A RecipeScan progress report
Last week, we completed our 7,000th RecipeScan, and we’re on our way to completing our 8,000th in another week or so. This new service, unique to BigOven, lets you scan recipes -- digitizing them into a searchable library quickly and easily.
In other words, by simply snapping a photo, you can turn this:
into this:
which is also available via our free apps for iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows Phone and anywhere you have access to the web.
Why Use RecipeScan?
If you’re like many home cooks, you have a drawer full of recipe clippings or paper notebooks somewhere in your kitchen. Or, you might run across a great recipe in a newspaper that you’d just love to save for later. Most of the time, they just sit there, forgotten, even when you’re completely stuck for dinner ideas, or out at the market.
Once your recipes are digitized, you can access them on the go, via any of our recipe apps for iPhone, iPad, iPod, Android, or Windows Phone. You can add recipes to a Menu Plan and generate a grocery list easily. You can search for it on the go. You can look it up at any time. You can calculate the nutrition facts. In short, your cooking life gets easier.
Example Uses
- Your friends have invited you over for Thanksgiving dinner. You enjoy a great meal and terrific company. The dinner finishes with a delicious dessert -- butter pecan pie. You ask the host for the recipe – she pulls out an old handwritten card from her grandmother. You pull out your iPhone, launch the BigOven app, snap the photo, and click upload. Later, typically within the day, you’ll get an email back with the recipe entered for you into your BigOven account.
- You want to digitize your own recipe collection. You pull out that recipe drawer, and your iPhone, Android Phone or Windows Phone. You snap photos of the recipes, and upload them. RecipeScans are $0.99 each if bought one by one, or $0.59 if you buy them 100 at a time. Note that when you join BigOven PRO, we give you 25 more RecipeScan credits, in addition to the 3 free ones that everyone gets.
- You want to digitize your Mom’s recipe collection to make cooking easier for her. You do the same as above, and also buy her a gift membership for BigOven PRO. Our support team will be happy to manually transfer over ownership of a set of recipes between any two BigOven PRO members – just contact support@bigoven.com with the list of Recipe ID numbers when you’re ready. (Please do not do these one at a time, however; we’d appreciate it if you’d bundle your ownership-change request in a single one-time request for ownership transfer. And both you and the recipient need to be BigOven PRO members.)
Tip: You can Edit a Recipe You’ve RecipeScanned
RecipeScan is meant to dramatically speed your collection of recipes in the cloud – but it’s not perfect. It’s simple to edit any recipe you’ve posted – including those that you’ve RecipeScanned. Just like recipes you post to BigOven, a RecipeScan recipe shows up under “Recipes I’ve Posted”. Since they are private recipes by default, no one will see it but you. (If you’re a BigOven PRO member past your free trial period, you can make the recipe public, if you so choose.)
You can edit a recipe simply by finding the recipe on BigOven.com (from any desktop web browser, not via the mobile apps), and clicking “Edit” on the right hand side of the page. There, you can make any finishing touches you’d like. You can also upload a photo, add ratings, add the recipe to your Favorites list, Try Soon list, Menu Plan and more.
On BigOven.com, you’ll be able to see the original image or images you submitted right under the recipe title, for handy reference.
Tip: To submit multiple photos for a single recipe, you MUST use the web interface
Our mobile apps only support one image per recipe. To submit up to 3 images per recipe, upload your JPGs here: http://www.bigoven.com/recipe/scan. Submission of individual photos that need to be pieced together via the mobile phone will result in your RecipeScan request being rejected.
Tip: Be sure to make it clear which recipe you want entered!
Some RecipeScan requests contain multiple recipes. If it’s not obvious which one is to be entered, the request will be rejected. For example, this submission was rejected for that reason:
Tip: RecipeScan does not divine a recipe from a photo of food – we need written (handwritten or typed) recipes!
Here’s another RecipeScan request we received. Care to type up the recipe? (Is it sweet? A hint of cinnamon? Or nutmeg? Filled with a cream cheese based filling… or is that ice cream? You get the idea…) Truth be told, we actually considered such a service, but we determined that even if professional chefs couldn’t tell you exactly how to make something without tasting it, neither could we.
RecipeScan: A demonstration
If you haven’t seen our demo video, take a quick look below:
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