Gizmodo reports that the Yelp iPhone app has a special Easter egg program hidden inside of it. Named Monocle, it’s an augmented reality app that is only accessible by shaking the device three times.
After the AR feature is unlocked, icons of Yelp-reviewed establishments will begin to pop-up on your screen, showing locations, ratings, and reviews for restaurants in your surrounding area.
Gearlive has a video demo:

[via Gizmodo]

Yelp, the popular community sourced review site, has announced that it will finally allow businesses a public voice on their forums. Prior to this reversal, companies were left with few ways to respond to negative reviews – they could either contact reviewers privately or in the case of one San Francisco pizza shop, showcase their bad reviews on employee t-shirts in a bit of ironic marketing – both of which fell short of addressing the public at large.
Yelp co-founder Jeremy Stoppelman looked upon this previous stance as a means of protecting the consumer’s point of view, but as the site’s reach [...]

Given the recession, it’s more important than ever to know exactly what you’re getting before you buy, especially when it comes to the crucial decision of what we’re going to eat today. Our individual choices might have the power to simultaneously drive the economy and ourselves, how many times have we ordered from a menu – perhaps swayed by an expertly snapped photo depicting the perfect meal – only to be disappointed by the end result? And while myriad examples of online review sites like Yelp! and Urbanspoon now provide us with greater access to information on restaurants, they often require [...]

In a humorous display of the interplay between the digital realms and real life, Pizzeria Delfina in San Francisco has started outfitting its staff with t-shirts bearing quotes from some of their “best” 1-Star Yelp reviews. The move is interesting for a number of reasons, but in particular because it points to a real understanding of how much these reviews mean to businesses nowadays. Social media platforms that provide peer-to-peer reviews have at least caught up with, if not surpassed, the once powerful sway held almost exclusively by the classic expert reviewer. And while this new methodology may offer a [...]