App Detail » Highlights

Published by: Benjamin Dodson

+ Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad

Price: $1.99
Current Version: 1.2.1
Released: July 24, 2011

What's New

v1.2.1
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Bug fixes to prevent application crashing on slow network connections - our apologies if you have had issues with the app because of this.

v1.2
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★ Share - you can now publish your plans to highlightsapp.com where they can be viewed and downloaded by other users. Plans can be password protected for planning between friends or made publicly available so anybody can try out your recommended locations. Plans can be quickly shared via email and SMS and are easily downloaded to your friends copies of Highlights. Finally, any changes you make to a published plan on your iPhone or iPad will be instantly synced with highlightsapp.com

★ Imperial Measurements - one of our most popular features requests was the ability to change distances from metric (e.g. 5km) to imperial (e.g. 3.1 miles). You can now do this in the Settings of your device.

★ Speed Improvements - both the internet and GPS connections have been overhauled in this version to make starting the app faster and downloading information quicker.

Thanks to everybody who has downloaded the app so far. If you enjoy this update, please leave a review on iTunes. If you run into any problems, please email us via [email protected] before leaving a negative review as we are unable to respond to reviews on iTunes.

App Description

Finding the best places in an area can be difficult. How do you know the best place to eat in a new town or find a really great day out for the family? Introducing Highlights, the crowd sourced recommendation app that lets you find the very best places around the world. Whether you're trying to discover the nicest bar in your town or looking to plan your next vacation, Highlights will have you covered with its advanced recommendation engine.

-- How does it do it? --
Highlights uses data from popular check-in services Gowalla and Foursquare and then pushes it through our custom ranking engine to work out the very best places around the world. This isn't just the places near you sorted by most check-ins, but ranked in popularity based on data such as photographs, comments, business listings, user activity, Foursquare tips, Gowalla highlights, and other social network activity.

-- Features --
For less than the price of a cup of coffee, you get a Universal app that runs on both the iPhone and iPad with all of these great features:

Browse - Finds the best places in any area around the world. You can filter results by some of our preset categories (e.g. "Great Days Out", "Food & Dining", "Art & Culture") or by Gowalla Highlights (such as "Steak" or "Celebrity Spotting") as well as choosing a search area up to 50km. All results can be sorted by distance or by popularity using our custom popularity filter that gives you only the very best places.

Recommended - A beautiful panel showing you the top 10 spots in the current area in each category. This is your one-stop shop to seeing the best places in any area.

Details - Every location will show a number of details (where available) such as description, phone number (with call button on iPhone), Twitter details, address, and opening hours. In addition, there are links to open the location in either Gowalla or Foursquare depending on which app you have installed on your device. If the location is a music venue then you can get a list of upcoming events powered by data from Last.fm. Finally, every location will list any similar places nearby.

Reviews - If you want to get the lowdown on an area, the reviews tab will give you everything you need to know. By combining Gowalla Highlights and Foursquare Tips, you get the best overview of every location. Reviews in languages other than English can be translated with a double tap.

Photos - So you can see how a place looks before you get there, we've included a photos section on every location. This will show you photos from Flickr, Gowalla, and Foursquare so you can be sure to see every angle!

Planner - It's all very good finding places, but what do you do next? By adding a spot to your planner, you can create customised plans that allow you to pre-plan your next trip whether it's a 14 day vacation or the next pub crawl! Plans can be shared to highlightsapp.com for easy distribution to friends and you can use Gowalla trips as a basis for your plans with our trip browser that shows you every Gowalla trip, not just the featured ones.

-- Support --
We take app support very seriously. If you have any problems at all, just email [email protected] and we'll get in touch as soon as possible (usually within 24 hours). If you have any suggestions for future features, drop us a line at [email protected]

---Reviews---
★ Featured as "iPad App of the Week" on the UK App Store (2nd Sept 2011)
★ "Highlights has found a permanent spot on my iPad and iPhone home screen." - TUAW.com
★ "Highlights can help by highlighting the places you should definitely check out." - AppAdvice.com
★ "There is no doubt that this will be invaluable to anyone travelling." - enoda.co.uk (App of the Week - 21st Aug 2011)
★ "The ability to create an itinerary makes this indispensable for planning visits to other cities" - UK User Review
★ "Already found somewhere nice for lunch by using this app" - UK User Review