Matt Braun, a talented web developer & co-worker, does some web work on his own (as a lot of talented people do). He put together ToledoMenu (http://toledomenu.com/ ):
"ToledoMenu is the place to find great restaurants and hotspots, read what we have to say, and put in your two cents.
Providing hyper-local restaurant reviews for the greater Toledo area, with information that's relevant to you, along with the ability to read what others in your community are saying and even provide your own insight, ToledoMenu.com is focused on having fun and keeping you informed. Our staff is very knowledgable – we've spent our lives in the area, we know some of the best places to eat and to get great deals."
Since there's also a lot of talented writers and more than a few talented eaters ;) in Northwest Ohio and Southeast Michigan, thought I'd pass along the resource and the opportunity to give your own comments about Toledo's fine eateries.
--Mike
Fantastic. I always get jealous of seeing really cool websites that are limited to NY or SF.
Yeah, who says all the cool sites have to be on the coasts?
Nice app. Nice tool.
In an older version of the Toledo City Paper's restaurant guide, beside each restaurant existed one or more dollar signs, giving the user a general idea of a typical cost for a meal. Each dollar sign represented a price range.
If it's not already, make toledomenu.com easily usable on a mobile device. Could be a handy tool for mobile users when out and about and someone asks, "So, where do you want to eat?" User enters a zip code to bring up all the restaurants in that area or within the area of the current location of the user's mobile device.
And when doing a search on zip code or on a tag listing like 'mexican', dynamically plot all the restaurant locations on a map. And of course, clicking on a map icon will provide additional information for that restaurant at toledomenu.com.
Thanks for the feedback, it's very much appreciated.
The mobile device functionality is an in-the-works feature. Glad to hear at least one person would use it. It should be mostly usable in mobile browsers now, but the stylesheet isn't optimized for that experience. Mobile Safari is probably the best bet at this point...
Again, thanks! I'm trying to make ToledoMenu a little bit better every day.
It's not very handy for bears searching for picnics.
Oh technology and all your flaws.
My thought was that since there's only a very small free-roaming bear contingent in the greater Toledo area, I was going to defer the picnic search feature to a later phase.
Something I hadn't considered, though, is the vastly larger population of ants. They might appreciate picnic search, too.
April 2009 Toledo Free Press story about ToledoMenu.com titled ToledoMenu.com serves up helping of area restaurants and reviews
... a mobile version that is optimized for iPhone devices, but also is viewable by the majority of mobile devices. That site is located at
ToledoMenu.com/m .
Toledo Web design firm:
http://www.magnateinteractive.com/
http://twitter.com/magnate_i