The Iconfactory

About Dine-O-Matic

Dine-O-Matic is a fun Dashboard widget created by the Iconfactory and Joesph Roback for Mac OS X that randomly selects a place to eat out when you just can't make up your mind. Does your family have a hard time deciding on where to head for dinner? Your co-workers want to go one place for lunch, but you want to go some place else? No problem, enter your selections into Dine-O-Matic and let the food fates decide!

What's New in 2

• Custom cuisine categories
• Enable / disable entire categories
• Expanded restaurant information
• Restaurant price filtering
• 'Weight' your favorite restaurants
• Google Maps and web integration
• Localized for these languages:
  • German
  • French
  • Japanese
  • Swedish
  • Chinese (Simplified and Traditional)

Installing the Widget

If you are using Safari as your browser, click the "Get It" button above to download. Once the download is complete, you will be presented with a dialog box asking if you would like to install the widget. Click the install button and Dashboard will automatically open and place the widget on the desktop. Once you see the widget loaded onto the screen, simply click the "Keep" button to complete the installation.

If you are using a browser other than Safari, once the widget download is complete, decompress it and place it in /Library/Widgets/ in your home folder. Show Dashboard in the Finder, click the plus sign to display the Widget Bar and click the widget's icon in the Widget Bar to open it.

Using Dine-O-Matic

The widget comes with several eateries pre-loaded so you can get a quick feel for how it works. To enter your own favorite restaurants, simply click the "i" button in the red title bar to flip the widget over. You can then clear the pre-set dining selections and enter your own.

Once a new eatery is created, you can add the restaurant's address, cuisine category, phone number, fax number and website address as well as set price and favorite ratings. You can then use these ratings to filter or weight Dine-O-Matic's final selection. When you're finished adding your favorite places to dine, simply press the "Done" button.

To have Dine-O-Matic select a place to eat, first set the price filter level using the dollar sign icons. By selecting the number of dollar signs, you are telling the widget to select eateries rated at that price level or lower. For example, selecting one dollar sign will choose from only the least expensive restaurants, while selecting all four dollar signs tells Dine-O-Matic to select from all restaurants.

Click the "Blue Plate Special" button to have Dine-O-Matic start its magic and let you know where you'll be eating tonight! It's that easy!