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Like Apple, Google has proven so transformative in our digital lives that we've come to expect to be knocked flat every time the company releases a new product. But sometimes a Google product is merely adequate. Every at-bat can't be a home run, after all.
That's the case with Field Trip, a free iPhone app Google launched earlier this year. The idea is that Field Trip will guide you to cool places to eat and fun things to do in unfamiliar cities, and it works fine. But it isn't so much better than, say, Yelp's iPhone app, that you need to rush out to download it immediately.
Field Trip tells you interesting tidbits about things around you, including real estate info.
When you open the app for the first time, the first thing you'll want to do is go to the "Select Your Interests" page. That name is sort of a misnomer—Field Trip assumes that you're at least a little bit interested in all the available categories: Architecture, Historic Places, Lifestyle, Offers & Deals, Food & Drinks, Cool & Unique, and Art & Museums. You can't choose (or un-choose) any one of them as an "interest." Instead, you click on the topic itself, after which you're allowed to choose which online services Google should use to generate recommendations for you. (Offers & Deals, for example, pulls its recommendations from just two services: Scoutmob and Vayable.) You can also pick if you want a source's recommendations show up either more or less often.
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