It was a blustery March day as the crowds packed the Texas Hill Country Wine and Food Festival Sunday Fair, but that didn’t keep Austinites from sharing their Best Evers with fellow festival-goers on our giant Google map of Austin!

Between sips from local wineries and bites from area restaurants, the sell-out crowd pinned more than 600 of their favorite places to our map. Popular picks included Eddie V’s Edgewater Grill, Moonshine Patio Bar & Grill, and Lucy’s in Disguise with Diamonds.

What are your Best Evers? Share them in the comments, or catch the giant map at other upcoming community events by following @GoogleATX on Twitter.

Posted by Whitney Francis, Austin Community Manager

(Cross-posted on the Google Lat Long Blog.)

For a lot of attendees at SXSW this month, including myself, it was our first trip to Austin, Texas. We’ve all heard stories about the great restaurants and bars found throughout the city, but I didn’t know where to start looking.

Luckily for us, on February 11, Google launched a campaign in Austin to promote Hotpot, a new tool to help you find the places you’ll love. Rate and review the places you know using Hotpot, and Google will personalize your search results based on your preferences and recommendations from friends.

To help newcomers identify great places in Austin, we began importing anonymous rating signals into Google Fusion Tables in near real-time. When a new rating came in, it was directly inserted into Fusion Tables using the Fusion Tables API. In the examples below we used a FusionTablesLayer with the heat map option enabled. We used Styled Maps to tone down the background colors to make the heat map stand out more.

After the first day of collecting anonymous Austin ratings, using the heat map function in Fusion Tables, we were able to see a few patterns start to emerge:

Austin, Texas - 24hrs of Hotpot ratings heat map starting on March 1, 2011

Just 24 hours of rating data was able to provide a good idea of where to target my Hotpot search in Austin, but I wanted to see what the concentration would be like after a few days. With just 12 days of Hotpot data, the heat map generated in Fusion Tables really starts to show much more concentrated patterns:

Austin, Texas — Hotpot ratings heat map March 1, 2011, to March 12

Having never been to Austin, I could tell by looking at the heat map that the hottest places in the city are along 6th Street, between Lamar Avenue and the I-35. Additionally, Guadalupe Street near the University of Texas at Austin campus also has a lot of activity. Based on the high activity, those areas would be a good place to start exploring the city.

If you’d like to watch Hotpot trends as they shape over the coming days, you can view more Hotpot ratings in near real-time on google.com/austin.

Posted by Carlos Cuesta, Geo APIs Product Marketing Manager

Hello, Hotpotters of Austin!

My name is Whitney Francis, and I’m happy to announce that I’ve recently joined the Google Hotpot team as Austin Community Manager! First off, I just want to say how excited I am to be representing Hotpot in one of the most unique cities in the country. Get ready to join me at some very cool upcoming events, share your favorite Austin places, and learn helpful how-to Hotpot tips. We're looking to do something for everyone: foodies, outdoor enthusiasts, dog lovers — everything that makes Austin the great city it is.

If you’re wondering more about me, I was born right here in central Texas and have lived in Austin for the past five years. In that time, I’ve worked for the National Karaoke League, covered SXSW as a reporter, and started my own blog called Free Eats Austin. I love to discover new places, and since Hotpot is all about sharing your Best Evers with friends, I thought I’d share a list of my Austin favorites with all of you!

I wouldn’t be a true Texas gal without a Texas-sized appetite for barbecue, and no one can smoke a brisket better than the guys at Franklin BBQ. Whether it’s a “Tipsy Texan” (brisket and sausage sandwich) or their fall-off-the-bone ribs, the second you try your first bite, you’re in Heaven!

Of course, if it’s a Tex-Mex craving that’s got me in its grasp, then I head straight to Polvos for a bowl of queso and their shrimp fajitas. With fresh ingredients like squash, mushrooms, and spinach, these dishes take South-of-the-Border cuisine to a whole new, mouth-watering level.

Once I’m finished indulging my gluttonous side, you may see me hitting the trail down at the Lady Bird Lake Hike and Bike, perusing the selections at BookPeople, or sipping on a Manhattan at Trifecta. And after that bit of liquid courage, it’s not at all unusual to spy me onstage at Ego’s — karaoke being my second passion, after Hotpot, of course!

That’s just a taste for now, but I’d love to hear what your Best Evers are too in the comments. Stay tuned to the blog for more from Austin, and ping me any time with questions or ideas at @GoogleATX on Twitter.

Posted by Whitney Francis, Austin Community Manager

Earlier this week at SXSW, about 2,000 people joined Google and GSD&M to celebrate all things Austin: local food, local art and local music and favorite local spots. When guests arrived, they were greeted by a neon sign in the shape of a Place pin, created by Roadhouse Relics specially for the party:

We featured art from local artists such as Magda Sayeg, RAD Furniture, and Hugh MacLeod, among others:

J. Roddy Walston & The Business, The Mother Truckers and Lance Herbstrong filled the air with good ol’ Austin rock throughout the night:

A mini food trailer park was recreated in GSD&M’s backyard, with deliciousness from The Flying Carpet, Royito’s and Coolhaus:

And what’s a party without a photo booth? Yep, we had one, thanks to our friends at Smilebooth:

But perhaps one of the coolest things about the night? The interactive screens in the lobby featuring GSD&M’s “Best Ever” Austin spots, including places such as Uncommon Objects and Juan in a Million. Guests could see these places on the map and read reviews by GSD&M employees:

We even showed Hotpot ratings and Latitude check-ins happening around the city:

Here's a full gallery of pictures from the night. A big thanks to GSD&M for having us in their home, to all the folks who made the party possible, and to everyone for coming out and having fun!

Posted by Vanessa Schneider, Hotpot Team. Photographs by Paige Pharr.

Editor’s Note: We on the Hotpot team love our music — Best Ever Concert Series, anyone? — so we’re sponsoring Music by the Slice, a three-day music party thrown by Austin's Home Slice Pizza during SXSW. Stop by 1415 S. Congress from 1 to 7pm daily from March 17 to 19. It’s free — no wristband or RSVP required. You can listen to the music or share the event info with your friends on Facebook.

Home Slice Pizza employees are consummate music fans. And once a year, when all of Austin is listening, Home Slice throws a party called Music by the Slice that channels our passion for music, for pizza, and for showing folks a genuine good time.

This is our 6th year hosting Music by the Slice and this year's event promises to the best yet.

First, we have a stacked lineup of 30 carefully chosen bands from all across the indie music spectrum, from hip hop (Aesop Rock with Rob Sonic and DJ Big Wiz, Shad) to pop (The Submarines, Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin, Ivan & Alyosha, The Boxer Rebellion) to bluegrass (Trampled by Turtles), to indie guitar rock (Versus, Telekinesis, Wye Oak, Times New Viking) to rootsy (The Cave Singers, The Rural Alberta Advantage, Great Lake Swimmers) to just plain quirky (Kimya Dawson, Thao with the Get Down Stay Down), and of course a healthy dose of the next big thing thrown in the mix (Lord Huron, Still Corners, Kopecky Family Band, Typhoon).

Second, we are teaming up with our pals over at Google Hotpot to pull this thing off. These guys are going to have a 25-foot map of Austin, where peeps attending Music by the Slice can rate their Best Evers in Austin! Just as we are passionate about the bands we select, Austinites love championing our local independent places. With so many out-of-towners visiting Music by the Slice, this is a great chance to throw some shout outs to your favorite places around town in a very public way and win them some new customers during the festival.

But the best part? It’s all for charity. Yes, that’s right, all the profits from our outdoor bar sales will be donated to Urban Roots/Youth Launch, a youth development program that uses sustainable agriculture as a means to transform the lives of young people and increase the access of healthy food in Austin. These guys have a farm in East Austin where they employ and educate local kids about sustainable farming and donate much of what they grow to feed the hungry locally here in Austin.

It's going to be an awesome event, and we can’t wait! Come on by Home Slice Pizza this week, listen to some great music, and share your favorite Austin spots.

Posted by Joseph Strickland, Co-Owner of Home Slice Pizza

A short time ago, Google approached us with an idea. They said they admired what we had been doing to raise money for clean water projects in developing countries (i.e. things like our pancake parties and letter-writing campaigns), and that they wanted to help us reach our fundraising goal for the semester.

So for two weeks, Students for Clean Water and Hotpot teamed up to “Rate for a Cause.” The deal: For every rating we gave on Hotpot, Google would give a dollar to our charity: water campaign, up to $40,000. More than 1,100 University of Texas at Austin students and their friends signed up for the campaign and rated and reviewed more than 47,000 places.

During those two weeks, we did everything we could to get the word out. We hosted “rating parties” on campus — students brought their laptops, ate pizza, and talked about their favorite local Austin places with one another and on Hotpot.

We made t-shirts and stickers:

We commissioned members of our organization to go speak to other campus organizations about what was going on:

And all our hard work paid off.

To wrap up the campaign, Google hosted a party for us at Austin’s Bar 96, complete with drinks, food, Google schwag, and music. Students showed up in big numbers to hear how much we raised. Drumroll please …

$40,000!

That’s right, we reached our goal! Overall, it was an incredible display of the power of a small group of passionate people looking to make a positive difference in our world. The past two weeks have felt like a dream, and I can’t fully express in words my gratitude to Google, those who signed up to rate for a cause, and those who supported us along the way!

Posted by Blake Mankin, President of Students for Clean Water at UT Austin

Yesterday we wrapped up the Rate for a Cause campaign by celebrating all the hard rating work done by Students for Clean Water and the students of UT Austin these past two weeks. Full campaign recap coming soon, but in the mean time, here are some pictures from last night's party at Austin's Bar 96. 

Thanks to everyone for coming out!

Posted by Vanessa Schneider, Hotpot Team. Photos by Paige Pharr.

The best taco in Austin sparks a healthy debate when brought up at GSD&M — every employee you ask will give you their opinion about the freshest tortillas or the tastiest salsa that makes their taco worthy of the “Best Ever” title. Our agency is deeply rooted in Austin and it's not just the best tacos our employees rave about; it’s also the best swimming holes, best barbecue joints, best lookout points, and all of the spots that make Austin the one-of-a-kind city that it is. Many of these places are renowned, but there a lot of secrets you need a local to tell you about.

With people heading to Austin this week in droves to kickoff SXSW, we wanted to do our due diligence to ensure the out-of-towners know the best places to go. We teamed up with the Hotpot crew to plan The Industry Party on Monday, March 14 at GSD&M. We’re going to have music from J. Roddy Walston & The Business, The Mother Truckers and Lance Herbstrong. We’ll feature art from Austin's Magda Sayeg, RAD Furniture, and Hugh MacLeod to name a few. And we’ll unveil a seriously awesome interactive Google map showcasing GSD&M’s Best Evers of Austin.

We can only hope SXSW attendees will discover some of their own Best Evers this trip, and we can't wait to see how theirs compare to ours. But seriously, you'll have to trust us on the tacos. You can thank us later.

Posted by John McGrath and David Rockwood, GSD&M

You know that we here on the Hotpot team love our coffee. We also love cozy cafés overlooking pretty lakes. So we thought it’d be perfect to team up with popular lakeside spot Mozart’s Coffee Roasters in Austin, Texas. Today and while supplies last, show your Android or iPhone app at the counter and get a free drink in snazzy limited edition travel mug — on Google!

A big thanks to Jack and the Mozart’s team for making this possible!

Posted by Vanessa Schneider, Hotpot Team. Photos by Thomas Heatherly.

We’ve teamed up with Students for Clean Water at the University of Texas at Austin to bring clean water to schools in developing countries. For every rating that UT students give on Hotpot from now until March 10, Google will donate $1 to SfCW. At the end of the campaign, Google’s going to host a celebration for students for all their hard work helping us rate for a cause!

To kick things off, Students for Clean Water began spreading the word to organizations across campus yesterday. Below, SfCW president Blake Mankin explains to students how to rate and review on Hotpot:

Since then, UT students have been rallying to rate — we're loving the enthusiasm and energy, guys! Follow @HotpotATX on Twitter and our Facebook page to stay up to date on the campaign and final amount raised. 

Go, UT, go!

Posted by Vanessa Schneider, Hotpot Team. Photographs by Paige Pharr.

In addition to rating and reviewing businesses on Hotpot, you can give your favorite businesses a Best Ever award. While we're in Austin these next several weeks, we thought it would be fun to talk to a few prominent Austinites to see what businesses they're giving their Best Ever awards to and why.

Up next in this ongoing series is Laura Kelso, an Austin-based food and travel writer who regularly contributes to Southern Living, Texas Monthly, Austin Monthly, and the Austin American-Statesman. She also has written for Travel + Leisure and the Discovery Channel. Laura was the food critic for Austin Monthly for four years, and is the co-founder of Dishola.com, a website devoted to sharing the love of food – dish by dish. We asked Laura to give us some of her Austin Hotpot Best Evers.

Uchi
I know. Uchi’s praises have been sung in oh-so-many-ways. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways…but honestly, this cutting-edge sushi mecca serves up the most imaginative Japanese fusion fare in town. Think smoked baby yellowtail, served atop crunchy yucca chips with garlic brittle and Asian pear. (Can you say umami?) Besides, how is it not possible to “heart” chef Tyson Cole? He’s the bomb.

Fonda San Miguel
How can you not love a restaurant that feels like a spacious hacienda in the Mexican highlands, filled with Mexican paintings, Saltillo tiles, and punched-tin lanterns that play tricks with the light? Add to that the Mexican interior cuisine – fresh ceviche, handmade flour and corn tortillas, tacos al pastor, and roasted poblanos – and you can see why “the Fonda” earns my love. Oh, and the crepas de cajeta, layered with milky caramel sauce, cinnamon and ice cream? In a word, ricissimo.

Read more »

Editor’s Note: Last week we kicked off a local marketing campaign for Google Places in Austin, Texas, to spread the word about all the Google tools business owners can use to connect with customers. Here, our new friend Rebecca with the Austin Chamber of Commerce talks about why Google’s a great fit for the Austin small business community.

Several weeks ago Google called us. They were looking to work with the Austin Chamber of Commerce and Austin’s local business community for a new marketing campaign about Google Places. Google’s been taking a new approach to marketing Google Places, their business listings, and a recently launched tool to help connect customers to those businesses, Hotpot. We were thrilled to hear about their interest in Austin.

Why Austin? Our national recognition as a tech-savvy hub for business development means the city is a natural fit for Google’s initiatives. The Google Places Business Kits will be introduced to the Austin Chamber’s network of business leaders in central Texas. These kits include a sampler of marketing materials that can help businesses get more exposure, get them reviewed online, and get more customers through their door.

Business owners also will have the ability to connect with potential customers through Google’s new rating tool, Hotpot. With Hotpot, people now have the ability to rate and review local businesses and share those opinions with friends. When that person uses Google to search for local places, their search results become more personalized based on their tastes and those of their friends.

At the Chamber, we’re always working to understand the small business climate as we develop our benefit programs. One trend we’ve noticed is the convergence of social and mobile computing, along with the growth of location technology and services. Google Places and Hotpot act as a great set of tools business owners can use to take advantage of these trends.

As small business owners look to expand their market reach, online promotion plays an increasingly important role in both attracting new businesses and retaining loyal customers. Easy access to accurate information online and helpful reviews work toward business stability. Google’s partnership with businesses in our city will support and enhance the opportunities for raising a branded level of awareness to the consumer. Certainly, it will be exciting to witness what happens in the marketplace when Google, with its global reach, meets Austin, whose reputation for innovation and creativity is well-earned. We at the Chamber are forecasting exciting new developments ahead in 2011.

Posted by Rebecca Martin, SVP, Austin Chamber of Commerce

Photo by Paige Newton

Last Friday, we teamed up with Torchy's Tacos in Austin, Texas, to kick off our newest city campaign for Google Places. The deal: Free Hotpot tacos all weekend for Austinites — on Google. Thanks to everyone for coming out to celebrate Torchy's and Austin's local businesses community. And a special, Texas-size thanks to the Torchy's crew for welcoming us to Austin — and for making one mean taco.

Posted by Vanessa Schneider, Hotpot Team

Editor’s Note: Starting today, we’re kicking off a local marketing campaign in Austin, Texas, to spread the word about Google Places and Hotpot among local business owners and those who live and work in the area. To get the Austin party started, we’ve teamed up with Torchy’s Tacos to give away delicious free tacos to their customers (get ‘em while they’re hot!). We asked Tiffany Harelik, a fourth generation Austinite and member of the Torchy’s team, to write a little something for the blog about working with Google and some of the amazing food Austin has to offer.

Photo courtesy of Jared Tennant Photography

When Google first called me at Torchy’s Tacos, they said they were coming to my hometown to celebrate Austin’s local business community. Hot off the track from launching Hotpot, a new local recommendation engine from Google Places, Google has chosen Austin to promote this fun new technology because of our forward-thinking and love for all things local. And several Austinites had recommended Torchy’s as a great team to partner with when Google hit town. 

Cecelia and Vanessa from the Hotpot team met me at the Trailer Park on South 1st Street to chat about all the delicious food we offer here in Austin, and to talk about all the Google products you can use to help your business (or your favorite Austin business) connect with customers. Cecelia had a clue about Austin’s great food offers, being a UT alumna, but Vanessa was new to the Tex-Mex scene, so we had to order some tacos before we could even proceed.

Photo courtesy of Jared Tennant Photography

We quickly decided we wanted to do something fun for Torchy’s customers, and what’s more fun than free tacos?

Thus, I'm exceptionally excited to announce that we’ll be giving away — on Google — the Hotpot taco (or for those familiar with our menu, the Migas) at all six Torchy's Tacos locations until 2pm today. Keep in mind this is while supplies last and one per customer. Woohoo! Thanks, Google.

Now back to Hotpot. It’s a tool that supports local businesses by allowing users to share the places they love with their friends and discover new places they might like. As both a local Austin business owner and someone who reviews other local businesses, I'm excited about Hotpot and very happy to see big dogs like Google collaborating with unique trendsetters like Torchy's.

One of the fun features of Hotpot is the Best Ever medal, reserved only for the most deserving of favorite local spots. The Google girls asked me about some of my Best Ever trailer food vendors so they could check them out while here in Austin. (This, as you know, is always my most dreaded question. Trailers, you’re all pretty.) But for you, Google and readers, here is just a tiny portion of the awesome trailers not to miss, in addition to our beloved Torchy's:

G'Raj Mahal – fine Indian dining al fresco on Rainey Street
La Boite Cafe – unique local bistro cuisine in an eco-friendly box on S. Lamar
Franklin Barbecue - a must-have mouthwatering bbq experience east of campus
Hey Cupcake! - selling thousands of swanky cupcakes a day in multiple locations
Mighty Cone - gourmet fried chicken from the creators of Hudson's on the Bend on South Congress
Lulu B's Sandwiches - one of the best-kept underground secrets of sandwich teases on S. Lamar
The Flying Carpet – incredible Moroccan food from a loving family on South Congress

Photo courtesy of Jared Tennant Photography

A big thanks again to Google for recognizing Austin for one of the things we love about ourselves: that we vote with our dollars by supporting each others' businesses both on and offline.

Posted by Tiffany Harelik. Tiffany started her company Trailer Food Diaries with nothing more than a blog in February 2010. Attracting the attention of C3 Presents, she partnered with them to create the first annual Gypsy Picnic trailer food festival last fall. Her successes led local trailer food ambassadors Torchy's Tacos to hire her, and she consults with other trailer food vendors across the country. Her trailer food cookbook will be coming out this fall. She remains inspired by the foodie-entrepreneurs she encounters on her trailer food journeys.