If you could have a particular cooking program or feature on your phone, what would it be?

[Tab]

There's stuff out there - like recipe programs and quantity converters.

I do mobile phone software development and was just curious if anyone had some particular feature or function they hadn't been able to find anywhere. There may not be any, but I thought I'd ask. I have some certain ideas, but didn't know what others might be interested in. If you have some idea, either respond here or PM me if you prefer.

Thanks

- Tab

[sandnsea]

1. Do you fish?

Somebody should develop a web site that lets user enter the name of every fishing hole in the country, and then it automatically maps it, connects to water levels, weather and moon cycles. And of course, it would be awesome if it were on a mobile phone too.

No, I don't fish. Somebody on hubby's fishing forum asked if there was a web site like this a couple weeks ago.

And if you do this, yes I want royalties! :)

[Tab]

2. I don't fish

but what I'm fishing for is something that doesn't require connecting to a website (which therefore requires building a website and supporting it 24/7).

[sandnsea]

4. I don't know how mobile software works

Or are you speaking of something that's kind of like computer software only for a phone? I guess I just thought all phone software would have some sort of internet functioning.

[hippywife]

3. Sorry but

I have an older cellphone that dates back to just before GPS capabilities (which is why I keep it) and is usually only on while I'm driving to and from work or making long distance calls at home. It has no voice mail or caller ID.

I likes it that way.

[Tesha]

5. For which platform(s) do you develop? (NT)

[Tab]

6. Probably be iPhone, Blackberry, and Android...

likely in that order too...

[Tesha]

7. No Symbian/S60 or S40, ehh? Even if they support Web-based runtimes? (NT)

[Tab]

9. Only so much at once...

But it will be generic to make it portable.

[troubleinwinter]

8. My phone

rings when somebody calls me.

It runs thru the 'puter so I don't pay long distance.

That is the sum total of my knowlege.

I know nothing about eyepips and hunkydories and applefiddlefadorskas.

[pengillian101]

10. If you could have a particular cooking program or feature on your phone, what would it be?

Too easy!

START DINNER!

:hi:

[Lucinda]

11. I know NOTHING about cell phones so this may already exist

But it seems like a grocery list/notepad utility would be helpful.

[Tab]

12. Well, I did think of a grocery list app

but it would organize stuff into general store categories, so you didn't have to travel all around the store 12 different times, and perhaps it could even be tailored for certain stores, making it the most efficient.

I was sort of hoping for more than that, but that's as far as I got.

Alternative, however - visual record of cooking - photographs intermixed with text giving quantities/descriptions of ingredients, possibly woven into a video that could be distributed or at least referred to later. It wouldn't have to be specific to cooking either - car repair (or home repair, or any project) could qualify - shoot photos and annotate them and then make them available.

Even for someone like me, who's an improvisational cook, and I don't publish recipes, but I don't always recall exactly what the hell I did to make something work out.

- Tab

[Lucinda]

13. Ingredient photographs would be a great help for sending a non-cooking

family member to the store. If they have a photo of the product in question it would be hard to bring home the wrong brand. LOL

[pengillian101]

14. Grocery list is a great idea.

I hope you realize I was just just joshing you previously.

A grocery list would be a major help, I bet! Broken down into groups.

Fresh vegetables
Fresh fruits
Fresh meat and seafood
Fresh dairy
Fresh bread
Pasta, etc.
Soups and canned items (like spaghetti sauce)
Canned fish like tuna and salmon
Condimements
Crackers
Oatmeal/cereal
Frozen items and quick cooked meals

and staples like milk, eggs, flour, sugar, coffee

[mtnester]

20. Could you get funding for this through someplace like Whole Foods?

Imagine, putting a grocery list together, and the minute you step into whole foods, you access the list and it integrates with the in store inventory, making meal suggestions, purchasing suggestions based on your grocery list and sale items, making smart suggestions based on precious uses, recommending meals WITH pics, video and recipes on the ready to DL through their inside network....

Oh the possibilities. You could even order a meal inside the store and have your phone buzz when the order is ready....I could probably think of a million more cool things, but THAT is the kind of grocery list I would like. Maybe even have a bar code thing integrated....oh man stop me.

[Tab]

21. The cool part

And I was studying for a Masters in GPS

would be if you could get location information within the store.

Unfortunately, you don't have line of sight to satellites when you're indoors.

Still, it's an interesting idea. I bet you could do something with major food chains.

[mtnester]

22. They are all computerized...I mean even Kroger has the nifty handheld

thingy they run around with at the self checkouts solving problems...it talks to their entire POS/inventory/intranet...multiple nodes too. I am sure it has RFID capabilities (which I am also sure will be part of all phones at some point as well)

[Tab]

23. It's different stuff

but I get what you're talking about.

[buzzycrumbhunger]

18. There's already a grocery list app

Undoubtedly many, but Grocery IQ is the one I've seen and it's pretty cool. You can customize it to go along with the layout of your favorite store, check stuff off as you get it, keep a list of favorites as well as a purchase history, and email a list to a designated shopper.

Sadly, I get a good discount (23% off) with Sprint through work, so haven't talked myself into making the jump to AT&T so I can get an iPhone. Probably a better chance of moving to an iPod Touch if my old 60 GB iPod ever dies, but I'm also hoping they start making those with more memory. I suspect I'd have a lot more useful suggestions if I was actually already using one.

[elleng]

15. My Mother and my Aunt Dot!

.

[Tab]

16. Aunt Dot???

I hope we're not thinking of the same thing.

For some reason, my wife (who grew up with 9 aunts, actually) adopted the euphemism about when "Aunt Dot" came to visit.

Let's just say "Aunt Dot" came once a month...

[elleng]

17. HAHAHA!

NOPE!

MY Aunt Dot was Dorothy S. 'DOROTHY G.' with an attitude was NEVER called Aunt Dot!

[Coyote_Bandit]

19. Ummmm......

Nada. Zip. Zilch. Nothing. Nothing personal but I can't imagine anything that would be useful. I'm not likely to be using the cell phone in the kitchen while I cook. I keep an old fashioned written shopping list. I have conversions posted. And a bookshelf of recipe books - plus two boxes of moms recipe cards. When I track calories and nutrition I find it just as easy to use pen and paper as to use eDiets. YMMV.

But then I do not care if my cell phone has all sorts of gizmos and gadgets and data capabilities. I don't care if its takes crappy inferior quality photos. What I do want is a phone that is reasonably durable, has clear reception, hands free capability, and the ability to get a good signal even in remote areas. Unfortunatley, every time I replace a cell phone with a new "more capable" model I find that the new phone often performs even poorer with respect to these very basic measures.

One thing that definitely could be improved is the numeric display on the screen. The text size is fine and taken individually the numbers are quite easy to read - but the horizontal spacing of those numbers sometimes sucks. Put a "0689" numeric sequence together and the numbers all jumble together. On my flip hone that 4 digit display occupies less than a quarter inch of horizontal space.

[BarbaRosa]

24. A kitchen cleaning app

so I can cook my brains out, without that pesky cleanup afterwords.