Picksie App Picks Personalized Places

Free mobile app Picksie hopes to make choosing a place to dine and finding entertainment options a bit easier. Picksie is a location-based app that helps users discover nearby restaurants, cafés, bars, clubs, sporting events, and movies.

Users begin by filling out a profile and inputting preferences like cuisine, favorite dishes, and price points. Picksie uses that information to personalize options based on consumers' picks. The app takes into account the weather, day, and time so that users looking for a lunch spot on a rainy day won't get suggestions for alfresco dining options that are only open at night, for example. The app becomes more personal over time as users give "thumbs-up or "thumbs-down to recommendations.

Through a partnership with celebrity food finder database TV FoodMaps, Picksie allows food program fans to easily find restaurants near them that have appeared on television shows like No Reservations and Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives and see the video clips from those shows. Another feature lets users access menus from bars and restaurants without leaving the app.

Picksie is currently partnered with Zagat and Fandango and gives recommendations for the New York and San Francisco metropolitan areas, which includes coverage to nearby spots like The Hamptons, Philadelphia, and parts of New Jersey for New York, and San Jose and Redwood City [?] for the Bay Area.

The app will have nationwide coverage by the end of the year, according to Ajay Mohan, CEO of Picksie. Picksie is available for iPhone and Android.