Funny, I just voted like fiften seconds before I read this post. (And yes, I voted for cookbook... and the weather one, and whisper.) I've really resisted cooking software for a long, long time but this is one I would actually USE since meal planning has become a must lately.
I swear I've seen a shareware program almost exactly like that on Apple's downloads page. Organizaed Gourmet is darned similar, aside from Amazon.com integration (do people actually order staple groceries from Amazon?).
Snarky Windows folks: try searching for Windows shareware recipe software. There might be some out there. And believe it or not, but there are a lot of "cool" applications that are Mac- or Unix/Linux-based-OS-only. They're operating systems, not freaking religions.
There are a number of other recipe management apps out there, but they really aren't very good for anything besides recipe management. Seriously, if you've actually tried to use them, to import your recipes, to import recipes from the web (e.g. you can't import, you need to type in manually), you'll find that there is definitely room in the market for something that actually works. There were many mp3 players before the iPod.
Anyway, it's really bizarre, everyone makes such a big deal about the Amazon.com integration when the Cookbook contestant himself doesn't think it is necessarily a top priority.
The big deal with Cookbook is the ease of use, the recipe sharing (RSS feeds for recipes from your favorite blogs??), the meal planning *integrated* with the recipe database and the automated grocery lists.
I agree that the other ones aren't great, but importing recipes from the web (stored in a variety of formats) automatically into the database form the program uses is something easy for a designer to talk about and very hard for a programmer to implement. So certainly those other features would be nice, but they're easier said than done. There are real programming reasons a lot of those haven't been done before.
Ah but not if you can get a microformat (microformat.org) going among the foodblogging crew; it's about time that happened anyway. Then recipes are distributed in a standard format for easy importing.
Also the self-contained community of Cookbook users could easily share their recipes with each other (and since they're all in Cookbook already, they're obviously in the same format)--this would be no different from any other social networking-based site in which user-created content is shared among the group to create something of value (e.g. Youtube).
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would be amazing if i had a mac.
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I love the weather and plant ideas, too. :D That 'blossom' guy can't be evil. :)
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Snarky Windows folks: try searching for Windows shareware recipe software. There might be some out there. And believe it or not, but there are a lot of "cool" applications that are Mac- or Unix/Linux-based-OS-only. They're operating systems, not freaking religions.
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Anyway, it's really bizarre, everyone makes such a big deal about the Amazon.com integration when the Cookbook contestant himself doesn't think it is necessarily a top priority.
The big deal with Cookbook is the ease of use, the recipe sharing (RSS feeds for recipes from your favorite blogs??), the meal planning *integrated* with the recipe database and the automated grocery lists.
Reply
Reply
Also the self-contained community of Cookbook users could easily share their recipes with each other (and since they're all in Cookbook already, they're obviously in the same format)--this would be no different from any other social networking-based site in which user-created content is shared among the group to create something of value (e.g. Youtube).
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