Chapter 9. Are You Unpredictable?
URBANSPOON CREATED an interesting twist on choosing a restaurant. Taking a cue from slot machines, it turns deciding where to eat into a playful experience. You simply shake your phone (the app was one of the first to take advantage of the iPhone’s accelerometer) and three slots for cuisine, price, and location are randomly selected. Don’t like your choice? Shake again. While you can “lock” any of these slots, and the service does offer restaurant reviews, it’s this simple playfulness that sets Urbanspoon apart from other restaurant review apps. And of course, this is the kind of thing people like to share with one another. The app is fun and (when it was released) it showed off a cool new feature of the phone. ...
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