
Show HN: Hapibelly, Rotten Tomatoes for Restaurants - benkarst
http://www.hapibelly.com/
======
ricardo_ramirez
Take this as user feedback.

I downloaded the app and it asked me for a forced login using Facebook, with
no other choices.

I was expecting to at least be able to bypass the login screen, browse the app
a little, and login once I have something to contribute to it or do something
with it, but I never found the option.

I don't mind creating an account, but I do mind sharing my Facebook profile
even if it's as little as the name and email. An additional option to just
register using email would be welcome.

I just uninstalled it and moved along.

~~~
spoinkaroo
it's almost worth making a fake facebook / google for so many logins like
these - to try new apps / websites / products

~~~
herbst
I did that, but facebook tends to remove those accounts after a while if they
show no activity and i lost access to some accounts, because people who forget
to have alternative login methods also usually dont have ways to login when
your facebook is lost.

Facebook only sucks and has to avoided.

------
mamurphy
This is an unfortunate name choice.

It's very, very awkward to share with word of mouth. "Check out [hap * E]
belly.com, friend." Friend goes to "happybelly.com." Friend is confused.
Webmaster of happybelly.com is happy, yet confused. "With an I."
Happibelly.com doesn't work, nor does "happybelli." Friend gives up and checks
yelp.

See Blackblaze's article about how they wish their name was better for word of
mouth: [https://www.backblaze.com/blog/why-backblaze-bought-a-
porn-s...](https://www.backblaze.com/blog/why-backblaze-bought-a-porn-site/) .

~~~
Naritai
Still better than MikeUnderscore2004@yahoo.com:

[https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/e-mail-addresses-it-
woul...](https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/e-mail-addresses-it-would-be-
really-annoying-to-give-out-over-the-phone)

~~~
cjslep
"What's your wifi password?"

"fourwordsalluppercase one word all lowercase."

------
caublestone
Rotten tomatoes tells me if a movie is worth seeing, not if its worthy of a
place in afis top 100. Yelp and others push answers to decor, service,
lighting and mood above the most important question of "should I eat here?".
I've seen restaurants with the shameful 3 star rating on Yelp with the top
reviews complaining about a party of xx's experience in splitting a check
while mentioning that the food is good. It turns out there are "3 star"
restaurants that are just fine for one or two diners. I'm excited to see a
binary opinion to my decision of where to eat.

~~~
jkaunisv1
The idea I had for a restaurant review site when I lived in SF was to allow
only positive reviews, and it's basically a binary "did you enjoy yourself?" >
"yes"/"yes, very much". And require a photo of receipt within X days of
posting the review to guard against businesses buying votes. I figured the
restaurants with consistent bad service/food would just not bubble up as much
as ones with real fans.

~~~
michaelmrose
While I can see your point in only capturing the positive reviews I wonder
about something. Obviously consistently horrible shops just wouldn't show up
but much of whats bad is much less consistently bad and this isn't just true
of restaurants.

Bad reviews don't just help me find the contractors that would light my house
on fire, rob me and piss on the ashes they help me find the ones who only
deliver without difficulties 90% of the time so I can avoid being part of the
10%.

Also people would still be able to write negative things while giving what
amounts to a 4 or 5 star review on your site. People after all love to
complain. Being able to filter or sort for the bad reviews helps me obtain
that information whereas it would be harder to do. In effect all the same
negativity would likely be there just without the extra metadata.

~~~
jkaunisv1
My issue with places like Yelp is that people could post a negative review for
the silliest of reasons and it can be hard to tell if the restaurant actually
messed up or the person had different tastes than me, crazy expectations, or
caused the problems themselves. I just don't trust them. If I had, I would
never have discovered and repeatedly enjoyed some of my favourite restaurants.

For something like a contractor working on your house, yea it's important to
see those reviews. For a meal? I'd rather just take a chance based on a lot of
people saying they had a good time. It's what you do anyway when you check out
a new restaurant based on a friend's recommendation or just on a whim.

And the whole point is not to have any star system, you either liked it or
loved it and that's it. No opportunity for commentary so if you want to
complain, go elsewhere. The tagline I dreamed up was "Haters gonna hate,
eaters gonna eat."

------
benkarst
It was a lot of work gathering review info for over 500K restaurants in the US
but I hope some people will use this app and find it useful. Cheers.

~~~
minimaxir
Are you following the Terms of Use for each service? Yelp definitely doesn't
allow you to redistribute rating data without serious restrictions.

~~~
dubcanada
Zomato also claims copyright/IP of any reviews/content on their site.

Though I am not a 100% sure if just the out of 5 or % number usage counts or
not.

~~~
benkarst
I actually posted a question to quora, "Is it legal to use review information
from websites to calculate an average score?"

Replied: "In the US, so long as you have the legal right to access the data to
begin with (i.e., you didn't crack into someone's system to get it), yes.
Simple facts, and things like mathematical analysis of those facts, cannot be
copyrighted.

Calculating an average is just a mathematical process. It doesn't require the
type of creativity that would allow for copyright."

Link:[https://www.quora.com/Is-it-legal-to-use-review-
information-...](https://www.quora.com/Is-it-legal-to-use-review-information-
from-websites-to-calculate-an-average-score/answer/Todd-
Allen-9?__snid3__=290497742&__nsrc__=4)

------
level
I looked into this a while back, but bailed on the idea because it violates
the TOS of a bunch of APIs. For example, the Google API terms specifically
notes that you cannot aggregate their content[1]. There were a number of
issues with other API terms as well, such as completely disallowing any
caching or storing of data, I can't recall which ones, but if you read the
terms, you'll find they're quite restrictive.

Ultimately I decided not to pursue the idea since there's no real opportunity
for growth, since all your content comes from your competitors, who can easily
shut you down.

[1]
[https://developers.google.com/maps/terms](https://developers.google.com/maps/terms),
section 10.5 (d).

~~~
benkarst
If you ask me, it's hypocritical coming from a company that scrapes the entire
web, runs it through an algorithm (PageRank) and puts the data thats in a form
that easier to understand. They make 10s of billions per year scraping other
websites. Isn't Google the king of aggregators?

But you can't scrape google when aggregating info? What ever happened to
"Don't be evil?"

------
dyladan
How do you plan to compete with or differentiate from any of the sites you are
aggregating? My usual flow for seeing if restaurants are good generally goes
like this:

1\. google places near me 2\. see google reviews for place 3\. maybe read 1
review from whichever review company is highest on google's results 4\. go
back to step 1

Aside from the fact that this is iOS only (I have Android), requires Facebook,
and violates the ToS of the services you are aggregating, I just don't see any
compelling reason to change my habits from what they already are.

~~~
benkarst
From my habits, I've found you really don't get the full picture using one
platform. Google Users will review a restaurant in a completely different way
than Yelp users. Zomato users are looking for different things than say a
facebook user. That's why they all have different average scores.

1\. I have a friend cloning the app right now for android. Many of the things
brought up in this post (like requiring facebook ) will be changed

2\. Copying review results does not violate the terms of services.
[https://www.quora.com/Is-it-legal-to-use-review-
information-...](https://www.quora.com/Is-it-legal-to-use-review-information-
from-websites-to-calculate-an-average-score/answer/Todd-
Allen-9?__snid3__=290497742&__nsrc__=4)

"In the US, so long as you have the legal right to access the data to begin
with (i.e., you didn't crack into someone's system to get it), yes. Simple
facts, and things like mathematical analysis of those facts, cannot be
copyrighted."

------
simonw
Out of interest, why did you decide to build this as an app rather than a
(mobile-friendly) website? I would expect the latter to be quicker to build
and easier to distribute.

------
mrcsparker
Is there is RT-like distinction between All Critics / Top Critics / Audience
Score?

I would love to see a site which gathered reviews from professional food
reviewers.

~~~
benkarst
Automation is necessary when you're talking about finding reviews for over
500K restaurants.

The best solution I can think of right now is 1) collecting valid professional
review links from around the web 2) associating them with specific restaurants
and 3) performing sentiment analysis to determine a rotten or fresh type
rating.

These steps are straightforward and would not yield 100% accuracy. Even a 95%
accuracy would be unfair to the few restaurants who's rating somehow gets
messed up.

------
dannylandau
If you don't mind me asking, how many weeks/months did it take to build out
this app, including both dev and design?

~~~
benkarst
That's a hard question to answer since 1) it's been off and on for about a
year and 2) I didn't start out with this idea.

The original idea for Hapibelly was to crowdsource popular menu items, using
your mobile device as an interactive media-rich menu, voting on the menu items
you like. It was done with just me as the designer. I created an entire
backend that let's restaurants manage their menu, specials, and basic info.

My friend Sara helped me out with the updated look
([https://www.behance.net/itssaramarshall](https://www.behance.net/itssaramarshall)).
I have to give her a ton of credit for telling me letting me pick her brain
and drafting a logo for me. I have another friend working on an Android clone.

The goal of this update was to keep all that in place and add more reason for
people to download the app giving an aggregate score. The Hapibelly score
became the main value add of this update. I spent more time gathering the data
than on the app itself.

This update took me about 3-4 weeks. The first version about 3-4 months. Of
course I have ideas for updates to make it more kick ass. With any luck I can
pursue those ideas with a bit of funding!

------
spoinkaroo
Why don't you add a chart of the individuals rankings that go into your score
for each restaurant, similar to the image you advertise on hapibelly.com?
similar to here: [http://www.cinesift.com/#/](http://www.cinesift.com/#/)

~~~
benkarst
I have legal concerns about displaying other platforms review information in
my app. I link to review websites and their info is used in the calculation.
Agreed that it'd be great visually for app.

I hadn't heard of Cinesoft. I like.

------
jmcgough
The image background looks grainy on my mbp (it's stretched and the quality is
a bit low anyways).

~~~
benkarst
Thanks. Will fix in the next release!

------
peternicky
Facebook only auth === immediate uninstall.

~~~
benkarst
Would an email signup alternative be a more friendly option? Google Plus,
Twitter, or none at all?

------
haffla
That's the fifth time this month that I just want to try a simple app but
can't as iOS 9 is required. Why?

~~~
eightysix_four
Because ~80% of iOS devices are >9 and spending development time on outdated
OSs is a waste for startups.

------
roryisok

        Rotten Tomatoes for Restaurants
    

Took me a while to parse that one. "why would any restaurant need rotten
tomatoes?"

~~~
SideburnsOfDoom
Indeed. "Rotten Tomatoes" next to "Restaurants" is an unfortunate combination
of words.

Unless you like Icelandic-Italian fusion cuisine, maybe.

