REVIEW: Mobio Networks’ Recipes app returns mouthwatering results

Editor’s Note: Welcome to Yay or Nay, a feature for RCR Wireless News’ weekly e-mail service, Mobile Content and Culture. Every week we’ll review a new wireless application or service from the user’s point of view, with the goal of highlighting what works and what doesn’t in the mobile content industry. If you wish to submit your application or service for review, please contact us at rcrwebhelp@crain.com.
Application: Mobio Networks’ Recipes application
Running On: Samsung M510 on Sprint Nextel’s EV-DO network
Yay: Clean format, with tabbed navigation to recipe summary, ingredients and preparation information. The ability to search by an impressive list of options-including cuisine, ingredient, course, diet, occasion or preparation-is a nice bonus, and a good variety of recipes are offered.
Nay: For someone used to scoping out the endless supply of recipes on the Internet, Mobio’s 20-recipe results seem kind of skimpy. The app also has a few quirks that take some getting used to.
We Say: Just in time for the holiday season! Mobio Networks’ application allowed busy holiday shoppers to browse for cookie or cocktail recipes with a mobile handset, save the recipe to the phone and create a grocery list for that last-minute stop at the store.
You can get Mobio’s app two ways: download it directly to your phone from Mobio’s mobile Web site, or use the company’s desktop Internet site (www.getmobio.com/) to trigger a text message containing the link to the app.
The download was lickety-split-less than 60 seconds-and the application was mostly easy to navigate. A quick keyword search for “meatloaf” popped up Mobio’s 20 Most Reviewed Recipes, complete with up-to-five-star rankings for meatloaf recipes ranging from the whimsical (one called “Yes, Virginia, There is a Great Meatloaf”) to the contradiction-in-terms (“Really Good Vegetarian Meatloaf”) to the celebrity recipe (“Ann Landers’ Meatloaf Recipe”) to the unknown (“Bri’s Meatloaf Recipe”).
Searching by course opens up even more possibilities. Choosing the “desserts” option, for example, allows the user to pick from a dizzying smorgasbord of options: cakes, candy, cobblers, biscotti, pies, puddings, tarts, and even individual types of cookies such as drop, hand-formed or rolled-out. (My mouth watered.)
Selecting, say, drop cookies returned 20 predictably popular results: peanut butter, and several varieties of oatmeal and chocolate chip cookies. I was pleasantly surprised that the recipe I actually wanted-no-bake chocolate oatmeal cookies-showed up. One nice perk was that tips from the cook are included in the recipe summary; in this case, I was warned that “the weather makes a difference on the consistency” and not to boil the ingredients longer than a minute.
A separate tab gave me a list of ingredients, and a third took me through the actual preparation. Clicking on “options” allowed me to save the recipe to the phone, a pre-cursor to generating a shopping list. Once I selected a recipe, I could go through the “MyRecipes” list, pick the ingredients I wanted to shop for and create a shopping list-which not only gave me the type of ingredient I needed (i.e., sugar) but the amount, so I didn’t buy a five-pound bag when I only needed two cups.
I did encounter a couple of quirks in the app. Any request for a new search pops you back to the initial search screen, rather than returning you to the category that you were previously in, such as cocktails. Sometimes it’s difficult or impossible to return to search results, and you end up having to repeat the search because, say, you didn’t save the recipe to “MyRecipes” before requesting the shopping list. After adding several new recipes to MyRecipes, it took me a few tries to figure out that, rather than choosing the “update” option for my shopping list, I needed to select the “new list” option and confirm that I wanted a shopping list for all of my chosen recipes-despite having an “all” option in the drop-down menu.
Overall, though, Mobio offers a tasty variety of recipes in a simple format with some handy features. The quirks aren’t enough to outweigh the perks-and while I think I’ll skip the vegetarian meatloaf, the cookies sound delish.