Medallions and Community Buttons

Medallions (or category) search has now been moved into the map area. This makes it easier to search and navigate by keeping everything in the map.


Also the medallions are now clearly labeled below and the on/off functionality is easily recognizable. Try them out yourself. We have...

• Hotspots (What's new in the city - restaurants, bars, shops)
• Nightlife (bars, clubs, lounges)
• Restaurants (search by cuisine and then filter by attributes)
• Shopping (lots and lots of shopping in NYC)
• Hotels (search by star rating)
• Recreation (salons, spas, theaters, gyms, etc)

Also, on the right side of the map, you will see community buttons as shown below.

Use these 3 buttons to discover places through your friends and the UpNext community.

- Friends: Shows reviews, favorites and places marked by your friends

- Community: Shows the latest reviews, top favorites and popular places from the UpNext community based on the area of the map.

- My Profile: Shows all the places you have marked. Your own personally annotated guide to the city.


Vik was the lead on getting these medallions done while Robin was the creative force on the sleek look and design. Gotta give credit where credit is due. Hope you enjoy and find them useful.

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Yelp Reviews

There is nothing better than having a passionate user base. We love our UpNext community members and all the feedback they give us.

So when given the opportunity to leverage another great group of users, we jumped at the chance.

The Yelp API allows us to bring more content into UpNext, helping you better understand and evaluate businesses in NYC.

Once a venue is selected. Click on "More Info" in the venue window to open the expanded sidebar. Here you will see up to 3 reviews from Yelp related to that business.


The screenshot above is a great example of how UpNext combined with Yelp content can be a very useful tool. Mr. Jones is a Japanese restaurant that opened this month. You can tell it is a new restaurant by the glowing red dot hovering over the location (UpNext Hotspots). When you click on "More Info", 2 Yelp reviews appear.

For a place that has been open less than a month, these Yelp reviews provide you with some immediate feedback on the location. Pretty impressive stuff from the Yelp community.

So take a look around when exploring New York City. Let us know how you like the Yelp integration and any feedback you might have.

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UpNext 2.0 or as we call it UpNext (the way better version)

So the team has been working overtime on this new version of UpNext. Honestly, I am blown away by the improvements and want to share them with everyone.

Even before you read this post, go to the new site (www.upnext.com) and check it out.

Here is a list of the new stuff we want to point out. (We will be writing expanded follow up posts on some of these features.)

1) Usability

Load time - UpNext now loads as fast as any other webpage. This required quite of feat of engineering by Raj, so please direct all your praise to him.
(Note: The first load will take slightly longer as we do need to build the base of the city initially. But subsequent visits will be fast.)

Speed and Stability - The overall UpNext experience is now faster and more stable. Try it out, you will notice the difference immediately. Exploring the city is now, an even better experience.


2) Features

Yelp Reviews - We are now utilizing the Yelp API to bring in more content for our users. When you click on the "More Info" button, you will see 3 Yelp reviews in addition to any editorial and user reviews that were there previously.

Permalinks - In the top right corner of the map, there is a icon labeled "Map Permalink". This feature allows you to take a snapshot of any part of the map and share it in an email, blog, Facebook, where ever you want.

Medallion - We have taken the category community medallions and brought them into the maps. (See the glowing buttons on the top and right of the map area?)
This allows to you to focus your interaction within the map and to easily find anything (from restaurants and nightlife to recommendations from other users and friends.)


3) Overall Look and Feel

We have improved the look and feel of the city. Fly around midtown and you will see a noticeable difference in how the city looks. There are more landmarks and better textures for all buildings.

Also, zoom down to the street level. Play around down there and run around the city. (More is coming for this feature so keep an eye out.)


There is a lot more in this new version than we listed above but those are just the highlights. Go check out the new site. Tell your friends about it. And tell us what you think, we would love to hear from you.

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