Glad you like it! The main idea is to share and learn how to make cool stuff.
If it gains momentum, it could be a great way to get new users for new projects (a bit like Show HN posts).
But I think if there's enough good stuff on it, then the data could power a simple but powerful recommendation engine. For example, if I know that 5 people used a 2-year old Thinkpad to make an amazing 3D game, then I would know it's good enough for my needs too.
The other simple idea is to allow people to sell their stuff too, especially things that start out as weekend projects. You can simply share the project when you first make it, but if it takes off, then just add a Buy button to get paying customers.
But that's all dreaming. For now, it's just what you see. So, please share your projects.
I much prefer Recipe Labs; the front page is actually useful to me since I can immediately fiddle with recipes or browse existing ones without being nagged about "signing up".
Minor niggles:
- on the "newest recipes" list: they all say things like "Created on 24 minutes ago". Drop the "on" (presumably this is there for older recipes that might get a date against them?).
- after clicking on "coupons" some of the top menu links are no longer correct
I often find myself wondering what to cook of an evening so a good recipe site is definitely of interest. Looks like it's aggregating quite a lot of other content though so I guess the challenge is for it to be better at recipe searches than Google.
what makes you say foodily is a UK company? I thought it was from Silicon Valley.
At the same time, I haven't seen anything remotely similar to this tool on foodily. Foodily is a recipe search site. The labs part here is completely different from what I've seen.
If you wanted to take a scientific approach you'd need to be able to do something like the following: (A) measure your actual work output and (B) some way of measuring your 'maximum expected output capacity'.
if A much less than B you are being lazy.
if A is close to or equal to B then you are burnt out.
[The short answer of course is, if you are reading Hacker News you are being lazy]
As an aside; Pivotal Tracker - the feature / dev tracking software manages to define output using average number of work blocks completed over the past X weeks. How you measure your maximum expected output capacity might be more tricky to define.
Tom, I'm working on a project similar to GrubWithUs (blog.eatsocial.net). We are a team of 3 and just started working every weekend on this about a month ago.
Advertising this could be one of your biggest costs. Reduce the requirement for advertising by devising a traction plan, if you haven't already. You already have the right idea by targeting a small area first and then expanding.
There is a similar site to yours already launched in London, fairly well established called HouseBites.co.uk - have you studied their model? Mike from HouseBites gave a talk at YCombinator London about 1 or 2 months ago. Did you see this talk? There is a video floating around somewhere.
Some of the logistical issues were discussed which may give you some assistance on for Meal Mogul.
I am also working on a different yet related project EatSocial.net (see blog.EatSocial.net) - think meetups in restaurants. Would you be interested to meet for a chat? I am based in London and would like to hear more about Meal Mogul.
In NDB I am on sources tab and I see dist folder highlighted (src also appears in the tree).
How does one "map the workspace under sources" (I tried right clicking - and I don't see a menu)
TIA