The apostrophe thing is just one of those usability things that drives me insane.

As far as RSS feeds are concerned, I am a fanatic. I very rarely visit web-sites any more, I drive everything through RSS feeds to Bloglines.

Having a link to iTunes is great but unless I have iTunes installed, it does not work. There are a lot of us out there who will never buy an iPod. If you could add a standard direct link to the RSS feed without requiring iTunes that would be a huge bonus.

There are two areas that RSS feesd could obviously be used on your site; Site news/ Announcements and the reviews themselves.

I know next to nothing about the plumbing required to add feeds for the main site content but a site blog would take care of news, changes, plans, announcements.

I also think a site blog is a great way for the people running the site to connect to their readers/customers. For nearly every new online service I have signed up for in the past few months, I always automatically sign up for their blog if they have one. It gives me some degree of insight into their vision, plans, problems, successesand allows me to have direct access via the comments.

It also comes across as a bit strange that you have a video blog but not a text one.

I loved the idea of the video blog and I agree that the production quality was very good. My problem was with the content. I just didn’t think I gained anything over a text blog with a few photos. On the other hand, interviews with owners, staff and customers would be compelling content to me.

I assume you listen to some of the fodie podcasts. Many of them consist entirely of interviews and make fantastic listening. Some of them would make even better vlogs.

I do still think there is an issue with having reviews and restauranteur services combined on one site. It’s just the whole conflict of interest thing that needs to be handled with a delicate touch.

I hadn’t noticed the customer reviews. In fact, I have just gone back to the site and I still can’t see a link on the front page. Where are they?

The customer review section will be very interesting to watch. From an Irish perspective you are heading into Adlib territory but from a global perspective you are getting into the whole area of “user generated content” and where that is going.

If you look at eGullet, there are tons of people adding content and happily getting no reward for it. The biggest startup problem for a site like them or yours is getting the initial critical mass. Once you get that, then it should snowball.

But in parallel to that (and growing more quickly), you have people like me who do reviews on their blogs. Some, like me, are happy for other sites to pick up that content and aggregate it via something like Structured Blogging and Microformats. Some are not, as they see others benefiting from their hard work.

It might be worth looking at kritX to see where things are heading. It is still very rough and basic but its entire review content is automatically slurped from blogs who tell them they want to be slurped.

I must read your La Stampa review. I ate there years ago and my only recollection was that I felt like a sheep in a barn it was so big and impersonal. I think that is also why I reacted negatively to the Mongolian BBQ review. I ate there many years back and thought it was really average. Has it improved massively?

You make a great point about positive reviews. I think I have been conditioned by newspaper and magazine reviewers to always take a slightly negative tack. Actually, let’s blame AA Gill

But I do feel odd when I write an entirely positive review in case someone else eats there and thinks it it kak. For example, I raved about Les Gourmandises but a workmate of mine ate there recently and had what sounded like an over-priced mediocre night. I’ll be writing my review of Boqueria Tapas over the weekend (excellent) and I’m loooking forward to reviewing Cafe Paradiso (finally) on Tuesday.

Despite my original grumpiness I do hope people check out your site and keep checking it out. Best of luck with it.

Thanks for the criticism. The apostrophe issue is being dealt with asap. I thought we had it covered everywhere on the site, the competition page must have slipped through, we do have RSS feeds for itunes. Please share your knowledge on what we should do (I am not the techie)

We did have the first irish video blog and due to that were shortlisted for a Digital Media award. Although lots of people thought the production was good. To be honest we just wanted to try something new and break the norm.

As regards our non negative remarks it was our honest review I admit we were ultra nice with the video reviews.

As regards dealing with restaurants we let restaurants list themselves that is why we have that link. We don’t charge for the service at the moments and pitch our other services to them.
For reviews we have links to our “customer” reviews that are real reviews from real people. It is up to the public to get on the site and get reviewing. We do some reviews of our own back and they are the honest reviews. Check out the reviews for La Stampa that was me, it was awful.

Otherwise thanks for the feature in your blog, I hope you can spread the word about goeat.ie we are on the consumers side and that is our main visitor. Sometimes a restaurant deserves a decent reviewTom Doorley hasn’t done one in a while, but I was pleased.

Graham