LocalWineEvents.com is a great website that I use quite often to find tastings, wine dinners and other wine-related events in the Atlanta area. After my recent review of the iVisit Sonoma County application on the iPhone, Eric V. Orange, CEO/Founder of LocalWineEvents.com reached out and asked if I’d take a look at their new application too. The app was just released on January 28, 2010 so it practically hot out of the oven.
PROS
1. Just like many iPhone apps, this program will be more valuable when you allow it to use your current location.
2. Once you select your location, you are given a list of today’s and future events that are closest to your current location.
3. The Details screen show some good information including the phone number of the establishment that can be pressed and automatically called. You can also view the establishment on a map and even forward the event in an email to a friend.
4. If you know you are travelling to another location other than where you are currently, you can easily select another city in a another country to find events.
OPPORTUNITIES
1. The event listing screen always defaults to 30 Mile radius and only has 4 options. It could be helpful, at least in my opinion, if it remembered my previous setting and offered more flexibility in radius options. For example, by having the radius options as buttons at the top, the number of selections are limited. The scroll list type of function could be used and allow more options to be made available, or it could allow the user to type in the radius directly. Personally, I would like the option of 5 mile radius to be made available. In most cases, I will not be travelling 50 miles around Atlanta to go to an event, especially with the lovely traffic we get here 
2. Just like I found with the Sonoma County app, the map option on the details screen does not allow the user to get directions that is so common and helpful via Google maps.
3. I’d like to see a website link, if available, for the establishment on the Details page, which is often available on the event page on the website.
4. It may also be very helpful to add a calendar feature which allows the user to specify a date in the future to further filter the event list. If I know I am not available until this coming Saturday and want to see what’s going on then, I have to scroll through the list currently.
5. In addition to the mail feature, it might be nice to include some of the social media links like Twitter or Facebook so that a user can inform their networks they are attending an event and include the event link.
6. Unfortunately, as with many version 1.0 releases, I did stumble upon a few bugs that I am sure will be worked out over the next couple of releases. Some of these still occurred after deleting and reinstalling the app as well as hard-booting the iPhone.
<<02/19 2:52pm EST: Error screenshot removed to not reveal proprietary code or vulnerabilities>>
Overall, I feel this application can be very valuable for those users looking for wine-related events in their cities while on the go. It can become even more valuable when even more valuable mobile and social features are added including those mentioned above. The more users can do with regard to filtering and finding events, making it easier to get to an event and finally sharing the event with others, the more valuable it will become.
Ed, many thanks for the valuable input. It’s exactly the kind of information we need from users to help make it better.
We will address these items for the next version as soon as possible.
EVO
Hi Ed. I developed the application for LocalWineEvents.com. Thanks very much for your review and input.
I’m sorry you encountered that error. We turned our debugging messages on for a brief time when we were updating some content. You must have accessed the app when we were in the middle of that process. It shouldn’t happen again!
/james
My comment has nothing to do with the technical aspects of the app itself, but with my local city version of the site. Every time I check LocalWineEvents.com for my city — Wilmington, NC — there are NO events. We are a small city, but there are a good 10 or so wine tastings a week in the area, and wine dinners, and other wine-related events, but no one posts their information! And for a city this size, we actually have quite a few good retail wine shops, but only one is listed on the site. I don’t get why wine and food biz owners don’t post their info, because it’s so easy. Maybe they don’t know about the site? What could be done to remedy that, I wonder?
Thanks, James and Eric for your responses! I can’t wait for the next release.
_
Kimberly: I might leave that question up to Eric who may be able to propose some ideas to increase the awareness of those establishments to use the site. I know sometimes I have set up events on the behalf of such places if I know they are having an event.
Thanks, Ed. Yes, I could take the initiative and post some event stuff on my own that I know about, that’s a good starting point!