One of the exciting, albeit not-actually-very-useful features of the new iPhone is the Urbanspoon 8-Ball: A little program where shaking the iPhone activates its motion sensor, locates you on its GPS, and uses the restaurant review web site Urbanspoon to spit back a nearby restaurant. Fun! Problem is, according to Frank Bruni, it doesn't work very well. The algorithm deployed by the program essentially ranks restaurants by popularity, which is to say, it ranks them by a combination of how many user reviews they have (quantity) and and how good the reviews are (quality). Which gives you a lot of restaurants that a lot of people have gone to, but that aren't very good, or aren't very near you, or aren't what you're looking for. Worse, if the algorithm isn't changed, it'll actually get wore. Since Urbanspoon is directing iPhoners to restaurants that are popular on the web site, and thus highly ranked in the results, those restaurants will become more popular on the web site, and more highly ranked in the results. The rich get richer and the reviewed get reviewed-ier. Meanwhile, you miss out on some good food. But there's no reason the main Urbanspoon algorithm can't be paired with a Critic's Choice option, or forced to compete against some sort of Zagat or New York Times program. Urbanspoon seems like an early try at an incredibly cool idea, and the bottom line is that even a rudimentary review aggregator is probably giving you better information than signs and tablecloth quality.
