Kyle
Quick take every preconceived notion you have about a restaurant ratings app and throw it out the window. We’re not going to be talking about the next Urbanspoon or Open Table or even the next Venga. But to set the stage we need to talk about Hack Omaha first.
The Hack Omaha challenge was this past weekend in Omaha Nebraska. The event was a three-day event, similar to a startup weekend, which started on Friday and ended this past Sunday at 6:00pm. During this time the “hacker” teams needed to use some portion of publicly available government data and turn into something useful, or in Omaha Food Fight’s case, useful and fun.
While you’re probably thinking crime prevention heat maps, city park guides, community planning apps, and things like that, those were all represented but Omaha Food Fight took the cake (you see what we did there?).
The other teams were:
Safeomaha.org- An interactive crime heat map.
Omaha Bounty Hunter- “The Price Is Right” for stolen property values.
Play Safe Omaha- Map of safe places for kids to play.
Valuation and Comparison Interface: a property value comparison app.
HSW Project- relationships revolving around campaign finance.
Slum Lord Next Door- Search neighborhoods for major code violations
Is It Clean- is the place you’re going to eat at safe.
Voting Registration app- needs no description.
Omaha Food Fight- The winner.
(source: SPN)
More after the break
The winner Omaha Food Fight gamifies restaurant ratings in Omaha. We’re not talking about how was the server, was the food good, would you go back again and what’s the star rating. We’re talking about the important stuff, what restaurants have the best food inspection ratings.
Basically the app/game asks you does your perception of a restaurant match the county’s actual inspection rating. Was that a roach that just ran across the floor? Would you give the restaurant a “fair” rating for that roach? Did the Douglas County Health Department rate it “Superior”.
So within the game Omaha Food Fight shows the player two restaurants, or other food establishments in Douglas County. The user has to guess the rating the actual health inspection rating of the restaurant. If you get it correct your “inspector” rating goes up. If you don’t get it correct, it goes down.
The great thing about Omaha Food Fight is you can either guess based on the name or if you’ve seen the establishment on the outside, and really put your brain to the test when you’ve actually eaten at a place. The other piece is that the ratings that are the “correct” answers are the actual health department ratings for sanitation for these establishments. You may think that four star restaurant rated “Superior” but if you learn while playing Omaha Food Fight that it’s in fact just Fair you may save your money and eat elsewhere.
Do you live in Omaha and have an Android device? Get the app for free in the Google Play Store
source: SPN
