

Rate my startup: coookin.com - logandk
http://coookin.com

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petervandijck
Any site around pictures of food gets my vote :) However, the tag line
"beautiful food photos" isn't right: the pictures aren't all that pretty.

\- When you "zoom" into a photo, ie. go to the photo detail page, the actual
picture is not much larger than the thumbnail. If this is about photos of
food, the photo should be larger.

\- All the emphasis on "beautiful photos": I think you have the wrong angle
here. Amateur food photos are _not_ pretty, making good food photos is one of
the hardest things to do, even for professional photographers.

-

~~~
logandk
Thanks for the feedback, good points! I think you are right about the wording,
I'm gonna rework that.

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BenS
I think this site will succeed or fail based on the quality of the food
images. I would recommend you look at how opensourcefood.com cultivated high
quality images from their community. If a low standard is set, I don't think
there will be much you can do to make the site valuable.

~~~
fookyong
oh wow, flattered to see opensourcefood.com get name-dropped on HN!

(disclosure: I was the founder, but sold it in 2009 - it is basically
unchanged though)

Setting the standard from the start is something any founder of a UGC site
needs to be actively involved in.

In the case of OSF I was responsible for much of the early content, armed with
my dSLR. I then invited friends who were similarly equipped and they added
awesome photos/recipes, which really helped set the tone.

I also actively deleted crappy content. I felt like a douchebag for doing it,
but there was a standard I wanted to maintain. People who got their content
removed would receive a list of tips to help them take better photos for next
time :)

Eventually this scales out of control. You can see the content from the early
days is still the most popular:
<http://www.opensourcefood.com/recipes/all_time_best>

And it's all pretty high quality. But you can't keep that going forever as you
community grows from hundreds to thousands to tens of thousands and beyond.

It's super important for early adoption though. Visitors have to visit your
site and go "wow, I want to be part of this!".

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tptacek
Very pretty, but doesn't do anything I find useful. And I cook, a lot.

What's the long-term vision here?

Also: couldn't hate the name more.

~~~
joel4039
I couldn't agree more. Pictures of food are really not very useful. If the
pages contained actual information, maybe the recipe (some pages do) then this
might be useful. Also, I think some type of search is absolutely necessary.

~~~
logandk
You are right about searching, definitely on the todo list. Thanks.

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huhtenberg
Did not sign up for all the reasons listed in this thread -

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1665498>

Nice idea otherwise, but I would move "It's all about photos" to the front
page. Otherwise it is very easy to assume that it's a Dribbble for the
recipes.

~~~
logandk
Thanks for the suggestion, it might serve as a better tagline. Regarding the
sign in, I am very happy with the current solution - I don't see the hassle?
Everybody has a Facebook/twitter/google account these days :)

~~~
huhtenberg
I am very happy that you are happy with the current sign-in solution.
Unfortunately it does not work for _me_. I don't have Facebook or Google
account, nor do I plan on getting them. The Twitter account I have, but I am
not comfortable associating it with some (essentially) random website that I
am merely curious about.

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CodeMage
I found a recipe I liked within the first two minutes, precisely because of
the photos. However, after that, I realized it just wasn't my kind of site. I
like looking for new recipes and the emphasis on photos would be a great thing
for me, but there's no way to filter or categorize stuff.

~~~
icey
I've got nothing to do with the OP, but what sort of filtering and
categorization do you think you'd use? By cuisine? Ingredient?

~~~
CodeMage
As many of the following as possible: cuisine, ingredients, type of dish (i.e.
salad, meat, dessert), difficulty (of preparation), time (i.e. how long it
takes to prepare it).

If I had to choose three, I would choose type, difficulty and time. Those
three would be "must haves" for me, cuisine would be a "should have" and
ingredients would be "nice to have".

------
chaosmachine
Maybe it's just because I'm hungry, but I really like this site. The only
thing I didn't like was the infinite scrolling. There's something
psychologically unsatisfying about a page you can never reach the bottom of. I
much prefer the steady progress of a "next" button.

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drtse4
Made me think about foodgawker.com and tastespotting.com,imo you should add
some sort of categorization. The average user probably will use you site as
source of inspiration, so being able to choose with a tag cloud (or better, a
more clever mechanism) would be a good plus. What about trying to improve the
look of the photos providing a section with photography suggestions(maybe
wrote by your best users)?

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mminolt
Looks really cool and very exciting to a foody like me. It would be nice
though to have more details about the recipe structured into some of the
posts. Some pics, titles, and details barely tell you what the recipe is...
Maybe you can create incentives for some of your submitters to add the recipe
and get entered into a recipe DB as well. Best recipe can receive major
attention... etc.

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barrydahlberg
I clicked on a photo wondering how to make a Joakim Bugge, turns out its
someones name and there's no recipe. Maybe the site is not for me?

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rjett
I'm no match for this Joakim Bugge character who has recently cranked out 4
new dishes!

In all seriousness, I would at least provide a way to broadly tag dishes
according to ethnic influence/price of ingredients/or time to prepare.

From here, I would personally prefer a slider to browse through the dishes
rather than scrolling down a seemingly bottomless page.

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BTBurke
Terrible name. Like the idea of photos, but when I click on them I want to see
a recipe so I can make it. What about copyright? I see some of the recipes are
taken from iphone apps or books. Are you liable if someone posts a recipe
straight from a source that is legally protected?

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andysinclair
Looks ok for a first effort, but check this site out: www.mycookingdiary.com
My wife loves it, it has great, large photos and a cool navigation system.

Anyway, I clicked on one of your ads, so at least you will make some money.

