I think zocdoc is usually used for specialists, at least that's what everyone I know uses it for.

Most of the time you need recommendation from your doctor for specialists in the U.K. A idea I had was site that was based on ZocDoc that was for hair salons, beauty therapist, nail Beautician ect that could let you make appointments and the companies on the site have the option of offer customer discount/deals.

I wonder what would happen to a school in a big city. I have to imagine a hammock room at Georgia Tech would end up a homeless hotel.

I've been thinking a lot about recipes lately. Not so much the aggregation of them since there are about a billion sites that do that (search sites like MyRecipes, AllRecipes, Epicurious, etc; and "Recipe Box" sites like onetsp, 7courses, blah blah blah), but displaying them.

I do think there's room for a little more innovation in recipe sites for recipes sake because trying to find a new one is waaaaaay too tough when all the sites have the same few ideas cooked 100 slightly-different ways with 300 different names. But I'll look past that for now and focus on the displaying:

Recipes always look like this

There are about a metric ****ton of things wrong with this formatting. It's not clear what items are used in what steps, it's not clear what steps can be done simultaneously, you can't see the upcoming steps from the one your on, etc etc.

I've been sketching out a few things here and there around what I would like a recipe to look like in a way that could really take advantage of tablets given their screen space and growing popularity. I mean, what the hell are the benefits of an app like this: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/my-re...375811859?mt=8 over a standard recipe book other than the number of recipes you can keep in a given footprint?

^^having the site so that when you click the recipes you get an online grocery store that deliver the ingredients for the recipes, customers could plan out there week meals ect.

Student ID card and some sort of front desk.

Been watching so much Food Network lately, and was thinking about a place (preferably near college or yuppies) where you have a bunch of ingredients and people can customize how they want their meal. i.e. chicken + brocolli + onions + jalapeno + bacon over pasta. limit # of meats and veggies you can choose and additional costs for more. have items that are simple to make but pretty easy to make delicious like pastas, sandwiches, rices, omelettes, fried foods, etc. kind of a ripoff on the rutgers fat sandwich origin, except you can now do it with pastas and other things.

interact with the students through facebook/twitter/skype (important part imho) and keep it a friendly atmosphere where you jokingly cannot guarantee their weird combinations will be delicious.

every now and then post up most innovative/popular "student concoctions" (in quotes because it doesn't have to be -- you can make up your own high profit margin item and pass it as a student created one). eventually you'll want to develop a menu of "crazy" creations that you'll be pushing and hoping people order because of higher profit margins and easier cookability, but always keep the customized orders as an option.

might be hectic in the beginning, but a basic template of seasonings and sauces should be enough to make everything taste decently similar but appear different in students' eyes hopefully. combination of fast food chinese + rutgers fat sandwiches!

@mmbt0ne,

i'm intrigued. what do you have in mind to improve recipes? what do your sketches look like?

Here's my idea. Company A in Country A wants to export to Country B. Country B requires joint venture, or partnership with a citizen of Country B. I am a citizen of Country B and for the sake of arguement have contacts a-plenty in Country B. I negotiate the exclusive rights to sell Company A's product to Country B. They gain entry to the market for very little cost despite having little control. I then find someone who actually wants to sell this product in Country B and sell the exclusive rights for a price.

Before I share my doubts and concerns over the quality of this idea because I do have my own, I'd rather see your own.

Also, I'm a fresh business graduate with very little experience so let's not be killing my entire morale with 2p2 harshness, although as I've said I expect there are many flaws with this.

As my previous scan may have made clear, I am not a good drawer. So I don't really want to hurt anyone's eyes by putting more of that crap up here. Give me a couple days to try and make some proper (however basic) mockups in GIMP and I'll throw them up.

In short though, I think recipes need to be less about lists (of ingredients, of steps) and more about what's needed for each step and what's being done.

The best way I can try to explain it is, imagine the difference between a standard set of instruction for putting something together, and the IKEA set of instructions. I want to be closer to the IKEA set. Each step is clearly laid out, you know exactly what you need, you know where you are in the entire process, you know what few things are coming up next, hopefully you can know what else can be done concurrently, stuff like that.

ah, ok. i think i understand better what you are getting at now and, yeah, i can see how that could be cool. looking forward to your mockup.

Are you a frequent follower of recipes and find them inadequate now? Or are you just hypothesizing that what people have been using for ages without any trouble is somehow deficient? It seems obvious to me that list of ingredients is far more important than the steps, and most recipes tell you when you need to do stuff concurrently, etc.

I use recipes a lot. I've got a handful of physical cookbooks, use all 3 of the major recipe search engines I listed, and have recipe files at all of them.

I also set a goal to make 1 new recipe per week this year, so I've been ratcheting up my intake of different recipes and am sick of consistently having to go back and forth in them.

If "we've always done it this way" is the only argument against a change, then I'm pretty comfortable with my idea.

I'd like to see your idea tied in with a smart phone app like "what the **** should I make for dinner" (f word in teh profanity filter- google it if you have never seen it). Something that knows what you have in the house, how much time you have, and randomizes. I'd buy that.

The problem with those is that it's a pain in the dick to keep an inventory of your foodstuffs up to date. Until there are smart refrigerators/cabinets/stoves/etc all connected it's going to be a special kind of OCD person who keeps something like that up to date at all times.

Or someone on a medically restricted diet that has to track everything anyways, and anyone who lives in a house with that person.

Everyone should print this out and hang it up.

paperkarma.com is something similar...
The cold start problem can probably leverage mechanical turk stuff.

I feel like I saw an article in the nytimes about this (the recipe format) a few months ago, but about a book? Seems like a good idea. Lots of people use iPads for recipes, and there are probably lots of possibilities (beyond just static formatting) for using that fact in a helpful way.

Golf course idea is excellent.

Plan:
Find a course that badly needs the revenue
Negotiate a deal with them, where you bring in last minute holders, and get a cut....

how about a service that takes all your tailoring measurements and standardizes it with clothing websites/producers so you can order clothing online and be confident it is the correct fit.

Could synch up with some of the bespoke tailoring shops that have sprung up...
Maybe a webcam or the computer monitor could scan a body for complete 3D dimensions, for mass measuring...

These type of transactions have been going on for a while in many developing economies especially for decent size investments. Usually a country that wants to develop their manufacturing sector with new industries or more advanced processes have set-up ministries to aid with such transactions. (ie. MIDA, Malaysian version of such agency).


For smaller transactions, there are a network usually among the legal profession that help with such arrangements. However, if you are only doing this type of 'joint venture" entity to import into such country and bypass higher tariff rates, it's not necessarily a good long term strategy as sooner or later, one will get into sticky problems with customs and tax authorities. It's better to at least be able to meet the minimum requirements of in country production with some kind of assembly / production facilities. However, then the financing for such facilities is the next challenge and that's where the smaller business faces the biggest challenge.

I was inspired to this idea by a soda machine I hadn't seen before. It has a single dispensing port with a touch screen interface. You can select your base soda/drink which brings up a secondary screen with various additives, eg orange, vanilla, cherry, etc. There are over a 100 combinations available.

I'd like to extend this idea to a cocktail machine. It would have hoppers or tanks for the base liquors, eg vodka, rum, gin, whiskey, the liqueurs and the mixers. The machine would have a touch screen interface with a massive pre-programmed cocktail library searchable by a variety of methods including alphabetical, by liquor, etc. The library could be customizable or programmable by whoever buys it if they wish to utilize their own cocktail recipes instead of mine. Perfectly portioned cocktails every time.

I envision these for use by businesses like casinos and restaurants. Cocktail waitresses in casinos can spend quite a bit of time waiting for hand-made cocktails (I, and I'm sure you, know from personal experience) when this instrument could save massive amounts of time, thus getting players drunk more quickly. Same for waitresses in restaurants or table service bars. Let the bartenders cater to customers actually at the bar and save time by utilizing this machine to make cocktails for customers waiting at tables.

The machine could also be designed in smaller versions for sell into home use. I entertain a fair bit and having a self-serve cocktail machine could be quite useful. I know there are a lot of others who could benefit in a similar way. There could be variously priced versions with more or less capacity/capability.

I've only done a brief search, but the closest things I could find to such a comprehensive machine are frozen cocktail machines that can only do a few drinks. I haven't figured out if this would really be of interest to the businesses I've outlined. It would be a huge time saver and provide significant ease of access/use. However, would it be worth it financially?

I like that. I actually think the home model could be the better seller if you could keep the cost down. One of the problems I see is sometimes the bars want pretty ladies serving drinks because it brings more guys to the bar.

That's what I thought as well. That's why I limited the marketing component towards table service like casino cocktail waitresses for table games, restaurant waitresses or cocktail waitresses in bars who serve tables. The actual bartender-patron relationship will remain in tact for people who actually go to the bar to order their drink.

I should have been more clear in my first post. The machines are for the waitresses to use, not the patrons. The patron would not be able to use the machine directly for obvious reasons. It's illegal for bars to serve visibly intoxicated people and the machine obviously wouldn't be able to tell. Also, it would make it difficult to prevent underage drinkers. But, the waitresses for the tables could go directly to the machine for the drink rather than waiting for the bartender to get to their order.

Oh I see. It wouldn't be hard to engineer. I imagine it would be just like the coffee machines they have now but substitute liquior for coffee ingredients.....