Price: Free    Score: 8/10    By Joey Bright

Developed by Buzzd Inc, Buzzd is a new app that uses the iPhone’s GPS to pinpoint your location and shows you the top buzzed, or ranked, places or events in your area. Participation by the community is crucial to help keep listings up-to-date and rankings accurate in the app and you are able to join in by adding or rating your favorite places in your city.

In order to help rank your favorite restaurant, bar, or event higher in Buzzd, you have to “buzz” the location or event via the app. You have the option to post your opinion, or buzz, to your twitter account as well as share it with the other users of Buzzd. When you buzz, you increase the ranking of the establishment or event. The more people who buzz it, the higher it ranks. You can also view other peoples opinions via the “see buzzes” button in the application.

If you want to find a particular venue or event listed in Buzzd, you can simply use the “search” function to find it. If it doesn’t exist yet, Buzzd will let you suggest it. This is perfect for letting other users know about a great new café, music concert or trendy market you’ve found. After verification, your listing will be added to Buzzd. There is also the option of viewing the most “buzzed” venues/events in a given area or just those that are closest to you. Once Buzzd has found them, there is the option to view your location on Google maps with the locations of surrounding places/events of interest marked out.

Buzzd is a great application for finding popular places near your area. Users in bigger cities will benefit more from the use of this application, as the amount of participation by users in smaller cities and areas is limited. Repeat reviews of restaurants, bars, or events do happen, but do not take away from the overall usefulness of Buzzd. And to top it off, downloading Buzzd isn’t going to cost you a penny.

Buzzd Requires the iPhone OS 3.0 or later and is compatible with iPhone and iPod Touch.