Have you ever found yourself out on a Friday night, hungry and without a reservation, only to find that all the nearby restaurants seem to have hour-long waits?

This week, Invoke released a new app with The Onion’s The A.V. Club to solve just this problem: WaitList is an iPhone app that tells you just how long you’ll have to wait at nearby restaurants, bars, and clubs.

Now, you can bypass restaurants’ long lines and get to your meal faster! Through the app, users can submit wait time tips, which are also published on the WaitList’s twitter, @waitlist. In addition to viewing wait times, you can also share notes on what to eat or drink at different venues. The app uses foursquare’s API to help you find places close to you or search for your destination.

Inspiration for the app came after the team at The A.V. Club, an entertainment newspaper and website published by The Onion, was sick and tired of waiting for over an hour at their favorite gourmet hot dog joint in Chicago. They developed a Chicago tip line and Twitter feed to outsmart wait lines all over the city, and a year later, worked with Invoke to develop this first nationwide WaitList app. Read more on Mashable and Lifehacker.

Check it out on iTunes for yourself, and never worry about standing hungry in the entrances of restaurants ever again!

image from Mashable.com

This is Part 2 of a two part series focusing on Facebook’s API and using it to create Facebook applications for brands.

With Invoke’s latest application, we were able to develop a highly customized application that maintained the client’s branding and integrated nicely into Facebook’s framework.  The client Invoke was working with already had a Facebook Fan page with a large number of fans but they needed to give their campaign a boost and make the fan page more dynamic and engaging for their loyal fan base.  Invoke saw this challenge and suggested the solution – add an completely customized app seamlessly through a new tab on the fan page.

How did we do it?  By utilizing FBML (Facebook Markup Language), our team created a user experience that made it apparent this application reflected the clients brand within Facebook.  A major challenge was determining what data was available from the API.  For example, we created an interactive Flash Map that allows users to post events on a map that feed into the Facebook database.  On paper it was a simple task, but the solution proved to be much more complex as the format of the API data was not as expected.  Other aspects of development went smoother than expected.  The application uses Flash to load videos and display a counter for donations.  Because Facebook’s API provides strong support for Flash, these flash pieces were easily reusable as “widgets” that could be posted onto Walls and News Streams.

All of these small details enhanced the user experience for both primary users of the application, and passive users who see the news stream postings.  It’s these “small details” that can lead to big results for the client as passive users “like” a posting, visit the page, become “fans”, and hopefully become primary users.  These metrics are used when determining a marketers ROI.  Within a few days of launching, the application we developed experienced this Facebook effect as the application received more than 1000 signups in just a few days.

In the end, our primary focus with Facebook development is agile development, which requires many iterations with wireframing, design, API research, and programming.  Put all of these together, and it’s a fine balance to launch an application that uses the latest offerings from the API and can be maintained for future revisions down the road.   A well conceived and executed Facebook application is a fun and engaging way to deliver a marketing message or organizational facts. The interactive factor (which is demonstrably important for Facebook users) mobilizes existing fans and turns them into active promoters of your message, which in turn builds the fanbase.  These brand ambassadors will then share and interact via the application and the messaging spreads.

Nashville Flood photos via Mashable

From a very captivating video of the Tennessee flood, Federal regulations on privacy, class action lawsuits against virtual worlds, to re-shaping the models of marketing, here is a list of what we’re reading right now.

Tennessee Flooding Inspires Stunning YouTube Video
via Mashable:
“While most on-the-ground videos covering disasters and other world events are hurried and low-quality, this one is beautiful and professional-looking; it was made by a photographer named Michael Deppisch, who used a Canon EOS 5D Mark II digital SLR camera. “You don’t see YouTube videos like this very often, and as one commenter put it: “This video so captured the heart of this story… if it doesn’t move someone, they should check their pulse.” ”

Facebook Stirs up Trouble for Silicon Valley
via AdAge:
“Days after Facebook launched its “Open Graph Platform” that extends the social net’s web across third-party sites, the Palo Alto-based social network got a surprise rebuke from New York Sen. Charles Schumer, who wrote a letter asking the Federal Trade Commission to develop guidelines for how Facebookers’ information can be used.  The flap couldn’t come at a worse time for online advertising, facing the very real prospect that it will be regulated in the form of privacy legislation that would require publishers, networks or marketers to receive specific consent to use consumer data for a variety of purposes on the web.”

How Effective are Corporate Social Media Policies?
via eMarketer:
“According to a survey by security solutions provider nCircle, about three-fifths of US security and IT professionals say their company has a social media policy, and two-fifths ban all usage of social media on the job.  Those bans may stem from legitimate concerns, but researchers have warned that security and productivity problems can be combated while allowing employees to harness social media in ways beneficial to their business.”

Gives and takes from #AdtechSF
via Marketing With Meaning:
“Yesterday I returned from the first Ad:Tech event of the year in San Francisco. Here in this post I will share what I shared, as well as some of the highlights from the Tuesday sessions. Including: A New World of Word of Mouth: Using Influence to Re-invent the Impression and Jamie Cohen Szulc—CMO of the Levi’s Brand.” Slideshow by Bob Gilbreath

Second Life Users File Class Action Lawsuit Over Virtual Land
via: Mashable
“A group of Second Life users is suing Second Life’s creator over a virtual land dispute. They say their contractual property ownership rights have been changed and that this alteration of the terms of service constitutes fraud and violates California consumer protection laws.  Second Life’s parent company, Linden Labs, was recently valued at $383 million.”

Happy third week of April! Here are just a few of the articles we’ve dog-earred for the week.

This Is Apple’s Next iPhone
via Gizmodo.com
“While Apple may tinker with the final packaging and design of the final phone, it’s clear that the features in this lost-and-found next-generation iPhone are drastically new and drastically different from what came before. Here’s the detailed list of our findings”

Facebook to Link Profiles and Pages
via Mashable.com
“Today, Facebook is starting to roll out an all-new way to share your likes and interests, and it’s all about Community Pages. These changes are related to the new “like” terminology Facebook introduced at the end of March. Instead of becoming a fan of pages — which, at the time, were limited to brands and organizations — users could simply click a button stating that they liked the page/brand/organization.”

Twitter Promoted Tweets Video
via TechCrunch.com
“A week ago, Twitter unveiled  its long-awaited ad platform to the world: Promoted Tweets. While it was a focal point of last week’s Chirp conference in San Francisco, there still seem to be some questions as to how exactly it works. So Twitter has made a short (but slow) video tutorial on the feature.”

1 Out of 5 Textbooks Digital by 2014
via ReadWriteWeb.com
“Today, digital textbooks for higher education and career education account for only 0.5% of all textbook sales in the United States. According to a new study by social learning platform Xplana, this could soon change. Xplana predicts that digital textbooks will account for almost 20% of all textbook sales within the next five years. This will make digital textbooks a $1 billion market.”

Sure, we’ve had it up to the ceiling with talk of Apple’s latest proclaimed wunderkid; but we were curious what different demographics have to say about the iPad.

We’ve collected five reviews from five different types of users that provide their initial impressions of Apple’s iPad and its usefulness in their lives.

The Techie

First iPad Hands-On and Reviews Start Rolling In
via Mashable
“The Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg calls it “pretty close” to being a laptop killer. The New York Times’ David Pogue takes a unique approach by reviewing the iPad for two audiences”

The Suit

Apple iPad for business: Three reasons to love it, three reasons to ignore it
via TechRepublic
“It’s a briefcase + a whiteboard + a dashboard…Only one app at a time? Seriously?”

The Mom

iPad – Gut Reaction
via iPhoneMom
“For me personally, it’s not going to replace my laptop but I can see it becoming something we use all the time for other things. Just the potential it has for kid apps is amazing.”

The Gamer

iPad, Portable Gaming’s Blank Slate
via Pocket Gamer
“When viewed through the eyes of a gamer, no other portable device is as transforming as this.”

The Academic

The iPad ebook reader: Some first reactions
via OpenCulture
“Then, when you fire up the eBook reader, you instantly like what you see. The fonts are crisp, and the images are in color, which means that you can read children’s books, comics and other graphic intensive texts.”

Now, what about you? If you’re lucky enough to have gotten your hands on an Apple iPad, leave us your own review. Even if you haven’t fought your way out of an Apple store, clutching your newest tech trophy, what are your first impressions about the device and the buzz surrounding it?