Nosh vs. Oink: Which new foodie smartphone application is best?

Using the GPS location and social networking functionality in smartphones is leading to innovate applications and services to help out your fellow human being. Two new services, currently both running on iOS, created from startup companies are now available to help you find the best food to eat and drink to consume. Nosh and Oink integrate social networking and an awards system to encourage you to participate too. 

You can check out my full ZDNet Smartphones & Cell Phones blog post that has embedded videos of each application too.

You can use the Discover button to find items that are popular, close to your location, or recently made live.

When you tap on the center pig snout, Oink button, you are shown this screen that tells you want you can oink.

The first step in oinking something is to select where you are at from the list of locations in the database.

You select categories where you want to earn "cred" and then you can track these in Oink.

You can check your cred and stats in different categories. As you can see I am just getting started and haven't earned anything yet.

You can view your profile in Oink by tapping the tab on the far right.

The Nosh feed shows you what your friends and others have been liking in the service. There are three main buttons at the bottom of Nosh for the feed, Nosh something, and your profile.

Your profile shows you your stats and lets you manage your followers and add others to follow too.

After you tap on the Nosh button the locations in your vicinity will appear.

It is helpful to capture a photo of the dish you are rating in Nosh.

When you Nosh something then you can rate it (from 1 to 5 stars), add a comment, and also share with your social networks. You can even integrate Foursquare so you don't have to separately check-in with a different service.

You will get a confirmation when you Nosh something.

The feed then gets updated with my Nosh.

If you are out and about you can also find restaurants and then tap to view what foods people thought were best.

If a place is not found in the database, you can manually add it and even designate a private place for your own needs.

Nosh Oink image gallery 1