Mmm…food

Hey friends and foodies,

I’m happy to announce that Mealstrom, my new meal blogging and sharing site, has reached beta.  Both the website and its associated iPhone app are now both stable enough and fully-featured enough for me to put them out there.  And what better time than hitting beta to publish an inaugural blog entry taking start of the project?

Without further ado, then:

Q: What is Mealstrom?
A: A meal blogging and sharing site; microblogging for meals.

Q: And what does “microblogging for meals” entail?
A: It’s tracing your life in food.  Meals are a big part of all our lives; the stories and pictures of those meals would make up a whole journal reflecting what we’ve done through where we ate.  Mealstrom is a bit like Twitter, but structured specifically for food; it’s a bit like Yelp, but about the meals you eat rather than reviews of the places you go.  Your posts can be anything from a simple “This is what I ate” and a single food photo to a photo spread and the story of your afternoon.

Q: Why should I use Mealstrom?
A: Because the idea clicks with you — if it doesn’t, that’s cool by me.  Mealstrom’s not the next big thing — just it’s a neat little tool for those of us who want to blog our meals.  If you do want to share your meals, head on over to mealstrom.com’s sign up page (with your Facebook account, if you want) and start posting meals.

Q: Why did you build Mealstrom?
A:  This all began in 2007: I started taking pictures of food because I started taking pictures of everything during a trip abroad.  (I wanted to capture everything I saw to show my then-boyfriend, now-husband, back at home.)  Once I came back, the food pictures were the ones that continued.  I’m not sure why, per se; I guess I just liked food — I was writing regularly on Yelp at the time — and meals were regular occurrences around which I built a habit.

Over the next year, I accumulated a lot of pictures that just sat there — organizing and uploading months of photos to Facebook takes way too much time and energy, after all.  I’d taken up programming again in 2008 and had gotten it in my head to build an iPhone app sometime, and one day in October I downloaded the iPhone SDK and just took the plunge.  I like food, I like programming, I want to learn, and I want my meal pictures to capture something of the story behind each meal, the what and where and with whom and the whys that created each photo.  After six months, I have a nicely working project and a product I use very day.  By using it to chronicle my meal stories, I even have a basic journal, something that captures the flavors of my life, which is a big win for someone unlikely to take up standard blogging.  Bonus points all around.

Q: So what I can I do with Mealstrom?
A: Great question!  I just happen to have a list right here.  As of today, 3/7/2009, Mealstrom is:

• A Rails-based website where you can submit and view meals.
• An iPhone app from which you can submit meals with pictures, locations, and descriptions.
• Email and MMS support for your meals, for those who aren’t blessed by Steve Jobs’ handiwork.
• Integrated with Facebook, so you can log in, share your meals with your friends, and post comments.
• Integrated with Twitter, so you can tweet your meals to your feed.
• Integrated with Google Maps, so you can plot a visual spread of where you’ve eaten.

Q:  Wow, sounds great.  I’ll probably give a try.  What else are you thinking about doing with it?
A: Here’s what I’ve been kicking around:

• Tighter Facebook integration
  • Tag people who are in your meals, with a simplified signup for those who respond with the notifications.
  • Create a tab for your Facebook profile that shows your recent meals, your map, and so on.
  • Interactive story publishing for meals entered on the website.
• Search your meals (descriptions)
• Create metrics
  • View charts, such as the distribution of the different meals you eat.
  • Add the ability to track whether meals are vegetarian, healthy, or other discrete (and hence chartable) criteria.
• Discrete locations — matching your description and GPS to a specific restaurant or site
• Enhance Mealstrom.com
  • Tab-based profile to view your overview/map, complete meal list, and charts and graphs.
  • Default location option for meals that don’t have GPS.
• LiveJournal and Blogger integration.
• Location privacy so you can obscure your meals to 100 feet or a mile or hide the map from public view.
• The ability to work on multiple meals on the iPhone, for when you haven’t finished entering lunch by dinner, but don’t want to lose the GPS or other info.

Q: I can’t wait to give it a try — I’m sure it all works great.  Smooth sailing ahead!
A: Umm….sure.  I’m kinda writing software, so you might want to keep an eye out for a few things.

• Sometimes the website seems to stall on loading, at least on my browser.
• The iPhone app <=> website communication needs some improvements so that an error in the website won’t mess up a meal on the iPhone.
• The iPhone app needs UI enhancements, in particular a better splash screen and background.
• The website account screen needs cleanup and organization, probably something similar to the tab approach I’ll take with the profile.
• The website needs a better interface for picture uploads and management.
• The website needs updated iPhone screenshots and some updated text/info all around.  (Such as this blog.)
• The iPhone app needs to be submitted to the App Store — it’s nearly ready.
• The website needs a forgotten password link, which some of you may need today.  (Email me if you want it reset in the meanwhile.)
• Since the service involves GPS locations, Mealstrom probably needs a basic Terms of Service agreement.
• The meal and meal edit screens need some behind-the-scenes improvement in layout to make them more flexible and compatible with different resolutions and browsers.
• The whole website needs IE/Chrome/Safari testing.
• The front page of the website needs a graphical map of how the service works, rather than the one-line text flow on there today.

Watch this blog — now that it exists, I’ll keep the blog up-to-date as the site evolves.  I’m also very excited to share some of the lessons I’ve learned the hard way dealing with some of the cool technology that’s gone into this site, so every so often I’ll be posting tech entries about Rails, Facebook, iPhone development, or whatever else I’m working.

Have a great weekend and happy eating!

Alex