Attending SXSW it can look like it is all about location.
SXSW: Location, location, location fuels mobile apps
A spate of location-based apps generates buzz at SXSW
By Cameron Scott, IDG News Service | Software Add a new commentMarch 13, 2012, 6:31 PM — Soon FourSquare won't be the only cool kid on the location-based apps block: A new wave of startups, including Highlight, Zaarly, TaskRabbit and Localmind, are generating buzz at South by Southwest by drawing on smartphone location data to deliver a range of social, commercial and informational experiences.
Highlight is a "social discovery" app that notifies users when they are near someone they don't know with whom they might share interests. It runs in the background, only requiring the user's attention when it has found a potential social contact.
A group of us got a chance to chat with GigaOm's Stacey Higginbotham and asked her as an Austin native what is hot at SXSW. Food and Health. Here is a post that Stacey threw up this morning on Open Data Standards for food.
This is cool: An open data standard for food
An open data standard for food has emerged on the web. With such a tool, restaurants, food apps, grocery stores, the government and other interested parties can tell that arugula is also called rocket salad, no matter where on the web it occurs or what a restaurant menu or recipe app calls it. Right now, that’s an impossible task, which leads to inefficiencies in both consumer-facing apps and the supply chains of restaurants and grocery stores.
A group of folks concerned about sustainable foods have built the seeds of an open food database hosted on Heroku, with the code pertaining to it located at Github. The group, which gave an awesome panel at South by Southwest in Austin, consisted of a restaurateur, an urban gardening movement, someone from Code for America and someone who rates sustainable restaurants.
What is cool about this idea is what could be done if we had Open Data Standards for the components in data centers. Like how? Knowing the ingredients in a recipe is useful. Wouldn't it be great if you could get details on the components in any piece of equipment.?
He texted me after the panel to say that his primary concern was that the effort be cautious about how it tries to attribute things to restaurants. For example, while he might gain value from starting from such a database, his real value is the taxonomy his team has created around dishes. So, if one checks out catfish po’ boys on Tasted Menu, his app could use the Open Food data for the catfish or the breading, but his app will also note that the food is Cajun or Creole, fried, a sandwich and other things that will help real users figure out where they want to go and what they want to eat.
I don't know about you, but I am much more excited about the idea of open data standards than another location app.