What is the best alternative to Foursquare?
Pro High quantity of reviews
Tripadvisor lists tour options for many of the available attractions. Many of the individual tours have lots of recent reviews so you can get a better idea of what the experience will be like.
Pro Good for food/restaurants
Tripadvisor will usually have the not-to-miss restaurants, even if they can end up being touristy. A good yelp equivalent in non-US countries.
Con Lots of sponsored content
Sponsored content such as sightseeing tours and hotels can clutter up the content users are actually searching for.
Con Lack of trust in reviews
There is a lot of incentive for companies to post fake reviews in order to increase their ranking/visibility. Tripadvisor does very little to catch the false reviews, so it's hard to know what's authentic and what isn't.
Pro Overview of the best/most popular attractions
Rather than give you a long list of all possible attractions, wikitravel lists only the most popular/must see spots. This saves you time when picking out quality attractions.
Pro Doesn't look like a marketing pitch
Wikitravel, true to the format of Wikipedia, doesn't have ads, and the content isn't worded in a way that makes readers feel like they're being pitched to go somewhere by a travel agency.
Pro Attractions are separated into a variety of categories
It's easy/quick to find the type of attractions that appeal to you most because of the way they are organized. "See", "Do", "Learn", "Buy" etc..
Con Short descriptions
Descriptions of each attraction are often only a couple of sentences.
Con Limited pictures
There are very few pictures of the destination, with none (in most cases) of specific attractions. If you want to get an idea of what the attraction looks like, you'll need to find images on google or other sites.
Pro Large collections of candid customer photos
Lets you know what the dishes actually look like, not what it looks with an Instagram filter on.
Pro Review keywords are helpful for menu must-orders
If enough people have posted reviews repeating the same key words (e.g. tiramisu), Yelp will highlight them. A good sign of something you should definitely order if it's your first time at the restaurant, or something that the restaurant does particularly well.
Pro Search filters allow a lot of customization
"Most Reviewed" for popular restaurants, "Highest Ratings" for well-received restaurants, use the # of reviews the popular restaurants as an anchor for had to evaluate the restaurants with the highest ratings. For example, if popular restaurants have ~1000 reviews, then well-rec...
Con Android app lacks certain features
The iOS app allows you to use all the filters of the desktop site, but users can't sort by most reviewed or highest rating on Android devices.
Con Best Match is rarely the best match
The best match is usually the result of some continuous feedback loop of recommending the same set of restaurants to people over and over again, instead of the best restaurants in the area.
Con Awkward photo presentation
They show from oldest to newest, even though the newest photos are more relevant. The desktop version of Yelp also has an old photo display system where you have to click to reveal each page of photos.
Pro Only quality attractions are shown
Rather than provide a long list of attractions, TripExperts only show the best attractions in a specific area based on expert reviews. This makes it much faster to find quality attractions, rather than searching through hundreds of less interesting options.
Pro Trustworthy reviewers
Rather than accept reviews from anyone, TripExpert relies on reviews from selected experts and locals.
Con Only shows a few attractions for each destination
They take a "quality over quantity" approach, which results in a much smaller list of attractions than is available on many other similar sites.
Pro Detailed information on each attraction
Along with having a photo gallery, each attraction has a small description, plenty of reviews and a map. The "Tribe" feature tells you what type of travelers enjoy that attraction the most (Outdoor Enthusiasts, Local Culture, Adventure Travelers etc.).
Pro Attractions have photo galleries
Each attraction has a photo gallery that any reviewer can add to. Many of the galleries are quite large with great pictures of the attraction, so you can get a good feel for whether or not it's something you're interested in.
Pro You can ask a question about your destination/attractions
gogobot has an "Ask a question" feature where you can inquire about your destination, and get answers from both locals and frequent travelers.
Con Website layout can be confusing at first
The website design is fairly crowded. With so many features available on the site, it can take some time to figure out how to navigate it.
Con Lists places that are out of business
Gogobot does not keep their lists of businesses and attractions up-to-date, so some of their listings are no longer in business.
Pro Reservation system authenticates every reviewer
In order to write a review, you must have had gone the restaurant, and your review is marked with the exact date you went.
Pro Separates rating into food, service, and ambience
Allowing users to easily distinguish between fancy, but not so tasty restaurants, and vice versa.
Con Ratings tend to run high
The same restaurants will typically get between .5~1 points higher on open table, the audience usually gives between 4~5 stars as long as there weren't major flaws. This is partially do to the fact that service/ambiance plays a larger role in the ratings than other platforms. Since most restaur...
Con Photos are not in chronological order
They appear to be random.
Con Low price cutoff
$50 and over is the highest price rank, which doesn't help much when comparing prices at sit-down restaurants.
Pro Gives you a chance to talk to locals
Group members are made up of both locals and travelers. Participating in the groups gives you a chance to ask locals questions and get insider information about the best spots.
Pro Very friendly, welcoming community
Most people on couchsurfing are very friendly and love to chat with others. Members are often very happy to help out with suggestions.
Con No feature specifically for finding attractions
Couchsurfing does not provide a list of available attractions in various locations. The only way to discover things to do on your trip is by chatting in the groups or by sending messages.
Pro Ability to compare price for many dates at once
You can pick the cheapest date to fly easily by comparing the different dates at once.
Pro "Explore" feature helps you discover new (cheap) places to go
Google Flights offers a neat explore feature that allows you to search by dates, continents and interests to discover new destinations.
Con Not able to book directly on Google Flights
You can't make a purchase/booking directly on the site. You are instead redirected to the company offering the service and must book there.
Con Limited to flights only
Google Flights only provides information for flights, and does not include other categories that many travel search engines do (such as hotels and packages).
Pro Comprehensive results
Kayak searches hundreds of travel sites to find all the possible flights to ensure you don't miss out on the best options. They have the most comprehensive results out of the competition. One of the biggest advantages of Kayak that most of their competitors don't have is the choice of wh...
Pro "Explore" is awesome for trip planning
Kayak has a feature called "explore" that lets you answer the question "Where can I go for how much?" Explore is a fantastic tool for initially planning out your trip while finding the cheapest flights. From CN-Traveler: You punch in parameters for a trip and how much you...
Con Dishonest about prices
There are a large number of complaints against Kayak questioning their honesty. It's frequently reported that after booking on the site and enter your credit card information, you will be told to call Kayak as something went wrong. You are then given a higher rate, or sometimes charged the hig...
Con Poor customer service
There are many negative reviews containing complaints of very rude and unhelpful Kayak customer service.
Pro Free and convenient large file sharing
Copy/paste videos, gifs, images, geolocation, and documents, drag over files for practically any time up to 1.5GB in size. Images can be compressed, too. asdf f
Pro Privacy focused
In addition to the end-to-end encryption that provides privacy to communications, the app also includes self destructing timers for chats, and the ability to permanently delete messages, yours and theirs, from your device.
Pro Beautiful UI
Very customizable with a lot of clean looking options.
Con Not fully open source
Telegram has an open API and protocol free for everyone, but the backend software is not open source. Therefore 100% privacy can not be evaluated.
Con Can only be used with a phone number
It is not possible to activate and use Telegram by mail etc. You need a phone number.
Con Only "Secret Chat" messages are encrypted end to end
The only way to get end-to-end encryption (client-client) using Telegram is to use the Secret Chat function, anything through the service is server-client encrypted. Also secret chat is only implemented in the mobile apps, meaning there is no way to encrypt messages end-to-end when using the deskt...
Pro Compares options while taking context into consideration
Context such as purpose, limitations, and situations change what options should be recommended and what pros and cons should be surfaced. For example, a comparison of Linux distributions for general use and Linux distributions for development will discuss the topics in different ways.
Pro Content can be easily kept up to date
Since anyone can edit content on the site, the pace at which information changes are reflected on the site is not arbitrarily limited by the number of writers the site has.
Pro Unbiased information you can trust
Slant isn't financially tied to any products listed on it. All the categories (organized into 'questions'), products (organized as 'options'), and pros/cons are added, and edited by real users - there is no way for a company to pay to have a favorable review (and if they try to...
Con Pros and Cons don't travel from question to question
If you see a new question and choose to add an option already recommended in another question, you need to add all pros and cons from scratch.
Pro Community rated answers
Unlike a number of other Q&A sites where the person asking the question picks the winning answer, Slant accepts that they're asking because they don't know the answer, so they allow everyone in the community to pitch in by upvoting the best answer.
Pro Pros and cons vs users' answers
Most Q&A sites give each user the chance to give an answer (sometimes multiple answers). A lot of the content of each user's answers will overlap, resulting in duplication of information (thus more to read), or information being lost in noise (e.g. if someone sees existing answers and adds...
Pro See all answers clearly
An enumeration of recommendations is easily viewed as a list, making it a good starting point for researching available options. This is the opposite of other sites in which multiple choices may be listed within a single answer, with the need for the user to read through paragraphs of information...
Con Maturity
The site is still young and has yet to build up the large user base required to have users with knowledge of all areas in which questions may be asked.
Con Needs improvements to avoid redundancy
Many questions can lead to the same app. Example: https://www.slant.co/topics/4648/~es-file-explorer-alternatives-for-android https://www.slant.co/topics/1956/~file-explorers-on-android. If you comment something on "Total Commander", you have to do this in more than one place.
Con Primarily for comparing products
Slant is a great website for comparing products to each other, but if your question isn't about products, the limits of Slant's format start to show more clearly.
Pro Polished agenda and month widgets
The app has minimalistic, semi-transparent, good-looking and customizable homescreen widgets for agenda and month views. Attributes that can be customized include choosing between light and dark themes, 12 and 24 hour clock, if the widget header should be displayed as well as adjusting opacity lev...
Pro Actionable notifications
On-screen notifications have a shortcuts for map and ability to snooze them.
Pro Has improved common views and two great views that combine month and agenda views
In addition to day, week and agenda views that have improved aesthetics and usability features compared to the stock app, there are also two views that combine agenda and month views in interesting ways. One approach shows a complete, color-coded month with agenda view beneath it and the second s...
Pro Gives the exact price
Instead of a some symbolic price range, the price for a typical meal is provided.
Con Smaller restaurant selection
Zagat mostly reviews sit-down, mainstream restaurants.
Con Not up to date
Post-Google acquisition, Zagat has been integrated into Google, but it's unclear where it's headed.
Con Opaque rating system
Ratings are assigned by some number of critics/reviewers, but who and how many reviews taken into consideration aren't revealed.
Pro Highly customizable player
Unlike other Android media players currently available, Phonograph Music Player can allow users to customize their player with more than 100+ colors.
Pro Free
This app is completely free without any ads. However, there is a donation option available.
Pro Integration with Last.fm
Phonograph Music Player supports integration with the official Last.fm app, which allows users to scrobble the music they are currently listening to.
Pro Scrobbling
Last.fm checks what you listen to the most, they're calling it scrobbling, and streams songs based on that information. It works via your computer, smartphone, iPod and other music services.
Pro Supports a wide range of platforms, music players and browsers
Last.fm scrobbles music from wide range of devices and music players, not just from official apps such as Scrobbler for Windows and Mac, Scrobbler for iOS, Last.fm for Android and Last.fm for Spotify, but also a wide range of 3rd party Last.fm apps that are available on many platforms, built using...
Pro Last.fm Tag/Artist radio
Play songs similar to "X" from Youtube.
Pro Best choice of supported cards through Google's Virtual Card system
Google has a partnership with Bancorp Bank that issues a Virtual Card to Google Wallet users that works as an intermediary between customer's card and merchant. It gives more choice in terms of compatible cards and works as a card fraud mitigation technique.
Pro Has a robust fraud protection system
All verified unauthorized transactions reported within 120 days of the transaction are completely refunded.
Pro No credit card information is stored on the phone
In case a phone is lost or stolen no access to actual credit card information can be gained.
Pro Scalable, customized organization
Infinite row/columns and all the separate tabs to play with. Trips can be organized with as many attributes and calculations as you see fit.
Pro Good for budgeting
Since it is a spreadsheet, very easy to calculate budget, and any secondary calculations as well (e.g. cost/day, cost/location, etc.)
Pro Easy to share
Google Sheets are always accessible on the cloud, and easy to control permissions to share with relevant parties.
Con Not optimized for travel
Unlike travel-specific websites, Sheets won't be able to tell if one link is a flight, and another is a hotel reservation, nor will it be able to know which cells correspond to what leg of the trip.
Con Zero foundation
While there are sample layouts (see Travel planner), it's likely that each person's trip planning needs will be unique enough that it's better to start from scratch. Of course, once you use Sheets for one trip, it'll be easier and faster to set it up for future trips.
Pro Gives actual customers a voice
Customers can leave their own reviews in a place where businesses can actually see/respond to them.
Con Still growing
Despite having reviewed 3,000 companies, there are still several companies/industries that have not been reviewed.
Pro Fast and fluid
No lag or stutter, smooth as butter.
Pro Supports TTS
Only client which reads out content to you.
Pro Streams all GIFs
No waiting for download of entire GIF. Streams instantly
Con Multireddits are not niche, it is standard to incorporate them in apps
The other apps have it multireddit integration.
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