SoCho - a social restaurant recommendation system for the mobile phone. A J2ME working prototype was built for the ITP community. The software could be used by anyone who had an S60 phone with a data plan. The idea was to store all the information that is usually exchanged between people in a community regarding food recommendations in an efficient way, allowing for easy access from a phone. It supports submissions of new comments and ratings for existing locations, in addition to adding new locations to the system.

We quickly realized the importance of personal recommendations, especially when it comes to food. There are thousands of online recommendation sites for the New York are, yet none dealt specifically with the needs of poor grad students, who only have little time to venture out of school and grab a byte to eat. Getting recommendations from fellow students was invaluable. By creating this system, the recommendations could extend and reach out to more people.

Illustration of the food recommendation network after the program ran for a couple of days at NYU. The white nodes are restaurants, while the colored ones are students. The link between them represents a positive comment.

Built in collaboration with Michael Delgaudio