Help Me Beta-Test Our New Online Features
You may have noticed a slew of changes that have been taking place on the margins of the Weekly's website. I've kept quiet about them while we worked out all the kinks, but these improvements have finally reached a state of glitch-free usefulness:
New and Improved No. 1: Food Files online. Every week, the print newspaper runs a short list of cooking classes, wine tastings, food festivals, and other events. That's only a third of what we list online. Check the
Food Files calendar for all the extras we don't have space for in print, and now plan even farther ahead.
New and Improved No. 2: The Big Bites Newsletter. In addition to the blog and the print versions, the Weekly recently launched a weekly dining e-newsletter that comes out every Tuesday. It has exclusive news on restaurant gossip, dining deals, and other food business that you won't find in either the blog or the newspaper, plus first notice of the restaurant I'm reviewing that week. Sign up for the newsletter here.
New and Improved No. 3: The Online Dining Guide. Now this is the part I'm most excited about — and the part I'm opening up to public beta testing. We've just spent six months expanding our online dining database so it now includes almost 1400 restaurants (and that's without fast food chains). In addition, we’ve built up our search capabilities so you can search the database by much more than just name or cuisine.
Looking for a mid-priced Japanese restaurant in Belltown? Hunting down a Central District restaurant with sidewalk dining? Select “Restaurant Guide” from the restaurants menu on the home page. Using the pull-down menus at the top of the page, you can search our dining database by cuisine, neighborhood, and price — all at once — as well as by new search categories such as "patio/outside dining” or “vegetarian-friendly.”
Then send the listing you pick to a cell phone. Generate a Google map. Identify nearby bars, music venues, and movie theaters to hit after your meal.
I, along with few of the staff writers and Mark Fefer's mom, have been testing out the search capabilities to make sure they're working. Now I'm opening it up to you. Let me know if the search freezes up on you, you can't get any responses, or if you find some obviously incorrect information. (I'm not talking about whether you agree with the content of the capsules, which have all been written by editorial staff over the past 8 years, but concerns like "That place closed last month" or "Um, that's an Ethiopian restaurant, not a Thai one").
1 comment(s)
Seattle Foodie says:
Hey John!
Could we have the same search tools that are found on the link that you attached for the dining page in the search engine square that is on the right hand side of the screen the one that has the tabs for: * Calendar
* Dining
* Music
* Movies
* Clubs
That would be really helpful too. =)
Posted On: Friday, Aug. 1 2008 @ 8:55AM