Avoid Noisy Restaurants With the IHEARu App
Having lunch or dinner at a restaurant is a great way to hang out with a friend, unless, of course, you can accidentally pick the loudest restaurant in town for an hour-long meeting.
While apps like Yelp can help you figure out what food might be like and if a place has free Wi-Fi, there is no noise level estimate. One startup is now trying to offer a solution in the form of an application called iHEARu .
Like other crowdsourced apps like Yelp, the app relies entirely on other visitors to report noise levels while eating. Restaurant diners can leave their subjective feedback, as well as measure the actual decibel level using the microphone of their smartphone, Food + Wine reports .
The app breaks down the noise level into 30 minute intervals. Noise, like everything else, is variable. The idea is that you can see that the restaurant might be fine on Mondays or Tuesdays, but it starts out loud during dinner every night after lunch, or that you would be much better off if you order at 7:30 pm and not at 19:00. …
The app launched this week in San Francisco and will launch in other major cities in the next few months to be available globally.