For some time my favourite “quick meal restaurant” has been lacking in this space. I was discussing it with Mrs Me over a meal this weekend (burger with cheese and pine, lemon and herb, side of corn) and we talked about what the Nando’s app should have. When prep’ing for this post, I discovered that Nando’s have recently launched an app. I was preparing to delete the notes from our conversation (yes, notes – what of it?) when I checked the app and was disappointed by the sense of lost opportunity.

The existing app has 3 features: store locator (frankly a must, also a hygiene factor), the ability to create a group event at a Nando’s and the ability to checkin via Facebook places (was this really worth development time?). There seems to be very little which will drive people into the shops, so I decided to share our ideas anyway.

Gamification
Make people compete. Get them excited. Sell more chicken. Gamification is very web 2.rightnow.

• Some sort of “roulette wheel” of hotness game for randomising orders
• Setup challenges, possibly within a region or for a specific shop. Challenges could be things like “eat everything on the menu (within a year)”, “ask for it extra, extra hot”, etc. Create a “journey to extra hot” challenge where the user orders hotter and hotter food each time.

Reward your regulars
Nando’s already has a loyalty card system. But carrying cards around is so 1900′s. Get the loyalty card on the app, even get prepayment on the app. I’d rather pre-fund my kid to eat grilled chicken than McDonald’s or some other fast food chain. Starbucks have got the mechanics worked out, it’s doable.

Once you’ve got the loyalty card built in, show a map of which Nando’s I’ve eaten in around the country, or the world. Set me a challenge – can I eat at every Nando’s within 20 miles of my house? There’s another game, right there.

Get the basics right
Store finder isn’t the only “hygiene factor” feature. Surely the menu should be on the app? (They do say it’s coming). Update the menu? Popup a notification to the phone. Create a challenge – can I eat all new menu items within two weeks that they are released? Another game!

Let me prepare a takeaway order and order it from the app. Phoning a busy restaurant is never all that efficient. Save orders to “my favourites”: can I order our regular “takeaway night dinner” within 3 clicks? Great, I’m not bothering to go anywhere else then.

Celebrate your heritage
Some shops use their walls to showcase (and potentially sell) work by South African artists. Share these on the app. It’s a great source of potential content to bring people back into the app. And get them sharing on Facebook, Pinterest and the like.

Some other ideas which don’t have logical categories

• Don’t forget retail: Can I buy your sauces? Recipe books? Crisps? T-shirts? Over the years all these things have been for sale. Mobile commerce is growing. Grow with it.
• Don’t forget the ankle biters: Colouring in sheets for download. Or make a little colouring in game on the app for kids to do while waiting.
• Don’t forget to share information: Recipes (with your sauce, of course), nutritional info, etc. You have a blog, there’s a ready source of new content right there.

Frankly, there’s a lot of suggestions here. I don’t imagine it would be easy to tie it all together into a single app. Difficult, but surely not impossible?

So Nando’s – hope you’re checking chickin (see what I did there?) this out.

Many of these devices have been on the market for a while, months or even years. Some less so. The observation is not that these things are – individually – new pieces of tech. The observation is that there seem a growing collective of these gadgets/apps and it feels as if there is about to be a tipping point into “mainstream” use (i.e. outside the gadget / tech and fanatical health communities).

What am I seeing?

• Nike Fuelband (released about two weeks ago), the newest multi-purpose health sensor with fitness tracking app
• Jawbone Up, another multi-purpose health sensor with fitness tracking app
• Fitbit Ultra, another multi-purpose health sensor with fitness tracking app
• BodyMedia FIT, another multi-purpose health sensor with fitness tracking app
• Wahoo Blue HR heart rate strip for iPhone 4S which doesn’t need additional hardware for the phone, hit the shelves in the days before Xmas

Many of these are into their “second version”, suggesting that the first sold enough to be commercially interesting but feedback and experience are bringing a round of improved devices to the market. Additionally, the use of Bluetooth 4.0 means that increasingly there will be no need for buying into the ANT+ ecosystem to connect additional sensors to your smartphone (the Blue HR strap is one of these).

Not to be forgotten, there is an ever growing selection of smartphone apps which blend data from the smartphone’s sensors (typically GPS for distance / speed tracking) with the potential to use add-on sensors (heart rate, cycling cadence, etc.) to give blended exercise information. RunKeeper is probably one of the most notable of these, although there are many worthy of trying out.

Is there about to be a tipping point?

Price – £70

I was waxing lyrical about it and a colleague asked for a link. Quick trip to Google and I found this.

Price – £129

Same product. Same vendor (who are the manufacturer). Same web property (hp.com). One “version” is almost double the cost of the other. That can’t be good.

FWIW, the printer’s great.

Since then (18/11/2008, a view of the Thames from One London Bridge taken on a Nokia N82) I have managed to consistently post (something that surprised me, I suspected I’d give up after a few months) amassing a total of 517 photos, most recently an amusing sign at Old Street Station (posted 15/12/2012).

Why have I gone with a dedicated web service?

• Instagram photos are shown in most Twitter clients (including Twitter.com) and in Facebook without needing a subsequent clickthrough. It used to be that when posting to Facebook, it showed the image on my Timeline although more recently this has not been the case.
• I can’t use Instagram to share video (yet?)

Why did I like using my own service?

• It’s quite nice to have things within one’s own domain name (http://mymobilestream.davereinhardt.com)
• It is possible to see analytics on the pages using both bit.ly’s analytics and Google analytics
• There is no readily accessible profile page on Instagram. I can hack one together by sharing to Flickr and creating a smart group based on the Instagram tag, but its far from elegant. (Anyone know a better solution?)

My instinct is that more people will see the photos using Instagram, I just will have less ability to know whether they’re seeing them because of the limited analytics.

The e-petitions site may be accessible again by now. I was getting this error message on-and-off most of the morning.

Have a browse, feel free to comment here or on the pics if you like them.

The service can be described as an elegant online gallery service. Not as feature rich as flickr, but with greater emphasis on a more elegant display frame and higher quality pics. There are some quite inspirational images if you browse through other users pics.

[UPDATE]
I seem to be getting a lot of 404′s on the site this morning so I’ve screenshotted my profile page in case the badge (above) is not working.

The solution seems so obvious: COMBINE EVENTS.

After both the judo and fencing competitions, why not have the non-medaling athletes compete against each other? The spectacle would be great, it would use the same athletes (so no additional expense or training) and give non-medaling athletes another chance at glory. Also, disappointed ticket lottery losers could get to see two events with one ticket.

There are no doubt countless combinations of events which could be considered, here are some that I came up with:

• Judo v fencing – Competing man to man in a mixed combat martial art.
• Taekwondo v javelin – The javelin athletes have one chance to impale their competitors, taekwondo athletes need to fend off one inbound javelin.
• Archery v synchronised swimming – Archers have to time their firing to try and hit synchronised swimmers when they surface during routines.
• Combat shooting v steeple chase – Moving targets make the shooting much more challenging, being shot at makes athletes far more focused.
• Hammer throw v 400m – Hammer throw athletes take a few seconds to get up to pace, just enough time to give the runners a head start.
• MTB v show jumping – Time for a real race.

The same approach could be used for the Winter Olympics. Biathlon (shooting) can be combined with most disciplines. Speed skating v. curling.

It’ll be a revolution, the biggest innovation since Fosbury turned the high-jumping world upside down.

Note: If you’re interested in the more serious side of Olympic ticketing, James Pearce (BBC reporter) has been a breath of fresh air, sharing interesting and insightful information via Twitter [@pearcesport].

Aside from regular tweeting, I didn’t publish anything that day.

What did I learn?

Lots of things. Some more interesting than others.

• The bookie comes out on top, in this case to the tune of £180. Admittedly, this should’ve been the outcome so no surprises there. I did win once in the season.
• When the windows says “£10 returns £100″, the odds are 9/1 (9 pounds out for every pound you put in) because the return includes your initial bet.
• The odds are misleading. I tended to take the view that longer odds make for more interesting bets, especially in the context of trying to get “1 big win” during the course of a season. You’d think that shorter odds would give more victories and that’s why shorter odds are, well, shorter. When I look back on the mix of bets, having one with shorter odds doesn’t seem to have given a greater chance of winning than one with longer odds.
• The web is full of serendipitous connectivity.
• Don’t bet on your own team. The first two bets I placed in Arsenal’s favour (1, 2) resulted in dropping points. I then had a window bet for Chelsea to beat Arsenal (gasp!) and that all but sealed the fate of that game. Next Arsenal bet should’ve been a sure bet (Ipswich in the Carling Cup) and Arsenal went and lost that.
• You can bet on stuff all day, every day. Somewhere in the country someone is hurtling some animal around a track with only 3 spectators and a camera for company.
• Bookies run a network of cyber dog races. If there genuinely is a moment in the day where there is no race happening somewhere, there is a piped feed of virtual races which punters can bet on.
• There are lots of very desperate people in bookies. People who smell like last week’s socks and are placing 10p or 20p bets.
• Kids aren’t allowed into bookies. I got thrown out of one shop because I had my baby daughter with me. This doesn’t upset me or even surprise me but as I didn’t actually know it, it counts as a learning.

How did I do?

I kept a running total on this spreadsheet.