With Foodspotting's west and east coast teams reunited in sunny San Francisco, we figured it'd be a good time to show you pics of us hard at work (and eating Ess-a-Bagels, which I imported from NYC yesterday). Best wishes for a wonderful weekend, everyone! And don't forget: It's Foodspotting's first birthday tomorrow. Get the Birthday badge and celebrate with us!
World Foodspotting Day is already upon us in some parts of the world, and we're excited to celebrate our first birthday with all of you. Last we checked, there are 99 eat-ups happening across 25 countries - that's huge!
In honour of such a happy occasion, we're giving away this special Birthday badge on Foodspotting :) All you have to do to make this cuteness yours is follow our Happy Birthday, Foodspotting guide and contribute a sighting of cake - and we're not picky, so any cake you fancy will do!
Remember: if you're going to a Foodspotting Day eat-up, we want to see pictures (surprise, surprise) both of your food, and of the group! So however you're documenting your fun - be it photo, video or song - send them to us. We're doing a round-up of Foodspotting Day next week here on our blog and your eat-up might make it in!
Social Media Week is coming and we're teaming up with the incomparable Whole Foods Market in New York City! Between February 7th and 11th, we'll be co-hosting Sustainable Flashmob with Whole Foods Market in their Manhattan stores. Celebrity chefs, like award-winning Chef Marcus Samuelsson, will prepare featured dishes for the ultimate Foodspotting opportunity. Come in during the demos to snap photos of the dish and upload the pic to Foodspotting to get a Whole Foods Market gift card. Plus, there's more...
The bigger the "mob," the better the prizes, so spread the word and bring your friends! Tell your co-worker, roommate, grandma - everybody! - that Foodspotting will be flashmobbing Whole Foods Market and their participation could mean the difference between you winning a free lunch or a whole month of groceries. More details will be unveiled closer to the date, but if you like us and good food in the Big Apple, then visit this link to register and hold your spot. It's free and space is limited, so get yer name on the list before your arch nemesis takes your place.
Stay tuned for Social Media Week festivities in San Francisco too!
In case you have not heard, it's Foodspotting's first birthday this Saturday! The Foodspotting New York team is currently flying all the way to the land of San Francisco. It's true - Soraya and I are live blogging from the sky! This is the future, people. That and ordering Chex Mix from a touch screen. Below is the aftermath. We were feeling peckish...
Pronunciation : nyo kee
Common Preparations : Usually boiled, but we've had them fried. If frying yourself, be very careful as they've been known to explode.
On a chilly January day, nothing sends us into a welcome food coma as quickly as dumplings do. As we mentioned in a previous A to Z post, there are many dumpling types, but one kind that always entices our tastebuds with pillowy, ridged carb-loaded softness is gnocchi.
The word gnocchi means "lump" or "knot" in Italian and is originally a Germanic word that described the distinctive shape of gnocchi. We're partial to any foods that we can smother in sauce, cream, and cheese, and soft, bite-size lumps of dough are the perfect vehicle to get all the above in our bellies.
Have you tried gnocchi? What's your favorite variation?
Click here to see where gnocchi has been spotted recently.
While we have your attention, we wanted to make sure to get out the word that we're hiring! In particular, we're looking for:
• Mobile Developers (iPhone, Android or both!)
• Rails Developers
• Visual Designer
• Frontend Developers
We are based in San Francisco, CA and are ideally looking for people to work side by side with us in our studio loft in South Park, but if you're amazing and live elsewhere, we'd still be open to talking. We offer competitive salaries, company-paid healthcare, dental and vision, stock options, plenty of paid vacation, and, of course, lots of opportunities to eat amazing food.
We'll be posting more detailed job descriptions on our Jobs page soon, but in the meantime, send WORK EXAMPLES (screenshots, links to apps you've worked on, wireframes, etc. -- explain your contribution) to jobs@foodspotting.com.
Mobile Developers (iPhone, Android or Both)
iPhone and Android developers who are relentless about details that will make Foodspotting the easiest and most enjoyable way to stumble upon good food wherever you go. Show us that you've built, shipped and refined dynamic apps for iPhone, Android and/or other platforms. We want to see pixel-perfect user interfaces, streamlined code, and seamless interactions between client and server. Bonus points if: You can develop for more than one platform - or aren't afraid to try - and create apps that look and feel native to each. You tackle the complexities of location-based app development head on, like managing battery life, working with large data sets, and targeting information based on context and location.
Rails Developers
A data-loving backend developer or all-around Ruby hacker who can transform Foodspotting into the intelligent and context-aware "Pandora for Food" that we have in mind. Show us that you've built, tested, optimized and scaled Ruby (on and off rails) applications and web services that are a delight to use in every way: Fast, straightforward, elegant and powerful. Bonus points for experience working with geodata, crafting recommendations and reputation algorithms, synthesizing activity streams, implementing game mechanics, integrating with external platforms (especially Facebook), developing targeted marketing or advertising platforms.
Visual Designer
A UX-minded visual designer who can transform mockups into "Apple-quality" interfaces that people love to use and that communicate what Foodspotting is all about. Show us that you can take visual design from high-level concept to production-ready assets and icons for any platform: Web, mobile, even print. Be able to explain the rationale behind your design decisions. We're looking for people who are more than just visual designers, and experience in any of the following would be particularly irresistible: Frontend development, crafting clever marketing campaigns, architecting interactive products and services, creating infographics or illustrations and communicating concepts through sketches.
Frontend Developer
A user experience-minded and visually attuned frontend developer whose interests go deeper than the View. You could build Foodspotting from scratch (if you had to) and have awesome ideas and plans to take "location-based food" to the next level. Show us that you can take ideas and PSDs and run with them, harnessing standards-based, cross-browser HTML/CSS and JavaScript to produce elegant interfaces and code. You have extensive experience working in application frameworks (rails, django) and have been known to dabble in the Controllers and Models.
Remember when we said that 2011 is going to be a great year? Well, nothing like kicking it off with our big announcement of $3 million in Series A funding led by BlueRun Ventures, an early investor in PayPal. Needless to say we're thrilled and excited. Many thanks to the lovely folks at AllThingsD, CNET News, Mashable, ReadWriteWeb, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, SFGate, and Fast Company for writing about us. Look, we're famous!
