Makansutra, a food guide widget
A couple of weeks ago, we were commissioned by SingTel and Nokia to develop 2 widgets for their upcoming Christmas promotion. Particularly, for the brand new Nokia N97 mini, the Nokia X6 (yes, you’ll get it pretty soon in Singapore) and the Nokia 5230.
One of the content provider that we had the opportunity to work with was, Makansutra. Makan what? Makan-suuuuutra, you know? Like Kamasutra? Hit the read more link below for the full write up.
About Makansutra
The “Food Guidebook Maven”, says New York Times. CNN calls it the “Guru of Grub”. Makansutra began life in 1997 with a simple mantra – “die die must try” in its quest to celebrate Asian Food Culture. This multi-discipline food company is the brainchild of photojournalist KF Seetoh who says, “eat the food and digest the culture”, and the guide is now available for your Nokia smartphone.
Find the favourite Makansutra listings right near you, or anywhere in Singapore and beyond, and discover new restaurants and street food gems! For more information, surf over to www.makansutra.com.
There you go, that’s the official write up. This was one of the most complicated widgets that we have developed so far, with features that took advantages of the phone’s hardware.
Enough talk, here are some of the screens.
The splash screen and main menu
The loading screen
The main menu. Shake the phone here and you'll get a random eatery recommendation. Ignore the pointy finger, just to illustrate the press state of the buttons :)
Looking at the menu, ‘Our Picks’ will load 10 random recommended eateries, while ‘Listing’ will list all the food type that’s available from their guide in alphabetical order OR by photo. ‘Offers’ will show users a list of available discounts or offers from eateries. ‘Makansutra TV’ as the name suggest, will list selected video content by Makansutra. Pretty cool stuff, you get to watch food reviews on your phone!
‘Around Me’ is another feature that we took advantage of the on-board GPS receiver. The widget will display 10 nearest eateries that is around your location. ‘By Location’ will list all eateries according to their geographic location. Ahhh … too much info? You’ll get the full picture after viewing the rest of the screen I hope.
Our Picks
Shake your phone here to get another 10 random eateries
There are icons indicating the nature of the eatery, whether they are restaurants, hawker stalls or whether the establishment sells halal food.
The eatery detailed view, 213.2km, yes, we are that far away
... scrolling down ...
You’ll be able to contact the restaurant through the widget by pressing the Call button or simple save the number into your phone book. ‘Show on Map’ will basically load up Nokia’s OVI Map to show you where the eatery is. From OVI Map itself, you’ll then be able to follow the turn-by-turn guide (car, walk, cycle, flying, zorbing, scuba diving, teleporting, etc).
Listings
"Easy as abc ... 123" ... sorry, no 123.
Anyone tried African street food?
I rather look at pictures
A short writeup on the selected food type. Pretty informational.
By Location
Did you know Singapore is divided by North, South, East, West and Central? I didn't know that!
Yes, you see Malaysia there. Currently the content on the widget is heavily Singaporean, but they do have content for Malaysia, particularly for Kuala Lumpur, Petaling Jaya and …. Penang. It’s not the full content, perhaps there will be a full Malaysian version in the future, who knows? ;)
Around Me
Around me, not you.
So, you’re in a hurry and absolutely no idea where to makan. Isn’t this a cool feature to have on your phone? Now you’ll know what recommended eateries are around your vicinity. Personally, this is pretty useful.
Oh yeah, this widget has the n97 homescreen feature.
Alright, that’s all the screens that we have. We’ve been trying to record a video walk through of the widget, these screens don’t do justice. The Nokia N97 doesn’t have auto-focus when in video mode … so, we rather not record any videos if we can’t see the details on screen. We’ll try to get hold of a video cam and do a run through of the widget in action.
Oh, how do you get hold of this widget? Well, if you’re from Singapore, the widget is preloaded on all new Nokia N97 mini, the Nokia X6 and Nokia 5230 … and is exclusive to SingTel only. We’ll keep you guys updated when it’s freely available … but since the lot of you are Malaysians, I don’t see how this is useful unless you frequently travel down to Singapore.
Any Malaysian food guide wanna do something similar? ;)
Earlier on I mentioned we were commissioned to do 2 widgets. I’ll post the other one up some time later this week. We have a few more widgets that are in the oven … but there’s only 2 handsome young men working on it so it will probably take a while before it’s properly baked and ready for consumption.
Car radio install
That’s a huge pile up of Acupuncture related informations. Thanks for sharing it.