

Meet Ness, the Pandora for restaurant recommendations - panic
http://gigaom.com/2011/08/25/ness-restaurant-app/

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potatolicious
Amazing UI. Speedy too, which is atypical of apps that try to get fancy :)

It says I have a 84% chance of liking Chipotle... looks like I should give it
more data ;)

One of the problems with this I noticed off the bat is that I only gave 4-5
star ratings. Great restaurants stick out in my mind, forgettable meals never.
Unless I've had a very negative experience with a restaurant I'm not overly
compelled to go and rate it.

[edit] The UI feels _really_ WP7-esque. I like it. It's like a delicious
fusion of iOS and WP7... now I'm wondering what the world would be like if we
had something like this across the board.

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schiff
Hi Potatolicious,

I work with the Machine Learning team at Ness. Thanks for all the feedback!
Please email us at support@likeness.com as you have more thoughts, especially
about where Ness does and does not work for you.

With regard to only teaching Ness by rating restaurants 4-5 stars, this is a
great point, especially for the first 10 ratings. There are a couple
particular ways we address this today: 1) Which restaurants you pick tells us
a lot. Did you rate hole in the walls vs. expensive places? We have spent a
lot of time working on our collaborative filter to address this. Wikipedia has
a good article for a starting ground on this, and the papers that came out of
the Netflix Prize are great
[[http://www.netflixprize.com/assets/GrandPrize2009_BPC_BellKo...](http://www.netflixprize.com/assets/GrandPrize2009_BPC_BellKor.pdf)].
2) On the personalize page, there are multiple stages. One of them is to
confirm that the system is correct about places you don't like, which is
obviously also very informative. 3) Sometimes, as with your Chipotle example,
we won't be right. Telling us where we are wrong is particularly helpful in
correcting the system, which in some sense gives us more information that
confirming what we already know. Think of it of correcting a person, who
misunderstood what you like from examples you gave. In a metaphorical sense,
this is like providing results that have more entropy.

-Jeremy VP of Product & Machine Learning

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guimarin
I'm really happy that you have addressed this problem. My question comes down
to, in the rating process, I rated a fairly limited amount of places, in terms
of categorical scope. Then when I moved into the main application, there were
many many more categories available, like ice-cream and bbq. I found myself
not finding restaurants that I liked loading in the initial 10 choices, so I
kept skipping a lot. You might consider a continuous scroll feature for this
initial rating set. Otherwise, integrate with open table, and this will rank
as the best vertical search/discovery app I've ever come across.

~~~
schiff
Guimarin,

Thanks for the feedback. We made a slightly different mechanism for rating on
the personalize page (the list of places you saw when you first came to the
app allowing you to quickly rate). Either a user can skip a place manually by
clicking the X, or can scroll down to the bottom and skip all the places that
you don't like. You are saying you would rather just scroll past the ones you
don't know?

-Jeremy

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guimarin
Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. I don't know if I agree with the other
commenter about interspersed skip alls. For me, scrolling past seems less
final then hitting skip. If I hit skip, I was afraid that a negative mark
would be given to the restaurant. I know that's not the case, but it was a
very strong incentive for me not to want to hit skip, or the x. I didn't feel
like harshly judging a place that I'd never been to.

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ethank
Does anyone know what their PR did to piss off Om so much?

<http://twitter.com/#!/om/status/106833400056389633>

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malouie
Hi Ethan, I believe Om had a misunderstanding.

-Marissa, Head of Marketing and PR for Ness Computing

~~~
dannyr
Did you clear it up with him?

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mey
Personally would like an Android version.

Edit: what about a web version or even mobile web version, etc.

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mikeleeorg
I've been dying for an app like this. Yelp's recommendations aren't very
helpful for me because the reviewers rarely have the same tastes I do. I'm not
a foodie, but I know what I like.

I'm a little bummed that I couldn't find some places I've been to on Ness.
Maybe their locations DB isn't complete yet.

I found it interesting that I wanted to rate non-food places too, like
coworking spaces I've been too. It certainly fits within their "organizing the
world's opportunities" goal.

~~~
schiff
I'm very happy to hear that the problem of similar tastes is one that
resonates with you.

We are working very hard to quickly add all the places in the US, so you can
rate the ones you love! Please request these places by clicking the mail
button in the bottom right corner of the app, and we will do our best to get
them into the system promptly!

We will be building out more channels soon. You mentioned coworking spaces,
what else would you like to see?

\- Jeremy, VP of Product and Machine Learning at Ness Computing

~~~
mikeleeorg
Off the top of my head:

If you're looking at the use case of locations sought via the mobile app, some
suggestions would be: coworking spaces, barber shops/hair salons, groceries
stores/supermarkets, running trails, and tailors. At least, as a higher
priority.

Lower priority, but still important, would be places that don't need to be
that close to me. Meaning, I would rather find a good, reputable service that
is far away, than a nearby mediocre service. Such as: dentists, doctors, tax
accountants, and mechanics.

I don't think I would need reviews for locations like retail stores, gas
stations, and that sort of thing. So that wouldn't be important at all.

This is just a quick swag; I'm sure some of the prioritization could be
argued. I hope this helps. Keep up the great work!

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julian_t
It sounds rather cool, but this Englishman-visiting-New-York can't download it
because it is only in the US App Store... and there are more restaurants than
you can shake a stick at within a couple of block of here, that I'd love
recommendations on.

But more seriously, this could be a very good app for when you're visiting a
new city, and I can think of a dozen people right now who would love to
download it but can't...

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ErnestineFu
Love how Ness realizes that I care more about my friends' reviews than that of
all the random people on Yelp. Also beautiful UI that makes me hungry just
using the app!

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smackfu
The feedback via email thing is slick but confusing. Do I need to provide the
details of the restaurant again? If not, it's unclear.

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kongqiu
Wow.

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tettu
I hope it will be on Japanese app store ASAP. #from Japan.

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rainmaker420
This is amazing!

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iphoneengineer
Great app, I wish I could code for iOS that well! Slick implementation.

