In the summer of 2008, J.R. Johnson sold Virtual Tourist to Expedia for $85 million dollars. While Johnson seems like the type of laid back Los Angeles entrepreneur that would take some vacation time, his quest for relevancy had him launching a new community the following March. Lunch.com is Johnson's attempt to cut through the noise that has proliferated since he first started in the user-generated-review space in 1999.

Says Johnson, "When I started, people asked me why anyone would want to read an amateur review. Now the environment has changed and there's even pay-per-post happening across the net. Virtual Tourist is travel-specific and you increase relevancy by picking a niche topic on which to base your community. With Lunch I'm trying to solve something new." Johnson spoke to ReadWriteWeb about some of the ways he's managed to ensure that his community is more than just search engine bait.

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1. Identity and Interest: In addition to requiring that individuals use their real names and specify topics of interest within the site, Lunch uses an interesting member matching system. Similar to OK Cupid, users rate a series of topics and the "similarity network" matches them with like-minded members. In order for a spammer to target a specific user, they'd have to answer multiple questions in the same way as their target and trick the matching algorithm into displaying a higher percentage of compatibility. In this way, spammers are deemed less relevant while passionate users are matched by the percentage of overlapping interests.

2. Opinion History: Johnson explains that just because people share common interests it does not mean that they share common opinions. Even at ReadWriteWeb we've seen Republicans and Democrats converge on the same comment thread in completely different ways. Lunch lets users view opinion ratings, past reviews and popularity rankings. From there you decide whether or not to follow others or look for additional commentary.

3. Top Review Ratings: The Lunch users rate each other and can review that history of rating over time. Ratings can be about a specific topic, on a specific review and on a specific user. In some cases a contributor with lackluster cooking reviews produces one standout piece about a specific type of food. It's important to be able to find those gems and weed out the reviews that are less relevant to you as a community member.

4. Existing Networks: Lunch allows users to pull information from their social graph via Facebook Connect in order to follow existing friends. Users can track topic reviews, member reviews and article reviews created by friends. I was actually surprised to see how little I had in common with my own social graph in terms of topic interest; however, where we converged was our opinions on other reviewers.

5. Frequent Contributors: By listing the top contributors to a community, Lunch is able to ascertain those with the most interest in a specific topic area. Johnson gives the example of Wikipedia's community as one where frequent contributors are also an indication of topic-based expertise. Explains Johnson, in Wikipedia, a community member that takes ownership of a page and can be seen as one of the page's top contributors (without deletions) is likely to offer more relevant content than those that do not contribute often. Coupled with opinion ratings this adds an additional level of user legitimacy.

While Johnson continues in his quest to thwart spammers and trolls, his site is already flourishing. For those attending SXSW Interactive, he is hosting a March 16 panel entitled, Trolls Suck, where he will continue to explore ways to ensure that thoughtful online contributors remain the majority in community sites.

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We are all told to never judge a book by its cover, but let's face it, when we find ourselves at an ugly website, we automatically make assumptions about the quality of the services that site provides. A topic we have begun to cover more often, and one that we strongly believe in, is the importance of design for startups. In the last several weeks we've provided tips and best practices for sign-up buttons and registration processes, as well as an inside look into at Boxee's user experience overhaul.

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According to Silicon Valley angel investor Dave McClure, design needs to be one of the top priorities for Internet startups, not an afterthought. These days, as McClure explains in a recent BusinessWeek.com article, the technical expertise it takes to engineer a basic back-end framework is at a much more accessible level than it was in years past, which means payroll dollars can be better spent on masterful designers.

"It's actually pretty easy to write a Web-friendly app or Web site these days," writes McClure. "But it's still incredibly difficult to create visually appealing interfaces and, beyond that, to design them in ways that are compelling and engaging, drive calls to action, and are measurably adept at getting more customers to use your products."

While coding languages can be learned through study and practice, having an eye for design is more of an innate talent. This isn't to say that there aren't people out there who are code masters and were probably born to practice their craft, or that solid engineering isn't critical to the success of a startup, but design is a more artistic and creative talent that you either have or you don't.

More importantly, the design of your product is what your users will interact with directly on a day-to-day basis. Opinions will be formed, rightly or wrongly, within seconds of laying eyes on your site and before they even have a chance to put your code to use. So before you go hiring a crack team of code monkeys, make sure to reserve some roster slots for design all-stars.

Photo by Flickr user zaphodsotherhead.

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With the highly anticipated Apple event finally underway in San Francisco, tech fans around the globe are already speculating how Apple's new iPad might change the state of computing. Another group of people listening intently to the happenings at the Yerba Buena Center are iPhone application developers, who are curious to see when they may be able to begin developing apps for the iPad.

As we've seen, the iPad is a blend of the iPhone OS and OS X, and it opens up opportunities for new business models for developers, so we thought we would point out a story of a man who rejuvenated his business by taking advantage of new iPhone and iPod Touch business models.

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Noel Llopis, an indie game developer and author of the blog Games from Within, recently wrote about the ups and downs of the App Store, which he witnessed first-hand with his application, Flower Garden. The app allows users to plant seeds, water them and watch their virtual flowers grow over time.

After some initial success after the apps launch, Flower Garden became what Llopis calls "a strange in-between app" where it was more successful than 99% of apps, but it still wasn't a chart topper. Llopis tried to bolster his less-than-thrilling sales by adding more features, like Facebook integration, and by releasing a lite version of the application.

"Fortunately I was right and the effect on sales was very noticeable, pretty much doubling sales," Llopis writes on his blog. "But it never really took off in any significant way, and sales slowly declined over time."

Llopis was nearly ready to move on and forget about Flower Garden. But when Apple released In-App-Purchases last summer, he found his second, if not third wind. The graph below from Llopis' blog shows the effect in-app-purchases had on Llopis' application, represented in yellow and green versus the stagnant blue of the regular application.

"Flower Garden Free was never a big player," Llopis writes. "But, as soon as the in-app Flower Shop was released, downloads started climbing, and on Christmas day they went through the roof (relatively speaking)."

So with the new iPad released today, iPhone app developers may have found a new platform for their mobile app business models. If you have an iPhone app whose sales have been steadily declining, look to the iPad or the existing options on the iPhone for new ways to raise sales.

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For anyone who deals with large files or multimedia content, file sharing can be the bane of one's existence sometimes. And trying to find workable solutions for these individuals involves a ton of capital expense and overhead in terms of server storage and bandwidth.

S4ve.as has a nice stopgap solution: They'll host any file, any size, for up to 24 hours. Sometimes, 24 hours is just enough time to get that 5GB video footage from one hard drive to another. For this reason, we like S4ve.as. They're so l337.

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As far as we can tell, s4ve.as is a free version of parent company Media Hog's yet-to-be-release digital assets management platform. It's one of the simplest systems we've seen around the web.

File uploads are relatively quick, require no login, have no weird redirects for downloading.

S4ve.as is, in a word, elegant.

Take a look at these screenshots, and definitely try out the service on your larger files. We plan to do the same as soon as we have the time and bandwidth.

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BitsyBox is a hosted content storage platform that allows developer access through an API and a simple user interface for their clients to edit content without touching the code. It's been described to us as "content storage and management without the CMS."

Co-founded by three West Los Angelenos, the platform's two components work through a free, downloadable PHP client and take a good bit of hassle (read: the penny-ante, back-and-forth of site edits) out of the business of web design and development.

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Of course, something that takes so many of the small tasks of website maintenance away from developers and allows clients just enough control over content could only be the brainchild of a veteran freelance developer, which cofounder Scott Rocher is.

Rocher wrote to us in an email, "Using BitsyBox's simple and secure web interface, developers can define data schema for each of their sites... and site-owner clients can edit the site content in real time." Client access is available for both individuals and whole teams.

Rocher also noted that because it is a hosted service, BitsyBox can be integrated with exiting sites by most developers in less than one hour. The service also doesn't require developers to learn a new language, framework, or code structure.

According to the site, the BitsyBox client packages handle connection, caching, and manipulation of API data. The API delivers structured XML, JSON, or PHP, leaving room for more advanced developers to write their own.

The site launched in private beta about two weeks ago; developers are urged to contact the BitsyBox team for more information.

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