotpot.co.th/>

