New Food App Alert: Updated Ness Drops Today

Today in tech news, the free iPhone app "Ness" released an updated version for food lovers everywhere, combining two things they love best: Yelp and Facebook. Or maybe food and friends.

Often referred to as the Pandora for restaurants, the "personalized restaurant guide... is focused on allowing users to share their restaurant recommendations with friends in Ness and on Facebook." This means that along with seeing your friends' photos of Napa Valley on Facebook, you can also read their rave about that wonderful bistro they went to the night before. Lovely.

Luckily, if you ever visit Napa, you can get recommendations from people you actually know, avoiding the risky waters of mass reviews. Instead, priority is given to reviews from Facebook friends and contacts.

The CEO of Ness Computing, Corey Reese, came up with Ness after a red-eye flight to New York and a serious hankering for coffee. He found the perfect cup at Abraço using Facebook to crowdsource. "I want to know what the equivalent of Abraço is wherever I am," he says.

Ness also recommends eateries for users by tracking their reviews and restaurant ratings, so you'll never have to crawl Yelp, the Times, and your favorite blog all at once, ever again. In the future, the app plans to work with Twitter and editorial partnerships, expanding to nightlife and retail. But in the meantime, iPhone users can just eat a lot happier.

The Daily Byte is a regular column dedicated to covering interesting food news and trends across the country. Click here for previous columns.