By now, I hope you’ve heard about and checked out WeGoEat.com, a directory of all the best restaurants in Hawaii. But what’s the deal with WeGoEat.com and where is this site headed? Luckily, head developer Ryan Kanno was willing to answer a few of these questions for Pulpconnection readers.

Why did you create WeGoEat.com and how did you come up with the name?

I contribute to the Django project (look for me next time you download it). It’s a Python web framework very similar to Ruby on Rails. I wanted to write technical articles to educate others on how to use it, and I figured that I better practice what I preached. Once I figure out all the Hawaii IP addresses, I want to restrict registration to only people in Hawaii. Everyone else will only be able to read reviews. I’m hoping two things: 1) The people of Hawaii will take it for what it’s worth – A forum to voice opinions about their favorite eatery and that 2) People outside of Hawaii will realize that though places like Yelp are neat, but what better place to get an opinion than from the people who live and breathe the culture. The local market is something that Googs/Yahoo have a tough time competing and I’m hoping to fill a niche. Also, since I’m pretty accessible, I can turn pretty much anything into a reality in terms of functionality/features, etc. Try requesting Yahoo to change their Fantasy Sports or a new feature to Gmail and see if that goes anywhere. 😉 Whew.

And of course, WeGoEat for obvious reasons… just something said a lot @ my family parties. 🙂

Where did the idea for WeGoEat.com come from and what makes this site different?

I just chose a market that I thought needed help. I haven’t really thought to differentiate it feature wise (yet), but I am hoping to differentiate it community wise.

What’s the long term vision for WeGoEat.com?

I’d like it to become a forum for Hawaii people to voice their pleasures/concerns/etc about places to eat. Ideally, restaurant owners will check it out to see what people are saying and improve, damnit. 🙂

How many active developers are working on this project?

Ahahahahahha. You’re kidding right? 😉 1.

What features are planned for the future? A Facebook app? Embed into blogs? Integration with software like IconFactory’s DineOMatic?

All of the above is viable. I’m tracking how people are using the site in Googs Analytics now and wanted to let the usage dictate the features. I figured the first thing I’d write is a little Javascript to embed your favorite restaurants into your blog. DineOMatic looks neato. I just emailed them to see what it would take to integrate. I wanted to work on a “magic-wheel” where you put in criteria and out comes a random restaurant, but I wanted a Flash developer for that (hint, hint). Ideally, I’d like to display menus as well, but that’s seriously time consuming unless I can get buy in from the restaurants to input their own menu. Finally, I’m always reading about ‘Hawaii’s’ best restaurants by some random questionnaire conducted by the Advertiser or Honolulu Magazine – I’d seriously love to audit their results especially since there’s usually some serious conflicts of interests (the people you are paying to advertise with are saying you’re one of the best in Hawaii)… I’m hoping this site will let the people speak volumes about what really is the best in Hawaii. 🙂

Thanks Ryan and good luck with WeGoEat.com!