TasteSpotting: Your Opinions Appreciated

hey fbs'coolers...it's sarah, just about to fall over from putting tastespotting v2 back up. *whew*

first, thank you to everyone who has shared very honest (the "*ouch* that hurt me, but i needed it" kind of honest) opinions and feelings in the comments of previous posts about tastespotting. that, plus the emails, IMs, and blog posts around the foodweb from everyone have been a tremendous help in refining tastespotting's future. there is still much left to do!

which brings me to the second...we just did a redesign on the site, and while the functionality is about the same (with the addition of being able to crop photos on the site and see a preview) and there will be more to come, it's fairly dramatic change in color scheme/look and feel. i would SO VERY MUCH appreciate it if you could share your opinions about it.

does the dark background behind the pictures make the food (*smack* me for using this term) POP? does minimal color (black white and gray) let the food stand out? does it feel clean? or is it too dark? drab? someone actually called it "scary."

thanks so much to everyone in advance for any opinions you have...if you'd rather share your opinions with me privately, you can also email me: sarah[at]tastespotting[dot]com

i'm going to go eat a cupcake now. they've been showing up all over the site.

This Post was written by Sarah from TasteSpotting

Just a guy named Yuri

This morning I woke up to the following comment on one of my recipes:

IP Address: 193.239.152.85
Name: Food for Heaven. Cooking recipes
Email Address: sally@foodforheaven.com
URL: http://www.foodforheaven.com
Comments:

I've made this soupe today and was really impressed. It was perfect!
Thanks for your tasty recipe!

Cooking is also my hobby, so we are kind of tasty-friends :)

I almost always check the URLs of comments before they post, and sure enough, this one turned out to be an aggregator, using content from my site and Kalyn's.

The nerve! First throwing up a Wordpress site with our feeds, and then leaving comments on my site to promote it?

When I demanded that Sally take down my content, I got this from "Sally Moore":

Hello, Elise.

I thought it would be great for you to have your recipes on my website. I added link to your website after every recipe, so people could read the whole entry at elise.com
But if you don't want to promote your website this way, it's your choice. Food for Heaven is becoming a great portal.

I won't post your materials anymore. I thought you're kind of woman who prefer friendship and collaboration. I was wrong.

Yeah, right. Turns out in the long header of the email, it was actually sent by a guy named "Yuri Zakharov", confirmed when I got another email from Yuri himself with the same IP address.

So, just a warning to everyone, the sneaky aggregators are trying to promote their stolen goods on our own sites, leaving happy, friendly comments from people with happy, friendly names.

If you've received any comments recently from FoodForHeaven, you should know that it's just a guy named Yuri who thinks we are stupid enough to buy into it.


This Post was written by Elise from Simply Recipes

[Aggregator] Blog Appetite Expanded for English Speaking Blogs

A French favourite translates to English

you can add your blogs here:


If you open a user's account you can bookmark, tag and manage your own favorites.


Note from the creator Laurent:
I wish all english written food blogs will appreciate it as much as french food bloggers. Blog-appetit.com exits since 2 years and more than 900 food blogs are already followed everyday by more and more person. It helped all the french written blogosphere to know each other, exchange and create a real community. It has really some good benefits for new comer in the foodblog. it provide faster to them some visibility.I made a blog-appetite's blog to maintain some explaination and news.



This Post was written by sam from becks/posh