Every once in a while, someone gets ideas about crossing recipes and computers. Of course, I love the idea. Two common ideas we hear a lot are 1) to put recipes in XML format and do all sorts of wonderful things and 2) that kitchen appliances should be smart and you should be able to feed them recipes and have your food made for you. They’re both great ideas, but invariably, people underestimate the work involved (“But it’s just a recipe!”) and overestimate the usefulness (“It would be so cool!”). The amazing thing to me about the 2nd idea is that few people would deny that humans are more intelligent and capable than computers. Yet, people who find cooking to be a difficult task (technologists, for example) assume that computers will find it easy. The day that computers are able to cook as well as humans will come long after the day that computers get so annoyed with us that they simply wipe the inferior human race out. They certainly aren’t going to want to waste their time cooking for us! So it’s a moot concept.
But the 1st idea is actually possible today. We contributed to RecipeML and even named the format, so we clearly believe in the concept. (As an aside, it’s unfortunate that the owner of RecipeML seems to have vanished so we have little choice but to create a new format).
Today we found a post talking about the first idea, so I posted the following as a comment on Building The Recipe Web and am re-posting it here:
As one of the contributors to RecipeML (and the person who named it 
, I like the concept. However, it isn’t useful in practice. Imagine the same thing for auctions. There could be an XML format for auctions, everyone can post their items for sale on their weblog and auction aggregators would replace eBay. This would not be as good as eBay, obviously, as there is significant value to a centralized database of auctions. The same is true for recipes, in my opinion.
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We watched Possession last night. My sister liked it, Gay liked it, and Real Good Movies liked it. I didn’t.
My parents live in Ocala, Florida and they have a new neighbor: John Travolta and a house with parking for two jets. How did John Travolta get so rich? From what I can tell, he’s had two hit movies in his career. Don’t you need billions to own jets?
I rode my “long” ride three times this week. One of my New Year’s Resolutions from last year was to ride half my rides on the long route, so I think I’m going to meet that resolution this year. And good thing I got a lot of riding in this week, because I just got this weather alert: A SERIES OF INCREASINGLY STRONG WEATHER SYSTEMS WILL CROSS WESTERN WASHINGTON TONIGHT THROUGH EARLY NEXT WEEK.
“YOU ARE A GOOD EXAMPLE FOR A C*CKSUCKER AND A MOTHERF*CKING SON-OF-A-BITCH. YOU ARE A GOOD EXAMPLE THAT PEOPLE SHOULD STRIVE TO RAISE THEIR LIKE.
C*CKSUCKING THIEF AND MOTHERF*CKING BASTARD. C*CKSUCKING THIEF AND MOTHERF*CKING BASTARD. C*CKSUCKING THIEF AND MOTHERF*CKING BASTARD.”
This last sentence repeats for several pages in the selected bright red 32 point type(without any asterisks). They are complaining because we’ve had to remove their account for abusive behavior towards other members, so their recipes now appear as posted by “Recipezaar” instead of their name. What is really adorable about the note is that they became abusive because another member pointed out that a recipe this person had posted originally appeared on another website. Awww, so sweet.
When the seasons change (and I get sick), I blow my runny nose too much and get regular bloody noses. My doctor told me to buy “Ocean” a nasal spray at the pharmacy to combat the problem. A look at the ingredients tells you it really is “ocean”, just saline solution in a nasal spray bottle. I think it is a beautiful name.
Now a Seattle company is working on a nasal spray that will curb hunger by getting the “you’re full” hormone into the blood stream. Ingenious. And a genuine good use of technology.
Kevin Spacy, Walt Mossberg, Joe Piscapo (is he still a celebrity?), even Howard Stern has a Treo 600. It is like the whole world is mocking me and T-mobile which must be the last carrier to roll out the damn thing. I check the Handspring site daily — more often than I visit any other web site…
