Archive for August, 2009

Feature Refresher: My Places

Wednesday, August 26th, 2009

I was out last night with a friend who frequently uses UpNext on his iPhone. He expressed his enthusiam for the app but had some additional feature requests. What surprised me was that the features he requested were already in the application and he just did not realize it. So periodically, we will post a refresher on some existing features that will help you better use the application. First up…

MY PLACES

My Places is found on the bottom of the home screen next to Categories. From there you have 5 options

1) Rated - see all the places you have rated

2) Favorites - see all the places you have favorited

3) Marked - see all the places you have marked (remember, bookmarks are private and not shared with the UpNext community)

4) Community - see the most favorited and highest rated venues based on the UpNext community. We aggregate everyone’s inputs and show the top places in each neighborhood.

5) Account - Here you have the ability to create an account, log into your account, log in with Facebook Connect

My Places is an easy way to bring up your favorite places and to see what other places UpNext users are talking about. If you use UpNext as your personal city guide, My Places is the best way to see those places you have been, want to go or need to share.

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This Weekend in NYC

Friday, August 14th, 2009

While there are hundred of events in NYC every weekend, we wanted to point out two in particular this weekend because they are enjoyable if you are part of them or they are something to be aware of if you are not.

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On Saturday will be the 2nd weekend of Summer Streets.

Summer Streets rolls on August 15!
NYC DOT and our partners are proud to present Summer Streets. We will temporarily close Park Avenue and connecting streets from the Brooklyn Bridge to Central Park to motor vehicles and open it up to people on three consecutive Saturdays in August (August 8, 15, & 22).

A perfect area for jogging, riding a bike or just taking a nice stroll. Check out the activities page to see all the events they have planned.

On Sunday is the NYC Half Marathon. Starting in Central Park and ending near Battery Park. This is a great opportunity to support those who are running to improve their health, raise awareness or just to do it.

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So what if you are not participating is either of these events. Well it is good to be aware of them because there will be significant road closures that will deter you if you are heading cross town or uptown.

Make sure you are aware of when the events are occuring and what areas they are affecting. Or just take the subway, which will be running fine regardless of those events above ground. (Try out the subway map on UpNext, top right corner, to find your way around the city.)

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Why Buy Local

Tuesday, August 11th, 2009

One of the reasons we created UpNext was to help people discover great local businesses in NYC. The neighborhood cheese shop, the local art gallery, the mom and pop diner, are all example of things we think make this city great. But there is also a financial incentive to shop locally.

Why Buy Local (via PSFK)

Spending your dollars at locally-owned businesses bring more money to local communities. A larger percentage of your dollars are returned to the neighborhood to provide greater services.

In addition to the fantastic graphic above, Local First gives 10 reasons to shop local first. Read through the list and see if it makes sense for you.

Our friends at Citysquares, created The Buy Local Challenge last June. For a month, they did their best to buy only from locally owned businesses. Why not give it a try yourself for a week? You will be surprised how easy it can be and how many new businesses you will discover that offer good and services on par or better than the national chains.

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There Is Such a Thing As A Free Lunch

Thursday, August 6th, 2009

We have been emailing with an UpNext user to update some information regarding a restaurant around him. We updated the information and an explanation for why the previous data was off.

His last email read,

Today, thanks to your light-speed response I went for lunch [at the restaurant] and read [the owner] your reply…

My lunch was on the house! Thank you for that.

While not quite at the Foursquare mayor level, we are happy to see UpNext users interacting and engaging their local businesses through UpNext (and being rewarded for their efforts).

On a more general level, it is great to see that local businesses are paying attention to the resources that customers are using to find, discover and learn about their businessess. Technology is not a substitute for good customer service on the local level, but it can definitely enhance and amplify the message local businesses are sending to their customers. We love that UpNext is part of this ecosystem.

If you are a local business owner and want to update, change or improve your businesses listing, please reach out to us at general [at] upnext [dot] com or email me directly at dmoon [at] upnext [dot] com.

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Bookmark For Later

Tuesday, August 4th, 2009

We try to make the functionality for UpNext as open ended as possible. Rather than forcing users to write reviews a certain way or bookmark locations for a certain purpose, we leave it up to you to decide how it works best.

But we like to highlight some uses, in case, you have no idea why we implemented a feature.

Today, we saw one of our top users, Tom (@toms), tweet this…

doodle

And he shared his screen capture on Flickr.

Using bookmarks on UpNext is a great way to catalog all the great places you have visited. But it is also a way to save places that you want to visit. Perhaps you read about a hotspot that you definitely want to check out in the future or a new restaurant across town that you have to try next time you are in the neighborhood. Simply bookmark these locations and you can bring them back up under “My Places”.

For those of you traveling to NYC, this is a great tool for planning your trip and making sure nothing is missed. A trip to NYC can be a whirlwind, so taking some time beforehand to mark those key locations help you see everything you wanted.

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