REVIEW: Cooking with Nexgenesis

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 [email protected].
Application: De Jour Meal Planner by Nexgenesis Studios
Running On: Samsung M300 on Sprint Nextel’s 1x network
Yay: A simple user interface that delivers step-by-step recipes as well as basic cooking tips. Meals are grouped by main ingredients, allowing users to find the appropriate recipe quickly, and users can e-mail themselves a shopping list for each dish. Nutritional information can help you take off some of those leftover holiday pounds.
Nay: Most of the recipes are pretty pedestrian – do I really need instructions for bacon cheese spudskins? – and some of the entertaining tips seem meant for grade-schoolers. Also, because recipes can’t be saved to the phone, the application must be loaded every time you want to access a shopping list or other information.
We say: De Jour Meal Planner may come in handy if you’re short on time and don’t know a slotted spoon from a lemon zester, and the $2 monthly subscription seems reasonable. But can’t I find most of this stuff on the wireless Web?
Foodies and wanna-be chefs have a lot of options when it comes to using their phones as a cooking tool. Kraft’s mobile site allows users to browse recipes on their handsets, and Mobio Networks offers an impressive, direct-to-consumer application that includes a guide for making cocktails. Even Rachel Ray has her own branded application that, inexplicably, is featured under “What’s Cool” on Sprint Nextel’s deck.
Also on Sprint Nextel’s deck is De Jour Meal Planner, a no-frills guide that seems targeted at those who find themselves lost in the kitchen. A home screen offers very little information but welcomes users and includes an overview of the application, while a second screen – dubbed “kitchen” – features a half-dozen categories including cooking techniques and a kitchenware guide. A primer on spices is both interesting and disappointing – users can access data on Indian spices or learn how to prepare their own Herbes de Provence, for instance, but most common seasonings are ignored.
The kitchen menu also offers some basic nutritional information, as well as covering topics such as “stressed eating” and a rundown on types of fats. Clicking on the “presentation” link accesses party-planning tips, including the warning to “make sure your table is long enough and has enough chairs for the guests.” Not exactly Martha Stewart, that.
A third menu includes information on several dozen recipes, which can be accessed by main ingredients including beef, chicken, pork, seafood and vegetarian. An “ethnic” category delivers a hodgepodge of cuisine from around the world, including hoisin pork, chicken korma and tabouleh. A summary includes a few words about the dish; step-by-step instructions and a shopping list are also featured.
And the application seems targeted directly at those who may have never cooked before. A suggestion to serve warm rye with an entr