Food Genius Tells You Which Restaurant Dishes to Eat--Not Just Where

Editor's Note: See all our Excelerate Labs coverage here.

WHAT: Netflix for menu items: learns your likes and dislikes and makes recommendations on what to eat, not just where. The Food Genius database has categorized 172K dishes in Chicago on everything from ingredients to cooking technique. Users start with a list of dishes and rate them. They can also recommend dishes they have eaten.

LAUNCHERS:  Justin Massa, CEO; Eric Cooper, lead developer.

WHEN/WHERE: Beta July 2011 / Chicago

WHY: No apps can help you decide what to eat in your area. People like getting accurate recommendations. Restaurants don't have a reliable data source about what local consumers want.

BACKSTORY: Justin, who used to work in downtown Chicago, would pull out his phone at lunchtime to look for something to eat, "but nothing answered the question the way I wanted it to. I wanted something like...

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Google Docs Gets New Look -- Have You Seen It?

Google docs officially unveiled an update to its look and feel earlier this month, but have you seen the new look yet?

The first things you notice: no more colorful "Google docs" logo and its grayness. Document pages feel cleaner and the controls at the top of the document are slightly larger.

Before:

After:

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Tumblr Sending 20 Fashion Bloggers to New York Fashion Week

[ Models at the Donna Karan show at February's New York Fashion Week. Photo by Jamie Beck, From Me to You blogger. ]

Tumblr is sending 20 fashion bloggers who use Tumblr -- including four of the 24 it sent for February's event -- to cover New York Fashion Week Sept. 8-15. About 20% of Tumblr's 20M blogs are fashion-related.

From our research, it does not appear Posterous, WordPress or SquareSpace has ever done something similar. This is the only vertical in which Tumblr has organized blogger access to a major event.

Founded by David Karp in 2007, New York-based Tumblr has raised over $40M to date from investors including Union Square Ventures and Sequoia Capital. The company is set to raise anywhere from...

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Mozilla's Firefox 6 Launched with 2,600 Long-Known Bugs

 
Mozilla's Firefox 6 may contain as many as 6K known bugs, of which about 2,600 were not only known about but went untouched for more than 150 days -- or since the release of Firefox 4, Tyler Downer, former Mozilla community lead, wrote in a blog post Saturday as ConceivablyTech reported.

UPDATE [ 8/29/2011 ]: In another blog post, Tyler Downer clarified that he is not an employee of Mozilla, but is actually a volunteer and has never been given a title by Mozilla. Additionally, he clarified that "Firefox did not ship with 6,000 bugs. Rather, there are 6,000 UNCO bugs in the Firefox Product on BMO. Not 6,000 real bugs, but rather 6,000 bugs that haven’t been marked as NEW." 

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Facebook Ends Deals Program While Google Offers Expanding

Facebook will discontinue its Deals program in the coming weeks, probably a response to saturation in a deals market that Groupon and LivingSocial dominate.

The program was launched in April and tested in five cities, including Atlanta, Dallas and San Francisco. Last week, Facebook killed check-ins on its mobile app, essentially acknowledging that foursquare has won that space [ see our story ].

In June, Google launched Google Offers in Portland. Offers is now available in six areas and debuting soon in over 30 cities from Omaha to Orlando, up from...

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