

HN: Please review my site, cooking video search engine Cookblast - dood
http://cookblast.com

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pringle
Cool idea. One little thing I just noticed: when I click on an autocomplete
term in the search field, it doesn't initiate the search. I have to hit the
search button. Just a small user experience thing.

One slightly bigger thing: While it's a cool idea, it leaves me wondering why
I should use this instead of googling "[specific dish/recipe] videos." Google
gives me a lot more videos than this site does right now.

But if you can crack that and offer something new in the area of cooking
instruction videos, you'll definitely have something, since cooking videos are
really popular.

~~~
dood
Thanks, I'll sort out the autocomplete.

The idea is that it provides a couple of things Google doesn't.

1\. All results in one place, watch videos from across the web in one
interface

2\. Exclusivity of results - you know its all cooking and all good quality,
don't have to weed through some of the random stuff from Google.

3\. Ability to navigate, surf and refine. Helps you to explore dishes,
ingredients, cuisines - for example to quickly look through popular Thai
dishes and ingredients. This is something I hope will keep the cooks coming
back for more, and will be working on improving in the coming months. Also
realize I need to improve how I communicate this, both in conversation and to
users!

~~~
orchidguru
Incorporating some community type features (votes, comments etc) may also help
differentiate from Google and keep foodies coming back.

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truebosko
Why is it when I search for "gordon ramsay" I keep getting 500 Errors but
"beef" produces fine results?

Quick feedback:

\+ I see no thumbnails, yet this is a video search engine. Plus, as a person
looking for food recipes, I want to see pictures. People are very visual when
looking for food especially.

\+ I notice some encoding errors on some searches, "black pepper" first
result.

\+ Could use some more colour/flare?

Otherwise, a great index to start. Look forward to seeing improvements

~~~
dood
Thanks for the feedback.

The Gordon Ramsay error is due to a last minute change (doh). In the meantime
searching for 'ramsay' should give you the right results
[<http://cookblast.com/cooking/ramsay>]. Edit: fixed.

Thumbnails are in the works, would have liked them to be ready for launch but
thought it better to get the site out there.

That encoding error is actually from the original link itself, but I should
try to clean those up.

Should probably hire a pro to do the design. Thats the best I can do without
tearing my hair out!

~~~
truebosko
Awesome! I was curious how gordon ramsay search would turn up because he has
plenty of videos from his tv shows yelling at people, but I love his recipes.
Your results only contained his recipes, very nice.

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jeebusroxors
Looks good so far. Here are my quick first impressions:

* Have your logo/search box above the explanation.

* I don't like the scrolling box the results come in.

* The results are kind of bland...in other words WHY should I click on the first link that comes up? Is it the best keyword match? Best video?

I was going to do some more testing but it looks like it died/dying. One thing
I did notice - is there a limit on the text box?

~~~
dood
Thanks, someone hitting it pretty hard but I think it should all be cool now.

I'm still debating the scrolling box. The idea is to have all the results in
one place, but I'm considering alternatives. May A/B test this some point
soon.

Results are by standard search approach; work well in some cases and less well
in others. I'll be trying to improve the ordering in the near future. Also the
ability to filter by facets means it isn't all about the results - the
navigation should work with the results.

~~~
jeebusroxors
Got it.

I would continue to debate it the box. That was just one persons opinion. More
specifically - I thought it made it look a bit like spam, and here - your side
navigation runs below the text box making me scroll two places to see the
entire site.

As for deciding on which video to watch - maybe a simple rating system:

 __ __* ($votes) Result Title

???

Anyway - good start!

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jasonkester
I like how you pull the video straight into the site rather than sending me
off to one of those terrible recipe sites. But you're going to need to scrape
the recipe itself and display it under the video so that I can actually, you
know, cook stuff.

~~~
dood
Good point. I'm not doing this because it seems legally dodgy. What I can do
is provide a direct link to the text recipe, where available.

~~~
evgen
Recipes are not subject to copyright unless it "is accompanied by substantial
literary expression in the form of an explanation or directions" (e.g. you are
clear on a conventional recipe, but not copying something like the detailed
explanation of why/how various recipe choices were made such as you would see
in cooks illustrated.)

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daredevildave
I was very confused by the results scroll box. When I searched for beef, for
about 30 seconds I thought there were only 7 results.

Seems daft to have the navigation go the full length of my screen but the
results stops half way up.

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jasonkester
The first thing I searched on, <http://cookblast.com/cooking/banana_bread>
throws a server error.

~~~
dood
Thanks, fixed.

