Qype - Live and tell

Last week we were lucky enough to receive a *special* invite from the folks over at Moët Hennessy, who asked us if we’d like to bring a few lucky Qypers along with us to a wine tasting…nay, a wine discovery event!

As places were very limited we sent out a few emails to see which Qypers would be free to join us on our “multi-sensory” exploration of wines from six estates around the world, and unsurprisingly the places were snapped up in less than thirty minutes.

Of course we’ll be blogging about the whole thing afterwards (along with plenty of pics and video), but if you can’t stand the thought of not being there to sample all that lovely vino (not to mention nibbling on the complimentary canapés) then we thought we’d let you know that you can contact Rosalyn Lane on rosalyn.lane@mhuk.co.uk to buy a ticket for the event direct from the folks at Moët Hennessy.

And don’t forget, we’re always looking for inspiration for the next Qype Big Adventure, let us know if you have any ideas over in this thread.

Siany has spent the morning with a craving for Chinese food. Specifically sesame prawn toast. Don’t judge her - it happens at least three times a week. But after trying a couple of great places she needs to find somewhere else to get her MSG fix.

So when things like this happen, we turn to all you clever Qypers. There’s a little known forum on Qype called London Chat. It’s perfect for answering all of your questions and just chatting about general stuff and nonsense. You’ll get to know lots of other lovely Qypers and find out some more secrets about London to impress your friends with. The more people start chatting, the more helpful it’ll be.

And if you could all please share your Chinese Buffet secrets, well that would make Siany extra happy.

This week we have a chat with Tim Dickinson (or, the Timinator) about ‘warm fuzzies’, winning lots of wine and being a rocket scientist…

Tell us more about you.
I’m 39, married, and live in Ealing, London. I’m Canadian, from Nova Scotia originally, but moved to London for work in 2001. I naturalised as British a couple of years ago and so am now a dual citizen (being able to choose the shorter queue at airport immigration is a good thing). I’ve been working for an IT/networking company for just over 10 years now, but had some unusual jobs before that: I have been a rocket scientist, a nuclear physicist and a military scientist. None of those jobs were as cool as they sound.

What do you enjoy most about Qyping?
I’m the sort of person that researches places before I go. I know some other people do the same so I’m always recommending places to anyone who’ll listen (one man’s mouthy opinions are another man’s value-added info). I often write about establishments I visit on my personal blog, but Qype means people that need the info I might have to share are more likely to find it. That gives me warm fuzzies.

What makes you happy about the places you review?
I’m a big music fan and go to a lot of gigs. I don’t have a favourite venue because different places are appropriate for different acts. But I love almost all the places that bands can play for their own particular characteristics. Reviewing them means recalling experiences I shared with hundreds - or thousands - of people.

What annoys you the most?
If you mean what annoys me most about places that I might review, then cynical, purposefully middle-of-the-road lowest-common-denominator places bug me. It’s one thing if your establishment just turns out to be ordinary because you’re not that imaginative. It’s quite another if you intentionally try to make it as bland, uninteresting, and uniform as you can in some attempt to maximise customer appeal. Thinking about this, though, I’ve just realised that I haven’t Qyped the rubbish places I’ve been to as much as I have the great places. I suppose I should.

If you mean what annoys me most about Qyping in general, then that would be wildly unhelpful reviews that consist of fewer than a dozen words, like, “This place is great!”

What was the place you wanted to keep a secret?
If people suddenly start flocking to my local Italian - Osteria del Portico - and make it hard for me to get a table then I will become very angry. And you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry. Even if I am Canadian. (Siany is guessing that link to his review hasn’t helped. Er… sorry.)

How can people write better reviews?
Obviously, helpful information is key. Don’t agonise over whether you should give the place a 3 or a 4. Tell me what happened to you there, what the decor and vibe is like, make sure the map pointer is correct, and so on.

I’m also a stickler for spelling and proper punctuation. If a reveiw is writen lik this….LOL……then i just can’t take it serouisly, no matter how glowwing it iz!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anything else you wanna say?
I found out about Qype when they sponsored a Meetup of London Bloggers, of which I’m a member. Qype enticed us to contribute by offering a case of wine to the person who submitted the most entertaining review of the pub where that meetup was held, the Camel & Artichoke. That was my first Qype review, and I won the wine. Any service that gives my gob another forum and gives me booze is tops in my book.

We admit it, we’re all in love with the iPhone here in the Qype office.

Its shininess, its touchscreeniness, and its general cleverness has completely won us over. So it’s no surprise that we’d want to build a special iPhone-friendly version of everyone’s favourite review site that takes full advantage of all that shiny touchscreeny cleverness.

So may we present to you iQype, a completely browsable, searchable version of Qype built specifically for the iPhone.

Browse by city then category to find the top rated places in any given area, or find reviews for a specific business by doing a quick search.

Everything’s there: star ratings, full reviews, user profiles… and it’s all built around the native iPhone user interface so there’s no fiddly zooming and scrolling.

Next time you’re on the move have a play around with iQype and then let us know what you think. We’re always working on introducing better, cleverer ways of making Qype more accessible and useful, so any ideas you have are very welcome.

You might have noticed that there’s been a bit of a twitchy buzz on Qype today. That’s because there’s a few Qypers who are so hyped up on sugar and sweeties that they felt very light-headed last night. Those lovely people at Melt invited us go to a chocolate tasting and we were just too darn polite to refuse.

You can check out the reviews on the site, but we thought it was a good idea to shout some more about how fab the experience was. The picture is of Rob of Qype HQ rolling truffles. Doesn’t he look happy (there’s more snaps over at the Qype Flickr page)? We learned lots of great things and the staff are really fab. They can tell the difference between 31 and 32 degrees without even tasting anything. Pretty amazing. Though how they stay so restrained is beyond us. Siany was stealing the samples when no one was looking…

So Melt is our new favourite place. We got to take away tasty treats and we were all feeling a bit high when we left the shop. Of course we still found time to buy some goodies before we left. But there would have been some very angry wives if the Qype boys had gone home empty-handed.

So go to Melt! It’s lovely in there. You’ll probably see us lurking next to the peanut caramel and chilli chocs. Have a chat to the guys who work there - especially Keith the master chocolatier. Try not to eat so much chocolate that you feel sick. Siany did. She’s regretting it now. But she still wants more…

Get snapping people! A little while ago, Qype told you about we were giving away a fab camera! (It has lots of buttons on it and it’s far too technical for the likes of us to explain what they do.) If you still want to be in with a chance of winning, then get those fingers snapping and upload your pics by Friday.

Then sit back and look at how pretty you’ve made Qype with all your pictures. And oooh, look at all those Qype points you’ve bagged yourself too. Lovely. Hopefully the camera will be winging its way to you. Complete with complicated instruction manual.

Thank you to everyone who came to the first ever Qype UK party last night at the Coach and Horses in Soho. Judging by the decidedly hungover emails we’ve had today it seems that everyone had a great time.

We personally enjoyed the appearance of the world’s largest Chupa Chup (above), the mini fish and chips, and the fact that Tube blogger Annie Mole fell asleep on the way home and ended up in Hounslow.

We should say a huge thank you to Coach and Horses landlord Alistair and the best barmaids in the whole of London: Jo and Denise.

All the photos from last night can be found on this page and don’t forget to review the Coach and Horses in the next week to stand a chance of winning £50 behind the bar plus a meal for four.

See you all at the next party!

How do you score your reviews? Are you a harsh reviewer? Or are you more forgiving? We realised yesterday that the way you guys see our scoring system changes from Qyper to Qyper. Obviously one star is pretty easy, so is five stars, but it’s the bit in the middle that seems to cause a bit of variation. So to kick off the debate, here’s how Siany reviews her places:

So there you go. Are you more harsh than us? Do you have a different way of scoring your reviews? Or does it just depend on whether you’re typing before your morning cuppa? Tell us in the comments.

We’re getting bored again. We’ve been to all the same places and we want somewhere new! So we thought we’d have a nose around Qype to see where we can try out this week.

Places you’re loving:

And the ones you’re not so fond of:

So hurry up and join in the fun. Go to the good places and tell us what you think. Or find some new places and tell us all about those. We’re very nosy at Qype.

Isn’t it great to find a new place in your local area and then shout about it? Yeah, that’s fun. But sometimes it’s also pretty great when someone does all the work for you. That’s why Qype Guides are great. They do all the hard work, you just have to pick up an A-Z and go.

So what new guides are there for you to scout around this week?

See, you’re spoiling us. Don’t stop. It makes planning our busy social lives much easier.