Foodsplore helps users to discover great new restaurants and cafes by combining location based services with social networking. You can see where your friends are eating and what they thought of the food, service, ambience and everything else thanks to Foodsplore's community feedback features. And, with the aid of our new iPhone app (Android and Blackberry versions coming soon), finding a great snack or meal while out and about has never been easier.

Simply fire up the app, see what's available in your area and what your friends (and other users) have to say about it. Or, if instead you're just keen to discover something new to tingle your tastebuds, Foodsplore also helps you find places you'll love in advance - so no more finding out the hard way that a place isn't for you (paying through the nose for a meal you didn't enjoy, having a nice occasion ruined by below-par service, or whatever else).

As well as location based searching, you can also find new eating-out options by food type, deals, or glance at the social calendar feature which shows you where your friends are planning to try in the next month. As well as tips, users can share their experiences with photos and location-based check-ins, all of which are aggregated in a 'Splat' score - which gives you information as to how detailed and successful someone's recommendations are. In short, whether you're a foodie looking to explore new experiences or simply need somewhere decent for lunch in an unfamiliar town, Foodsplore is for you.

The Foodsplore team will head to SXSW Interactive for the 5-day conference in March 2012, along with 33 other hand-picked UK digital start-ups as part of the UK Trade and Investment mission. Here at Etondigital we're very excited for Zainab and Foodsplore and will have more coverage of the conference when it comes around in eight weeks. In the meantime, head over to Foodsplore.com, or check out the iPhone app in the Apple app store, to find out more right now. Sign up with an email address, or simply log in with facebook, and get exploring!

Anyway here's the blurb from Gogobot for anyone new to the website:

'Whether it is a week's vacation, a business trip or a weekend getaway, we believe planning your trip should be almost as fun as the trip itself. We believe the best advice comes from people you trust - people like you - and not from anonymous strangers on the internet. We believe sharing your experiences should be as simple as touching the screen on your phone. We are passionate about technology and design and their power to reshape our world for the better.'

The way that Gogobot does these things is by offering three main services for the traveller:

1. Real-time info about the place you are visiting. Everything from hotels and restaurants, to events, attractions and maps. It basically offers almost all the standard types of info which you tend to seek when choosing a destination, planning a trip, and - with the aid of mobile apps - when you are actually there. Lots of sites offer information however, so what is so good about Gogobot? This brings me to the second point.

2. Trip planning and organisation. Gogobot users can create profiles so that trip info that they wish to retain for later can be organised and stored on their accounts (no more need for endless print-outs prior to embarking on a trip). This option of having personalised trip plans and the possibility to share them with travel companions and friends is only attractive because of the wealth of travel information that Gogobot initially offers (see above).

This aspect of Gogobot is one of its strongest features in my view, promising to make travel more fun simply by removing a vast chunk of the time wasted on the tedious side of organisation: for example, having 19 browser windows/tabs open trying to find a hotel which is in the right place, has good reviews while also trying to check late night public transport facilities and timetables for the area is annoying and time-consuming. These aspects of trip planing are not fun in my view but sometimes cannot be avoided. Gogobot however seems well placed to dispense with the frustrating aspect of such tasks, though not their useful products.

3. Social. Gogobot takes the social element of websites such as Tripadvisor (i.e. community reviews, recommendations, feedback) and takes it to another level. Users have more detailed profiles with some essentially acting as free, knowledgeable online tour guides whom you can ask individual questions. Otherwise you can address the entire community of people who have been to the place in question, as well as still consulting the opinion poll result type info which we now rely on.

You can also directly seek the advice of your friends who can recommend places and things which you would enjoy in a particular city or country. This is important as things like museums, attractions, hotels etc do not really work in the same way that say DVD's and books do in terms of a computer algorithm's ability to recommend effectively with relatively little data what you might like (just check Amazon to see it in action in the latter case).

For now it would require far too much data for an automated recommendation service to be capable of this: there's simply too many variables to consider and unless users were happy to spend a good few hours inputting trip data, it would be unlikely to suggest things to do/see/stay with any great success rate.

That's why friends are important - they don't need hours of data inputting to recommend a cafe or park that you might like because they've already got months, years, or even decades of experience of knowing and learning what you like, how you think and feel, and can probably do a much better job than any automated recommendation currently available.

Also, remember when I said Gogobot could reduce the annoying side of travel planning? Well it can also open up more ways to enjoy the fun side of it - through features such as real-time digital postcards which can be geo-tagged and customised in a few ways (making it a little more advanced than simply sharing a photo on Facebook).

Anyway, I'll be having my first Gogobot experience with the aid of their iPad app this coming November on a trip to Paris, so you can expect a more hands-on review of it around mid-November (although I've already used the site a little to find two decent looking vegetarian restaurants in about 3 mins - which normally takes a lot longer, especially outside the UK where veggie places tend to be harder to locate).

So, with that in mind, here's a clip from a recent episode of the popular US talkshow Jimmy Kimmel Live with Justin Long (actor and comedian - you'll recognise him) in the guest's chair. US readers will of course also recognise Justin Long as the star of a series of Mac TV adverts (of the 'Mac vs PS' type) which also provide the pretext for his discussion of technology and the iPhone in this episode of Kimmel Live.

Long clearly is a both an avid user and a fan of his iPhone, so it's a comedy delight to watch him talk Kimmel (and the studio audience) through a bizarre recent encounter he had with a stranger via his iPhone. I'll say no more so as to avoid ruining the sketch - but click over to Engadget or Youtube for the full clip (and then pop back here for some more serious news and comment later on ;)

While this might not necessarily be the most exciting news for developers, it is certainly a key piece of info for consumers choosing their next smartphone, and indeed with the latest version of Android (2.2) also being touted as an all-round hit, I'd say that despite the recent high-profile launch of the iPhone 4, Google also has a rather enviable position in the smartphone game.

However, it should also be noted that, when it comes to paid apps, Nokia and Palm lead the way in terms of the cheapest average prices, while Apple is way out in front with the most expensive. Of course, while none of this counts for much unless we consider the quality of the apps (loads of free rubbish is not going to get anyone excited), it does provide consumers with some very handy info when choosing which smartphone suits their needs best. All in all, hats off to Distimo for filling in with a much-needed analytical role in the emerging app market, especially since most high-street retailers currently undersell smartphone app capabilities with inadequate info.

Dejan Levi

As anyone following any sort of technology-orientated media sources in recent years will be aware, the likes of Google, Apple, Twitter and Facebook tend to get about three to ten headlines (this is a blatant guess from me, let me know if you disagree) for every one Microsoft is able to get. And even when MS does get a headline, more often than not it is about various un-sexy PR disasters (racism in its Polish ad campaign last year, complaints over vomit ad, monopoly lawsuits etc), while others like Apple usually seem to have some pretty morale-boosting sales figures or mega-hyped product launches to throw in the mix (though they of course get the odd bad headline too...).

Among others I also questioned some of Microsoft's long term prospects in recent months, particularly the difficulty they have in muscling in on the disproportionate media coverage given to some of the aforementioned rivals. Well, Frank Shaw's post yesterday is intended exactly for people like me: a dose of bare hard facts to set the record straight.

And guess what? All in all, it makes for pretty impressive reading, and I must applaud Shaw for his astute use of the blogosphere to restore some perspective and redress the balance of coverage given to major players in the tech world.

The main gist of the post is that Microsoft is BIG, getting BIGGER, and outperforming all its rivals if one looks at the companies balance sheets as a whole (profits for 2009 stand at well more than Apple and Google combined for example).

However, Shaw is keen to illustrate that the extent of media coverage devoted to Microsoft's rivals is highly disproportionate to the relative size of the companies involved. Again, point well made, though Shaw seems unwilling to acknowledge that this is because much of what is offered by these high profile rivals tends to offer mainstream news media with viable stories (about social networking, fancy new phones etc), while operating systems tend to be of little interest to 'mainstream' media channels (BBC news for example is unlikely to report on Windows 7 sales, while iPhones of course are big news). The lesson here is that MS needs to get its 'sexy' stuff working a little better in the mainstream news and media arena - something like the xBox for example might be just the product to do this.

In any case there's a wealth of expert analysis of Shaw's figures floating around already, with Guardian tech and Techcrunch being my two top tips so far (check the Guardian one for some excellent 'reading between the numbers', and TC for some more comical analysis).

However, one thing which neither have yet discussed is the question of who Shaw's figures are intended for? After all, if Microsoft is happily smashing profit targets and dominating markets in a relatively quiet and understated way, then who cares if the press want to discuss iPads all day and night? Ultimately, as Shaw points out, Microsoft's profits and growth rates are such that they need not worry too much about what others are doing. And yet they clearly do worry somewhat about their inability to be the media darlings that Apple and Google currently are.

For example, Shaw points out that Nokia's smartphone sales far outstrip iPhone sales in 2010 - the message being simply 'shut up about Apple already - they're not even that big...' But isn't it funny that Nokia don't seem half as bothered about endless iPhone hype, they're just calmly reeling in mega-profits year after year, mainly by letting products speak for themselves. I somehow feel Microsoft's best strategy, judging by their self-evident success regarding sales numbers and profits, might be to follow suite, since I doubt they'll ever succeed in out-cool-ing Apple or Google in terms of media image.

Dejan Levi

So basically, if you fancy hearing what Jobs has to say on everything from the missing iPhone to Google and Android, click over to Engadget for their nicely organised highlights.

D8 is due to finish tomorrow, but by that point they will also have hosted the likes of Steve Ballmer and Mark Zuckerberg so look out for plenty more fascinating coverage over the next few days.

Dejan Levi

Now, for a company which spends a lot of cash trying to look nice in expensive TV adverts, this is rather a bad bit of PR. Furthermore, Apple is now finding a bit of downside to the considerable media clout that its activities command with a number of prominent and mainstream media sources directing their focus to the company's blunder.

In particular, Jon Stewart has done a piece about the story on his Daily Show, lambasting Apple for their draconian raid on Jason Chen after it was their own error which resulted in the phone being lost in the first place. Perhaps even more interesting is the Techcrunch analysis of the comic segment - which highlights the danger of this mainstream criticism for Apple, as opposed to the blogosphere critiques that it can easily ignore most of the time.

As the saying goes - live by the sword and die by the sword, and indeed no-one will be more aware of this right now than the Apple branding and marketing team who must somehow undo all the bad press that this initially trivial incident is now generating. As a potential legal dispute looks set to unfold in coming days (with Chen recently hiring a lawyer) it looks like the story - and all the surrounding bad press - won't be going away any time soon for Apple. I bet the careless developer who lost the phone has never had a hangover as horrible as this one...

Dejan Levi

It seems clear to anyone who has been inside a mobile phone shop since the launch of the iPhone that there are a great number of quite similar devices out there, from a variety of manufacturers. If HTC are guilty of infringing patents then probably so too are a number of other manufacturers (though perhaps HTC provides a good example of a much smaller and weaker company out of which to make an example - unlike Nokia for instance).

Regardless of the actual details of the technology involved (I'm neither an engineer nor a lawyer and so won't comment), it seems likely that if the case is eventually settled in Apple's favour there could be some quite significant consequences for the industry as a whole, and I don't doubt that many of the other players in the smart-phone market are also following the situation closely. We'll keep you posted with the results in coming weeks...

Dejan Levi

Well I suppose it's only inevitable that the actual thing can't live up to such overblown fantastical expectations, and while many in the 'blogosphere' contemplate a 'failure' for Apple, I must say that I'm more inclined to side with Stephen Fry on this one when he highlights that a similar response has met most of Apple's recent launches (including the iPhone) - simply due to the extent of media coverage and hype beforehand.

And just like the iPhone, Fry reckons this really only represents an early version of the iPad - more of a testing ground before 2.0 and 3.0 come into play. It seems sheer folly to deny that Apple's track record suggests that once these later releases are reached, the market will not once more be dominated by a sleek shiny device with a small apple on it...

Currently for me the iPad seems to be based on a couple of very sound principles and assumptions, which place it on good stead to do well. Firstly, it seems hard to doubt that gesture based software interfaces are the future of computing. With touchscreen technology improving all the time, I doubt that we'll have much use for the old mouse and keyboard in another decades time.

Secondly, there remain many potential markets and functions which the iPhone looks unable to ever deliver - simply because of its size. Conquering the e-book market, which remains there for the taking after the Kindle's relative lack of success, is one such potential goal - and the iPad once again looks like it has the potential to do the trick.

Only time will tell, but even at this early stage past experience teaches us that Apple sometimes know a good bit more than they modestly let on - and that in all likelihood the iPad will be at least a decent success by this time next year, if not a roaring one already by then.

Dejan Levi

However, as good as the iPhone is, one must surely feel that it is important that it does not provide the answer for every tricky, confusing, or annoying problem or situation in our lives. I'm talking especially about the new surge in health related apps, some of which threaten to assume far too much significance in people's health decisions and education.

There's no doubt that some of the more minor apps are great at helping us monitor and improve our health and fitness. The NHS has already endorsed the 'Drinks Tracker' which will help people to keep better track of their alcohol consumption, and hopefully exercise better informed choices aided by this additional information.

Various fitness apps that follow your exercise progress and log improving (or deteriorating) personal bests for exercise tasks are also nice additions and do far more easily and efficiently what otherwise required some serious self-discipline, good memory and lots of bits of paper and pencils...

However, as a recent Guardian roundup of the best health apps out there stresses, apps should never ever replace going to see your doctor for a professional consultation if something is wrong. While there are plenty of diagnosis apps out there - and they are all no doubt quicker to use than arranging and waiting for an appointment - we should surely remember that in certain areas of our lives, efficiency and ease is not the most important thing.

While there's no harm in enquiring on the symptom checker function of apps such as WebMD mobile and Symptom MD, this should never replace visiting the doctor for a far more thorough consultation with a life-long expert. Just remember your iPhone for some entertainment if you get bored in the waiting room...

Dejan Levi