Highlights Review

Our Review by Phillip Levin on August 22nd, 2011

Rating:

:: PRETTY BUT MORE OF THE SAME

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Another app promising to help find users something to do nearby -- but is it any good?

Developer: Ben Dodson
Price: $0.99
Version Reviewed: 1.0
Device Reviewed On: iPhone

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There are more than enough apps devoted to finding things to do nearby at this point. Nonetheless, we have Highlights, an app that does just that – and it might actually be worth taking a look at for many users.

Indeed, the App Store is overflowing with these kinds of apps, but Highlights does stand out right away in at least one regard. The app features a truly slick, clean interface. Many of the apps I've reviewed that offer a similar service often sport somewhat clunky and even ugly interfaces. Thankfully, Highlights sets itself apart immediately with its interface – one that's both eye-pleasing and easy to use.

Beneath its looks, Highlights is essentially another app that locates nearby restaurants, entertainment, hotels, nightlife, services, shopping and things to do. But it does handle the process in its own unique way, at least somewhat distinguishing itself from the competition. The app pulls data from popular check-in sources, such as Foursquare and Gowalla, to create its database of suggestions. Further, the app does more than just list nearby local spots. Instead, it takes this data and measures the popularity of these locations by analyzing user activity, comments, photographs and more pertaining to each place. The end result is a compilation of suggested places to go and things to do, including the option to read many of those user comments and view user photographs as well.

Highlights doesn't offer a lot of extras. It's a somewhat minimalist experience, which is fine by me, as many of these apps are somewhat bloated. However, one nice extra that the app does feature is the Travel Planner. With this feature, users can put together a list of where they want to go – something I can see being useful when traveling to unfamiliar cities and towns.

All around, Highlights is a mostly unoriginal but well-executed app. It doesn't do anything particularly different than any of the other apps out there that do the same thing. But it does do a good job at what it promises, and it's an intuitive app that anyone can learn to use.

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