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Website of the Week — Group Recipes


Time again for our Website of the Week, when we showcase interesting and innovative online destinations. Our web guide is VOA's Art Chimes.

There's a long history linking computers and recipes, of all things. In the early days of home computers, people wondered why they would need a computer, and one of the standard answers was, to organize that box of recipes in the kitchen.

Actually, a stand-alone computer isn't the best tool for that, but a website is, and there are a lot of online recipe sites. Today we highlight one with a difference. GroupRecipes.com is a place to find and share recipes, but CEO Kristopher Lederer says it adds a social networking component.

LEDERER: "You can start posting your own [recipes] and getting feedback on those. And, you know, one of the best features is, you can sign up with friends, and every time one of your friends submits a recipe, you instantly get it into your GroupRecipes profile every day when you log in. You can see what all your friends have been posting about, and they get to see your recipes as well, so it's a really easy way to share."

Lederer stresses that the recipes are the main reason to come to GroupRecipes.com, and to help you find interesting dishes there are technological aids like Roger the Recipe Robot, but harnessing the power of crowds works pretty well, too, especially when that crowd loves to eat and cook.

LEDERER: "I think that harnessing a community in almost any endeavor can yield some very, very serious benefits. And food in particular is a space where that works, you know, incredibly well — kind of group knowledge can yield some really powerful results over these old, traditional recipe sites, where editors handpick every recipe."

Users can tag recipes with all kinds of keywords, not just the ingredients or the name of a dish. For example, Quick Caribbean Chicken has been tagged as colorful. Roast Leg of Lamb was tagged as impressive and elegant — maybe just the thing for company.

LEDERER: "When you let people tag with, you know, any keyword under the sun, you really get some interesting [ideas and] like a deeper understanding of the dish. And it also helps to discover new dishes that are related, yeah, maybe in this kind-of intangible, homey sense. I can go find other recipes that have that same type of feeling, even though they might have totally different ingredients or keywords."

The site is easy to use, free, and — for now at least — uncluttered by advertising. It's a great way to share family favorites or your favorite traditional dish. Check it out at GroupRecipes.com, or get the link from our site, voanews.com.

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