Bing Maps Technical Evangelist, Chris Pendleton interviews Windows Phone Program Manager, Ian Todd on the new Windows Phone 7 Series and it’s usage of Bing Maps at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.
Bing Maps Technical Evangelist, Chris Pendleton interviews Windows Phone Program Manager, Ian Todd on the new Windows Phone 7 Series and it’s usage of Bing Maps at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.
There’s something so exciting about discovering new places. Nothing beats finding a great new place I’ve never been—whether it’s a new bakery with a special dessert, a hole-in-the-wall Mediterranean place I didn’t notice before or a local art gallery where I can let my imagination roam free.
The challenge with finding those great places is that each of us has different tastes. I want to find places I like and I want to find them quickly. So when I’m overwhelmed with possibilities, I turn to sources I can trust. For example, if I’m in a new city, I might chat with the concierge at my hotel and explain to him the kinds of places I like so he can give me personalized recommendations, or I’ll ask my friends for local recommendations because I value their opinions and we have similar tastes. But finding trusted advice is hard; wouldn’t it be great if there was a way for me to get these recommendations all the time, everywhere I go?
We are trying to do exactly that, and today we’re excited to share the first step: an early release of Hotpot – a local recommendation engine powered by you and your friends. With Hotpot, we’re making local search results for places on Google more personal, relevant and trustworthy. There are three main ingredients in the Hotpot recipe:
Combining these three ingredients makes the hard task of choosing where to go easy; all you need is to rate places and add your friends. To do that we created the Hotpot rating app: quickly rate all the places you’ve been to and choose exactly which friends you want to invite to Hotpot. Then, when you’re visiting places, you can continue rating on the go from Mobile maps on Android.
Your recommendations are with you whenever you need them. In search results, you can see recommended places by using the new Place Search and clicking on the “Places” filter. You can also see recommendations when searching on Google Maps, Google Maps for Android or when checking the Place pages for a specific business.
You can set a Places nickname (here’s how) when you start using Hotpot, so you control how you post your ratings. That way, only your friends will be able to see your real name.
Happy hotpotting!