ZAGAT RECOGNIZING CULINARY STANDOUTS WITH FREEBIES; INTERSTATE BATTERIES INVESTS $10M IN RECYCLING STARTUP; TELLING THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN UI, UX

Every day Dallas Innovates staffers scour websites looking for the most interesting, important, and unusual stories about innovation and creativity. Here are three we thought you’d like:

Zagat is celebrating the release of #Zagat30Under30 list in Dallas with freebies all week. Free food? You don’t have to tell us twice, especially when it means highlighting culinary up-and-comers, who are transforming the Dallas-Fort Worth restaurant scene. From an artist turned chef to a 16-year-old line cook at Kitchen LTO, see who made Zagat’s list and what freebies you can snag this week. (By the way, Wednesday’s giveaway is a free slice of strawberry or chocolate cake at Cake Bar, in case you’re wondering).

Dallas-based Interstate Batteries is partnering with California-based recycling startup Aqua Metals, which has developed a patent-pending, environmentally-friendly process for recycling lead-acid batteries. As part of the partnership, Interstate Batteries will invest $10 million in the startup and give more than a million automotive and other lead-acid batteries for recycling. Read more about it here.

According to Mason Pelt, user interface and user experience are terms that have been so overused/misused that they have lost their meaning. Pelt is a marketing and product development consultant and founder of Push ROI. To him, the definitions of UI and UX are simple. UI is the actual interface the user interacts with such as an iPhone app and UX is the end-to-end user experience (not just the user’s experience with the interface). And if you aren’t sure you have a golden product, go to a coffee shop and talk to your target market. Read more of Pelt’s thoughts here.

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