I noticed something that I thought was kind of fun on Food Porn Watch and thought others might like to do it too. (After all, you great food photographers have all those shots stored on your computers.) It's called Mealme.com and it's a site for anyone (worldwide) to submit a restaurant photo and review of that restaurant. You can tag it with whatever you want so other like minded people can find it. They only accept submissions of restaurant foods (no home cooked food), (and don't publish urls so it's not a way to publicize your blog,) but I thought it was fun. I submitted a photo yesterday (my very first ever restaurant photo, by the way) and they published it today.
This post submitted by Kalyn of Kalyns Kitchen.
7 comments:
I am wary of the small print at mealme.
For similar reasons I dont post to Chowhound, Yelp, etc, etc. I prefer to retain ownership of my own stuff on my blog. I don't find it necessary to publish elsewhere:
You agree that your submission - images and text - may be used for the purpose of promoting MealMe, and you expressly grant MealMe the right to republish and repurpose your submission for that purpose. This may include, but is not limited to, advertising, merchandising, retailing and general all-around promotion of MealMe.
and just to be quite clear. Even though they can use whatever they like of yours, you are still responsible for content you publish.
The opinions expressed in your posts are yours and yours alone. MealMe takes no responsibility for what you say; you're responsible, and liable, for all statements you make. So keep it clean and honest.
Sounds like you do all the hard work and they reap all the benefits of your content by having other people efectively build their site for them.
Yes, I thought of that Sam. But since I'm not really a big name food blogger and I don't think these short little restaurant reviews are worth money, it didn't seem like much of a risk. I don't think I would bother to submit a bad review, so there wouldn't be any liability. I like the idea of being able to go to a site and see what others have written about the restaurants in a certain city where I might plan to visit. Kind of like a Zagats guide without the snobbery. So for me that would be enough benefit to submit something once in a while.
Very interesting stuff. The concept is cool but I hear what you're saying Sam.
Hi everyone. Eric from MealMe. I see your points, and all valid.
MealMe is really just for fun, in the end you always retain the copyright to your work. I didn't spell out the copyright details because I wanted to keep the tone light and I thought most people would find it over-the-top.
But maybe I should be a little more clear about what rights we are seeking. Essentially we are asking for non-exclusive rights to just what you submit. In other words you can reuse, repurpose and republish the exact same photo and submission yourself.
The reason the first point is there is that maybe, one-day, we might want to promote MealMe, and rather than hunt down previous contributers (we don't really track email addresses etc.) I asked for the rights up front.
But good points, I will go and revise the Terms and Conditions to be a clearer on our intent.
Of course I'm not suggesting that Sam or anyone else is wrong wanting to keep their rights. Copyright is important and I totally understand the caution with posting. We only want people to post if they are 100% comfortable with it.
Anyways, thanks Kalyn for letting me run on here, sorry about that. Oh... and thanks for posting. Hope to see more from you!
Oh... we are considering adding a URL section to MealMe.
Hi Eric Again. So I've been mulling it over and y'know I'm going to NOT ask for a copyright license to submissions. It gets too complicated navigating non-exclusive licenses and really it's not that important to me or the growth of MealMe. Look for a revision of the Terms sometime this week.
MealMe is a Food Photo Community, and like every community everyone can participate in how it is run. I'm not saying we can do everything people suggest, but in this case Sam spoke and I listened.
Thanks for bringing the copyright issue up!
thank you Eric.
I always check for this small print on those kind of community sites and it always states ownership over whatever you submmit and I think people don't realise.
On the epicurious website, for example, you can submit recipes. WHo knows - they may use those recipes for their magazines or in a book one day, and none of the originators of the recipes would have any say.
Chowhound have already published a book using readers comments.
It's good for these fine details to be out in the open and for people to be aware about it and discuss it.
thanks for listening
Just visited MealMe and couldn't help but think this would be a great way for singles to hook up! Just scan a users list of food reviews and look for similar interests.
Silly, but couldn't help but notice that certain users seem to have particularly great taste in restaurants!
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