Yelp Review

Category: Travel
Cost: Free
Platforms: Apple, Android and most BlackBerry devices

Overall Rating:
Multiplatform:
Lots of function for nothing:
Fun and easy to use:
Solves travel need or challenge:

Find what you want when you need it.

Why we like it -- A mobile Yellow Pages, of sorts, this free app offers you listings and user reviews of businesses and restaurants in most US cities, plus London and Paris. It’s highly useful for generating on-the-fly ideas on how to get things done in an unfamiliar town. If you’re already active on Yelp.com, you can sync your account with the app and see which spots and services have been touted by your Yelp contacts.

The "Monocle" feature (not available on iPads) adds an augmented-reality twist: Depending on where you point the device, it will show the location of nearby establishments and their ratings, plus a link so you can read more. The feature can use some refinement, as the listings are hard to read and they fail to list your distance from an establishment. Still, it can be useful.

Improvements we'd like to see -- Users have complained that the BlackBerry app falls far short of the iPhone app. It failed to load on my BlackBerry Style.

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