Michael says: Are you a fan of the Food Network Show, “Diners, Drive-in’s, and Dives”? If you are — and even if you aren’t — you might be interested in the “biggest and most complete collection” of details from restaurants featured on the show. Kokopelli Software has developed an iPhone and iPod app that they are billing as the unofficial companion to the hit Food Network show “Diners Drive-Ins and Dives” with Guy Fieri.
Since I’m part of the Blackberry crowd, I wasn’t able to take advantage of the gracious invitation from Kokopelli to review the app. Fortunately, Bianca over at South Bay Rants and Raves is an iPhone user and offered to share her thoughts on the app. Thanks, Bianca!
Triple D iPhone and iPod App Review
By Bianca Avelino
The Triple D app is based on the hit Food Network show, Diners, Drive- ins, and Dives.
Launch the app and you will see a column that lists recent shows. Be sure that your location setting is on so that you can see the closest restaurants that were featured on the show.
Tap on one of the restaurants in the “Recent Shows” or “Nearby Restaurants” column and you will see a picture, a map of the location, and episode information including other restaurants featured on that particular show as well as the air date. If you click on the picture, you will find ratings from restaurant and retail review sites and Yelp. You’ll also have the option to make this restaurant your favorite for quick browsing the next time around.
The random feature is great for the indecisive diner in that it picks any restaurant featured on the show. However, that is any restaurant. So you could be living in California, click the random button, and be shown a restaurant in South Carolina. It would be nice if the random button could be geared to restaurants that are local to the user.
A workaround is the search option. Searching lets the user see what eateries are closest to them by entering their city or zip code. A nice tweak to this feature would be letting the user specify a maximum distance to search from their zip code or town.
One drawback to the Triple D app is that it only features restaurants that have been featured on the show. Unless they are traveling or planning a road trip, the app might not be of much value to fans of the show in states and cities that the show has not covered. An improvement would be to list suggested diners, drive ins & dives in locations yet to be discovered by Guy Fieri and the Triple D staff.
All in all, the intentions behind this app are good. However, a few changes need to be made before recommending it to everyone. With a few more adjustments, this app will be a go-to resource for iPhone wielding fans of the show.
There’s a newer app called FyTek’s Triple-D Finder that has all of the above, is more up to date, and allows you add your own diners as well making it handy to not only get details about those on the show but to keep track of your personal favorites with a quick link to hours, phone number, etc. Plus they have select recipes from the diners on the show as well. Oh, there’s also a handy tip calculator.
They have both a free and a paid version. The free version has in-app purchase options to remove ads, buy the map screen, buy recipes, etc. Though if you plan on using all those features, it’s cheaper to buy the paid version which currently is $1.99.
The free version is located here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/free-triple-d/id591290042?mt=8
Thanks for the heads up on this, Mike! Its crazy you should comment because I was just watching Triple D last night was thinking about this post! 😀