Forkd - A Site for Sharing Recipes
March 15th, 2008
I visited Forkd today after seeing some a review on TechCrunch UK (& Ireland). It is basically a social network for sharing recipes. Coincidentally, I had just been looking for a good recipe site with user-generated content. I’m sure there are plenty of websites doing this same thing, but Forkd has a really cool vibe. Mike Butcher hits the nail on the head:
“Note the way they are calling this a “Feta” not a Beta version - it’s part of the overall fun, easy going feel of the site.”
The “Feta” pun is perhaps slightly lame, but it ties in with loads of internet in-jokes scattered around the place that TechCrunch readers would pick up on, ranging from slightly cheesy to very funny: “It’s your turn to mash up” or “I baked you a cookie. But I eated it.”. I actually laughed out loud at some of the testimonial quotes:
Maybe this is a sign that I’ve been spending too much time staring at this monitor, immersed in the world of web 2.0, but this site was genuinely a joy to use. Check out the sign-up form, for example:
I hope there are some web application designers reading who can appreciate this as much as I do. The beauty of the tomato to indicate the required fields. The prompt to enter password again “with feeling”. I have not gone insane, but after the nightmare of Irish-Roots and TV Licence sites, it is so refreshing to come across a project that has been thoroughly thought out. And crucially it doesn’t fall flat by trying to be cute or too clever.
Kudos to the developers Isotoma, it looks like they really know what they’re doing. The design is decent, and I like the company blog, they even list their To Do list and tick off the items as they complete them. If it sounds like I’m gushing with praise, I haven’t even started on the site’s cool features. Best thing is to try it out yourself and let me know how it goes. The only problem for me is that I have no recipes of my own to add so I’m waiting for my neighbour (in the Last.fm sense of the word) to appear so that I can benefit from the service. All the Gastonom.ie folks and Conor, I hope ye sign up and share your knowledge. Which makes me wonder, why isn’t there a hRecipe microformat?
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