Seems I manage only to write about long-awaited features from my favorite online apps in this blog. This time it comes from Qype.

I just discovered by accident a tiny link called “Book a table now” below the review of Cheyenne restaurant in Zurich Oerlikon. When you click it, a widget appears allowing you to actually make an online reservation in three steps. Not yet that powerful in its usability as e.g.  you still have to manually type in your address details though you are logged in, but definitely an important step in leveraging the presence of restaurants in Qype.

I have not found this feature at many restaurants and, as far as I know,  Qype has not yet made a big buzz in releasing it. Furthermore, I found it interesting to see that this restaurant is not a premium partner, opposite e.g. to this one here in Hamburg that also has this feature. Hence, I am curious to learn if the business model behind this lead generation is already implemented and how deeply into the restaurants’ booking system this is already implemented.

And, of course, there can be even more useful features built around the profile of restaurants, such as their menu.

Just explored on XING the new Map feature in my address book – something I have waited for nearly two years after having looked closer at location-based services and their possibilities to interact with social networks. Currently, this mash-up based on Google Maps just displays the business address of my own contacts with the possibilities to just display them by tags. Of course, XING has taken serious any privacy concerns and is just mapping the addresses which have also been released for me.

As XING’s VP Product & Engineering, Felix Menden, clearly states in his blog post this is just the beginning of many possibilities to bring the dimension of location into social networking and hence increase radical the value of XING to its users. Beyond thinking of bringing this feature to your mobile while on the go, other possibilities include to connect it with users’ current and future locations. Platforms such as Plazes or Dopplr, among others, deal with this and would bring certainly value to business travelers.

Plazes (disclosure: portfolio company of my employer b-to-v) for instance just put more focus on developers with its platform plazes.net allowing them to use their API more efficiently, also beyond MAC address geo-targeting. Furthermore, the recent acquistion of Bluetooth-based location service Imity with Zyb reveals that mobile applications are becoming more compelling to users by implementing the most important feature location, and thus becoming real mobile social networks. More use cases we will see soon in this space – hopefully also on XING.