I recently wrote about launching Eat.ly on my blog and wanted to share an even easier way of understanding Eat.ly – a simple video.

We produced a simple, short, concise visual story showing exactly what Eat.ly is and are happy to share it below!

When you use Eat.ly to track what you are eating you get an optional weekly summary email of your activity.  Today we are announcing a fresh change to this summary which now includes; your popular meals, some suggested users, overall interesting meals in the Eat.ly system, and more!

A picture is worth a thousand words therefore this is what my weekly email food summary looks like:

You can see people in your network, some great photos that are “interesting” (based on views and activity around them) as well as the latest tips from the Eat.ly team.

A few other fun features to announce:

You can now see profile views
You can now see individual food photo views
You can now send photos directly to Twitter and Facebook

More to come!

One of the most requested features went live over the weekend – view who is following you on Eat.ly

Simply click the followers number next to someones profile and you will see your followers.  This is a quick and easy way to see if you are following them back and what they have been eating.

As always your feedback drives development – so let us know what you want to see next.

When we first started Eat.ly we collected email addresses from our homepage to gauge interest and asked folks to let us contact them.  Everyone has now been notified from the early access beta list and we wanted to welcome everyone that signed up for the service!

We have seen a surge of signups even though the platform has been open for some time and we wanted to thank everyone for coming into the Eat.ly community and sharing their meals!

We continue to add new features weekly and hope you will let us know what you want to see next.

We don’t get too political on the Eat.ly blog but the recent health care bill that is going to have a big impact on fast food chains is the forced disclosure of calories on menus showing food listings.

This is an interesting development for a lot of reasons.

From the post:

More than 200,000 fast food and other chain restaurants will have to include calorie counts on menus, menu boards and even drive-throughs.

The new law, which applies to any restaurant with 20 or more locations, directs the Food and Drug Administration to create a new national standard for menu labeling, superseding a growing number of state and city laws.

First it means more data. More data means better informed eating habits, and smarter web products to go with them. We are in the process of collecting food data from users, but looking at the exponential growth of data that is being exposed voluntarily by restaurants and chains right now, as well as future laws that are making this mandatory.

This is all good news for Eat.ly especially, as we are in the business of supplying the easiest way to track what you eat – without all the hard work of entering in the data.

And now a picture of a great meal that I am glad did not have the calories marked down; Chorizo and clams

Want to see other great seafood pictures on Eat.ly – just search for the food you are interested in like chorizo photos!

Everyone loves some kind of dessert and Eat.ly has some amazing dessert photos to choose from.

First up is our very own Sam Huleatt who took advantage of a recommendation from the Santa Cafe and got the upside down lava cake with vanilla bean ice cream

Yuri posted an amazing looking dessert plate from Tokyo, Japan
As he describes it:
“Clockwise from top: strawberry shortcake, mango pudding, NY cheese cake, green apple & grapefruit mousse, creme brûlée, chocolate mousse dome w/ apricot compote, berry & grapefruit jelly”

A user called RedMapleLeaf posted a beautiful looking strawberry shortcake dessert and I was left wondering where I could get one.

Finally an amazing looking dessert to finish off a meal by Cassie who is one of our power users which

All of these and other dessert photos look amazing.  I continue to be impressed (and made hungry!) by all the spectacular food images that users are posting to Eat.ly

]]> http://blog.eat.ly/2010/03/12/fun-with-food-photos-dessert/feed/ 0 http://blog.eat.ly/2010/03/09/where-to-get-your-eat-on-south-by-southwest-2010/ http://blog.eat.ly/2010/03/09/where-to-get-your-eat-on-south-by-southwest-2010/#comments Tue, 09 Mar 2010 18:42:07 +0000 sam http://blog.eat.ly/?p=72

South by Southwest is an amazing event held annually in Austin, Texas focused on Film, Music and Technology. However, while you’re in Austin there is something else to be focused on: FOOD!

Austin is home to some of the country’s most amazing restaurants.Here at Eat.ly, we’ve decided to highlight 10 team favorites for you to check-out while in town:

1. 1886 Cafe at the Driskill Hotel

Technically in Driftwood Texas (a bit of a drive from downtown) but The Salt Lick is a must for anyone visiting Austin. Served family style, it’s known as the best BBQ in land of great BBQ. Beer, Brisket and some of the best BBQ sauce you’ve ever had.

3. Cantina Laerdo

Looking for a budget conscious option to meet your friends or team? Enjoy the great vibe, outdoor seating and awesome margaritas at this convenient downtown Mexican spot.

4. Moonshine Patio Bar & Grill

Housed in an historic downtown building, Moonshine Patio Bar & Grill offers comfort-food with a few unique twists. Great spot for an afternoon or early evening drink.

5. Uchi

Uchi is high-end sushi, but man is it worth it! They only reserve 25% of the dining area; everything else is first come, first serve. If you’re in the mood for a real treat, try the 10 course tasting menu. Five stars.

6. La Condesa

From Sam, “Literally on of the best meals I’ve ever had.”  Wow.

7. Maria Maria

Amazing tex-mex and owned by Carlos Santana! What’s not to like? Try the tacos and the Blackberry Mojito

8. Walton’s Fancy and Staple

A relatively new cafe with unbelievable sandwiches and espresso. This new addition to Austin also has a touch of celebrity. Sandra Bullock is the owner, and if you’re lucky, you might just see her

9. Halcyon Coffee Shop

The coffee shop staple in Austin, especially for those in the tech scene. Free wifi, great music and you get an animal cracker served with your mug of joe. Note: It’s a bit out of downtown, but if you have a car and love coffee and cool atmospheres, check out SpiderHouse.

10. Magnolia Cafe

Magnolia is an Austin institution and must-try for breakfast, lunch or brunch. It’s one of the few spots open 24X7. If you like breakfast tacos, this is where you want to go.

**More suggestions? Add them to the comments or email your images to post@eat.ly and we’ll highlight the best ones! Mmmm!

Myself (Eric Friedman), Sam Huleatt, and Mike Singleton (Sam Brown is in the UK!) all meet weekly at a NYC coffee place called Think Coffee on Mercer street and we love it.  It is a great place to get some work done, collaborate, and discuss our future plans.  We all live in different places in NYC and it makes for a centrally located brainstorm spot.  There are of course a few locations around the city, but this one is our favorite.

We have been going to Think Coffee to discuss our plans for Eat.ly and test out the latest features of our food blogging app and realized we have a ton of photos from Think Coffee!

Here is an early bagel and latte from Mike from back in November

Below is a pastry from Think Coffee and a fancy looking latte from Think Coffee (also is Mike’s iPhone which was not eaten!)

Sam likes to go for the toasted bagel with tomato and a coffee – you can see one of our other meals behind it

We like the food.

We like the atmosphere.

We love testing out new photos with Think Coffee meals and we love the free wifi!

It is very cool to see all the photos posted on Eat.ly

We are working on doing a better job of picture discovery, search results, and just overall better visual interfaces of what we are seeing.  With that being said, its fun to highlight a few awesome photos users are taking and today I am focussed on hamburgers and cheeseburgers.

First up is my own personal favorite cheeseburger in NYC from a place called JG Melon – side of cottage fries to go with it.

Next up is bacon cheeseburger picture from Eat.ly user Matt – looks delicious!

Here is a fun one I found from Eat.ly user Dave Lifson showing us the S’Mac version of a cheeseburger – Mac ‘n cheeseburger!

Finally here is a delicious looking cheeseburger with fries on Eat.ly from user Micheal

Want to see more hambururger photos or cheeseburger photos just Search Eat.ly

A lot of people ask me “what is Eat.ly?” and my fastest answer is a social food blogging photo site.  We say in our tagline Meal Tracking and Social Food Discover

Although there is a lot more you can read about in our Eat.ly Frequently Asked Questions, I thought I would take the time to sharpen my elevator pitch;

Eat.ly is a great way to share meal photos with friends.

Eat.ly is a fast way to show your friends your food photos on Twitter.

Eat.ly is a great way to see what you ate in the past, and make a healthy decision about what to eat today.  For example if you know that you ate spaghetti with meatballs last night – what will you eat today?

There is a quick equation that I use called “Data + Pictures = Change” which can be defined as the more information you have, plus visual meal photos should give you the information you need to make a better and healthier eating decision in the future.  Along with tracking what you ate for your own reasons, knowing that you are not keeping up good habits is helpful.  One of the reasons we built Eat.ly is simply because we could not remember either.

While some people are using Eat.ly for dieting, tracking gluten free food photos, or for share meal photos on Twitter, wee see Eat.ly as a helpful utility in a world of camera enabled smart phones.