Meal Snap – Calorie Counting Magic
Developer: Daily Burn, Inc. Cost: $2.99 Runs on: iPhone, Windows Phone 7 Website:http://mealsnap.com
It’s rare that I come across an app that has a built-in “wow” factor. Meal Snap – Calorie Counting Magic is such an app. The idea is simple: open the app, snap a picture of what you’re about to eat and the app tells you how many calories you’re about to consume—like magic!
How does it do this? I don’t know, but I do know that the app accesses a database of over 350,000 items to help calculate the number. There’s also some sort of image recognition software or perhaps a person who quickly looks up the item in the database the same way Amazon used to accomplish this feat with their image-snapping price check app. So even if the developer, Daily Burn, Inc., is keeping their magic trick secret I can still talk about how it functions.
My Candy Recipes
Developer: Damjibhai Manvar Cost: $0.99 Runs on: iPhone Website:http://yourappsonline.com
I love cooking a romantic meal for Valentine’s Day. What I usually don’t do, however, is make candy. I was excited to see an app that would help walk me through the process since I’m more of a cook and less of a baker/candy bar maker. My Candy Recipes offers more than 250 recipes sorted into six categories. Let’s find out if a sweet treat is on my Valentine’s menu.
The home page of My Candy Recipes offers six thumbnails for the various categories: Chocolate Candies, Fudge Candies, Popcorn Candies, Brittle Candies, Fruit Candies and Nut Candies. Click on any of these and you’re taken to a long scrolling list that includes a thumbnail and title of each corresponding recipe. The images used are effective in showing what the recipe is, but some are well shot while others definitely look like an amateur was snapping the picture. Like the recently-reviewed Do Eat Raw, this app also lacks alphabetical scrubbing, meaning you can’t jump to “strawberry,” for example, by touching the letter “S” in the margin. There’s also a lot of wasted space between each recipe. While not using the same layout, Trufflehead used their navigation page to include additional information such as prep time, serving size, and difficulty. My Candy Recipes has the space to include this information, but it’s not there.
Do Eat Raw
Developer: Wachipi Cost: $0.99 Runs on: iPhone Website:www.doeatraw.com
I love all forms of cooking, but there’s something divine about raw food. Grabbing a vine-ripened tomato and biting into it like an apple is a guilty pleasure of mine. Of course, most people who dedicate their life to eating raw foods do it for nutritional or ethical reasons. And, of course, that doesn’t mean non-vegans can’t enjoy this raw food app, Do Eat Raw.
Do Eat Raw includes over 300 raw vegan recipes organized in seven different categories: Salads, Entrée and Main Courses, Appetizers and Snacks, Desserts, and more. Each category is organized alphabetically, but you can’t scrub/jump through the recipe alphabet like you can when scanning for cheese in Ask the Cheesemonger. This app also doesn’t include thumbnails of the recipes so you can’t have that ravioli recipe jump out at you through visual stimulation. Unfortunately, once you’ve clicked into the recipe page, you’ll notice the dearth of visuals continues.
It’s rare that I come across an app that has a built-in “wow” factor. Meal Snap – Calorie Counting Magic is such an app. The idea is simple: open the app, snap a picture of what you’re about to eat and the app tells you how many calories you’re about to consume—like magic!
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