Showing people the world’s best foods is a daunting task, which is why the founders of Foodspotting, which is now available as an iPhone app, are relying on crowd sourcing to help them with the task. Foodies are already flooding the Internet with photos of things they eat—lovingly dubbed “food porn”—and Foodspotting is creating a convenient place for users to find delicious local eats through those images.
The iPhone app (free) uses your GPS to display photos of food that are close to your location. Swipe through the photo album (the iPhone app uses a sideways pull-to-load mechanism to get more images) until you see a food you want to view. Tapping the “I” provides the phone, address and Web site information for the eatery, along with a map. Foodspotters can mark foods as “want it” if you’d like to try it or “nom it” if it’s a much-loved food you’ve had. By tapping more, can see other photos of that type of food or view other foods from that particular restaurant.
From the main page, you can view a map with pins of all the nearby foods available in Foodspotting, search for a food or restaurant, set search filters or explore Guides, which include scavenger hunts and curated lists of things to eat. And, of course, you can upload your own food spots through the iPhone app.
Foodspotting, which is a companion iPhone app to Foodspotting.com, officially debuted at Austin’s SXSW’s festival last week, so because the app is relatively new, your area may be lacking in content, but that just means you need to get out there and start eating.
