Recipe for Innovation – ZipList Mixed Lightly with Pinterest

I have an odd affection for Pinterest. While I tend to ignore other social sites like Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare for regular surfing, I can’t help but love the concept, design and user involvement of the site, and it always feels like every time I visit, I’m really finding something that catches my interest, even if it is just for a moment.

Of the various topic boards on Pinterest, the most continually interesting one has to be the food board. There’s a term out there called “food porn,” and it’s used when there is food that looks so good, and is so appealing to the eyes, that it causes a rush of endorphins that is the equivalent to looking at pornography. Well, the Pinterest food board is basically a hardcore food porn website, as pinners use it to find and share the best looking food on the web. If you’re smart, you’ll also learn to take advantage of the ability to click on the tantalizing food photos and get the recipe from the source site.

And now, thanks to the handy recipe-saving program ZipList’s new Pinterest-friendly features, you have even fewer reasons not to go recipe cruising on Pinterest. It’s as simple as this: You download the ZipList program and drag the “clip it” feature button to your bookmark toolbar. Then, you just find a tantalizing food image on Pinterest like this:

And you click the clip it button to bring up a screen that turns the image into an ingredient list like this:

From there, you can use the site’s mobile app to bring up your saved ingredient list while you’re at the store, so you can shop for exactly what you need to make the recipe. There’s even a notes feature, in case you want to write down the full step by step recipe for future reference.

The word from Pinterest is that 70% of users say that recipes are their most pinned topic. It’s no surprise, either, as the food industry is booming to the point that it’s being compared in some circles to the rock and roll revolution of the ’60s. So now is a great time to turn your solo food porn adventures into some hot, sweaty kitchen action as you use this program to help you take the bold step into the world of cooking for yourself.

  

New Website Maybe Wants to Help You with Life’s Tough Decisions

There’s no denying the power of sites like Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and Pinterest over modern society. Together, they help represent the core of the social networking society we live in, and the potential for one good idea to take over the world. Because of their success, thousands of sites are pitched and launched all the time with the hope of joining the internet elite and reaping the rewards that come with that.

Newcomer Maybe is one such site, and is based around the simple idea that in a world of potentially unlimited knowledge and information, there’s also too many decisions to make. Maybe combines elements of Pinterest, Facebook and good old Google to allow users to pose a question (current examples include: help choosing wedding shoes, what to do on vacation, and which work of fiction to read next), and use a combination of pictures and polls to let the rest of the world help them decide the answer.

Besides an interesting concept, Maybe also boasts a strong pedigree. Site founder Omar Hamoui made his big break in the online world with the promotional aid website AdMob, which was purchased by Google in 2009 for a princely $750 million. A year later, Hamoui left AdMob to start up Churn Labs, which was treading the waters of the App market until a new idea was birthed by Hamoui while helping his wife shop for a new coffee table. Hamoui says that as he was clicking link after link his wife sent him, he quickly became lost in all of the information and was having a hard time separating one products features and prices from another in order to reach a purchase decision. From there, Maybe was a result of the timeless statement, “There has to be an easier way.”

Maybe is in a preview build right now and sports a pretty simple design and straightforward purpose. However, Hamoui and his team have pledged to expand the website to its full potential, including adding a mobile app where the team feels that Maybe will truly shine. Personally, I feel the site is a great idea, as I count myself among the indecisive masses of the world who often debate over judgments ranging from what movie to watch, to where to go on vacation. If Maybe is able to acquire and maintain an active community of users, we could all be facing a glorious future where we never have to think for ourselves again.