Brief History of Digital Lantern

In 1993 Mark Richard Beaulieu created the Digital Cities Restaurant Guide, one of the first computer restaurant guides as written of in Wired Magazine. The software featured geocoded and deep content for the 3,200 San Francisco restaurants[8] and eventually all 14,000 restaurants in the SF Bay Area. The interface was designed by Nathan Shedroff. Designed for Powerbooks, the software was sold by Apple Computer and affiliate stores, the content updated every season. The product was widely reviewed in the Bay Area; even Gary Wolf wrote of it in SF Weekly. Terry Winograd asked him to present the salient concepts of his innovative interfaces, predictions for emerging consumer deep personal content at an HCI seminar at Stanford University. For a synopsis of the lecture click here. Some of the Digital Lantern concepts and user interface are seen on Yelp.com.

In 1996 Mark transferred Digital Cities assets to Vivid Travel Network and worked as their director of product development helping to develop a 25 language web-based international travel guide. Branded as Digital Cities the name was sold to AOL. When VTN dissolved, Beaulieu created the United States Restaurant Guide.