Been to any new Boston restaurants lately?

We've added a few new Boston restaurants to xelago. If you have been to any of them, you can be the first to rate them!

We've added:

• Pizzeria Dante in Coolidge Corner
• Joy Rice China Cafe in JP
• Scampo in the Liberty Hotel
• Daily Grill in the Prudential Center
• Rendezvous in Central Square
• Tory Row in Central Square
• Stephi's on Tremont in the South End
• Sensing at the Fairmont Battery Wharf

Also, we've added the following new event:

• Eathfest, on May 30th

Hope you like these new places to go!

Congratulations to Alice!

xelago user Alice McMahon is the winner of the xelago $25 gift certificate to Stephanie's on Newbury! Alice has rated over 50 places and events, and Stephanie's is one of Alice's top rated restaurants on xelago. She can now go have a delightful brunch on their patio or nice dinner on xelago's dime. Enjoy it!

Sad you didn't win? Keep your eyes peeled for more deals and contests from xelago. Subscribe to the xelago blog RSS feed or follow xelago on Twitter to stay in the loop!

Only 3 More Days to Win a $25 Gift Certificate to L'Espalier, Mistral, Aujourd'hui, No. 9 Park, Tapeo, Lucca, or Others!

Hello xelago-ers!

You only have today and this weekend to enter our first ever gift certificate givaway by rating 25 or more places on xelago. Make sure you have signed up for xelago and rate away!

Already have 25 ratings? Boost your chances of winning by writing reviews to 25 places or finding 25 friends on xelago--you'll automatically be entered!

You can also enter by helping us spread the word! Post about the contest on your blog or Twitter to be entered again! Make sure you let us know somehow, by writing a comment on this or the original post.

Thanks for being a great xelago supporter! If you need more information about the contest, see the original blog post about it, or don't hesitate to contact us at info at xelago dot com!

Win a $25 gift certificate to your favorite Boston restaurant!

Photo by joeltelling

xelago is giving away a $25 gift certificate to one of your top rated restaurants. We are making it easy to win with five ways to enter. The more times you enter the greater chance you have to win! You can enter the contest up to five times total:

1. Rate 25 or more places or events on xelago.
   
2. Connect to 25 or more friends on xelago.
3. Write 25 or more reviews on xelago.
4. Post about this contest and what you like about xelago on your blog, and link to the post in the comments of this post.
5. Tweet about this contest and what you like about xelago on Twitter, and link to the tweet in the comments of this post.
   

The contest will run for a week, until noon on April 27th, so you have a bit of time to rate places and events, write reviews, and recruit friends! Hope you have fun participating!

*A top rated restaurant is any one of your restaurants rated 5 stars on xelago. If you do not have any restaurantes rated 5 stars, it is one of the highest rated restaurants on your profile.

Revamping the xelago blog

At xelago we want to customize the experience on the site to our users' preferences, just like how we customize recommendations for you. We've just revamped the blog to be hosted on blogger and changed a few other small things about the site (hopefully you've noticed). The blog now shows who is following it, and has badges to our Facebook site and a mini-feed of Twitter tweets. What do you think? Do you like it?

Also, we've just added a status bar for the completeness of your profile on the xelago homepage. In order for xelago to make accurate recommendations, we need to know more about you! We hope this little status bar will help us help you.

Please don't hesitate at all to let us know what you think. You can post comments here, tweet to us @xelago, or email us directly at info@xelago.com.

Thanks for your support!

xelago is in the Boston Globe!

Check out xelago on the Boston Globe website through their coverage of the Mass Innovation Night held last Wednesday.

The event was great, and there were lots of people there to check out new products from all sorts of Massachusetts companies, as you can see in the video above. Brentan and I (Liz) are in the last minute of the video, talking about the inspiration for xelago, and the premise of the site. Hope you enjoy!

xelago is on Twitter!

xelago is now up to date with the latest web 2.0 trend. Well, maybe we're just a little late to the game.

So follow us on Twitter to get the latest news and fun stuff: @xelago.

xelago to Participate in the First Mass Innovation Night

xelago has the wonderful opportunity to be part of the first Mass Innovation Night, being held on April 8th at the Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation. We are very excited for this event that will showcase new, innovative products from Massachusetts!

Here's a little description they sent us:
"Mass Innovation Nights are a series of events designed to harness thepower of social media to showcase Massachusetts-based innovation with amonthly event (a launch party if you will) at the Charles River Museum ofIndustry and Innovation in Waltham, 154 Moody Street in Waltham, MA (www.crmi.org).
It's all a grand experiment at this stage but the idea is that this willfunction like CES or DEMO. We will be showing real products that people can buy -- not just concepts. The live events will function as a networking party. It will be free to all but we do ask that people use their favorite social media tools to tell others about the cool products they see. Think of it as Karmic Marketing."

We'd love it if any of our users/fans came and supported us. It should be a good time to see some other cool new products, too.

For more information about the Mass Innovation Nights, click here.

Two new features added: Cafes and Recent Friend Activity

We've added two new features to xelago in the past 24 hours.

First, we added a new category for places: cafes.

Cafes are often different than regular restaurants and users suggested that they look for something different when they need a place to study, hang out or read. Hopefully everything has been recoded correctly, but if you do see something that has been miscoded, please suggest a change through the site (you can click on the little pencil icon on the place's listing).

Second, we've added a cool new way to view what your friends are doing: Recent Friend Activity.

Recent Friend Activity shows up on the right side of your home page and shows all the reviews and ratings that your friends have made. It also is a new page within the Friends tab, and this shows a more expanded view of your friends ratings and reviews.

Hope you enjoy the new features. If you have any feedback, you can comment on this post, post it to our page on Facebook, or email us at info@xelago.com.

Welcome to the xelago blog!

Hi! Welcome to the xelago.com blog.

We're hoping to use this space for updates, press, and other general newsworthy things that happen with xelago. We also have a page on Facebook, so you can become a xelago fan on Facebook!

We launched xelago to a limited number of people about a week ago, and are hoping for many more people to join so they can discover new things to do in Boston! Feel free to invite your friends using our contact importer (Go to the Friends tab and click on Find and Invite Friends). The importer supports Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail right now, though you can manually invite friends by typing their email addresses into the Search and Invite box.

Boston is our only city right now, and it will probably stay that way until we have some money to hire someone to help us expand to New York or San Francisco. But in the meantime, enjoy the site and get back to rating more places and events!