Dani 3.0

Etiquette 2.0 & a MySpace for Cooks

// August 24th, 2006 // View Comments // Tech Reviews

Do you know what I hate? I hate it when I get MySpace requests without any introduction, especially since my profile explicitly states that requests without an introduction will be denied. This complete disregard for my simple request tells me that this person either has the attention span of a gnat, or is a friend ‘ho, neither of which I’m likely to want to be associated with anyway. In the real world, a friend request without an introduction would be analogous to walking up to a complete stranger and shaking their hand without any introduction. Hopefully most of us were raised better than that, although I’m starting to wonder about most MySpacers formative years.

Bad manners seems to be making a comeback on the ‘net. Consider this screen capture from Skinnyr, a site that lets you “track your weight with a graph thingy!” You’d think that with such limited functionality, they’d be a little nicer to their users. I might add that part of the signup process is giving them your weight and height. If you’re any kind of overweight, seeing your disproportional weight and height reflected back at you from your screen is disheartening enough without being insulted by the site you wanted to join to help you in your weight loss efforts.

In other news, there’s a new crop of MySpace competitors/clones that have been launched since my last post on said sites. One of the new clones that I’m really liking the idea of is BakeSpace.com. It’s a MySpace for cooks. How cool is that? It’s a pretty site (they get points for that from me) and there are some neat features like being able to forward recipes, but filling out your profile will take about the same amount of time that writing the sequel to War and Peace would. Pack a lunch. In addition, they’re hampered by a small user base – and as a result – a very limited recipe offering. If they can increase membership, I think this has the potential to be a great site. Still, they have their work cut out for them with “competitors” such as AllRecipes.com and Meals.com.

Technorati Tags: MySpace, BakeSpace, cooking, manners, etiquette, recipes

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A Salute to Russian Race Horses and Recipes

// August 16th, 2006 // View Comments // Mobile, Tech Reviews

Well, I’ve made a successful start in planning my lifestyle change. I managed to drink two 8 oz. glasses of water today, and am working on my third. The next step in my plan is to get together some healthy recipes so that I can make a shopping list. In true Dani style, I’m looking to the web for the recipes. (I only wish that our local grocery stores were as high-tech as I am. Wouldn’t you love to have a grocery cart that would follow you around? I usually take my son with me to push the cart. He has the advantage over the robotic grocery cart in that he enthusiastically races the cart into position whenever I get the urge to go out for a pass with a box of cereal.)

Since I would like ideally to be able to synchronize my recipes with my handheld, I started my search for recipe sites at Handango, hoping to find a recipe application that interfaces with a cool website. I immediately hit pay dirt by doing a search for “recipe.” There are two contenders, Pocket Cook and Big Oven. Both offer recipe synchronization between the Pocket PC and the website, and seem robust enough, but I’m really put off by the interface. (I’m a design snob. I freely admit it.) If I had to choose on of them based on the cursory examination I made, I’d choose Pocket Cook. In addition to syncing recipes from the website to the handheld, they both have shopping lists and menus, but Pocket Cook seems to be the only one that supports Windows Mobile 5.0.

Of course, I always have my long-time favorite sites like All Recipes and Meals.com. I don’t know how 2.0 either one would be considered – after all, neither of them is in beta. But heck, I know how to use the cut and paste functions, and they do have a huge selection of great recipes. I also found this huge list of recipe sites that I’ll check out later.

For now, though, I’m off to the races thanks to my third glass of water.