Tastespotting is live again

* no longer a part of notcot, tastespotting is back.
and apparently, we love daring bakers. also, follow updates here *
TASTESPOTTING

It's raining and I am putting off installing software, building the network and transferring files over to my new laptop - what a drudge. So after popping some toast in my gob, I thought I'd check my various email accounts and took a look at Statcounter, to see how my new post on the Vanilla Slice Blog was going.


It was then that I noticed on my stats for this blog that amongst the people who are still reading about the TasteSpotting Stalker, I had been paid a visit from a viewer in Coquitlam, British Columbia, Canada, who had come to me through TasteSpottting itself. They had clicked through from there to my old post on Braeside's incredible breakfast featuring corn fritters. So I followed the trail back to the source and it took me to a Tastespotting search which I expected would be a Google archive of the site, but it turns out that it wasn't.



So guess what? The TasteSpotting site's back and apparently under new ownership. You can read about it on the Tastespotting Twitter feed - mentioned above. The new owner of the site had dropped by and placed a comment on my last post on the subject, but I had not anticipated that it would be up and running so soon. Good job!



Thinking that I should immediately restore their widget to my sidebar, I logged in and the first thing I was greeted with this:

Welome Back, stickyfingers!(sic)

We're in the process of making everything all crispy and clean here, which includes letting you know about the Terms and Conditions of using TasteSpotting. Click the "accept terms and conditions" link below if you agree. Thanks, and again, welcome back!

Here are the Terms:

While we finish getting all buttoned up, please read the following Terms. If you have questions, feel free to email [email protected].

1. By accessing TasteSpotting.com or using any part of the site or any content or services on the site, you agree to abide by these terms and conditions. If you do not agree to all the terms and conditions, then please do not use TasteSpotting.com.

2. TasteSpotting reserves the right, at its sole discretion, to modify or replace the Terms of Use at any time. If it's a major change, TasteSpotting will notify you by posting an announcement on the Site. Use of the Services by you following such notification constitutes your acceptance of the terms and conditions of the Terms of Use as modified.

3. Please register. In order to submit, you are required to register with TasteSpotting and select a password and username. You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your TasteSpotting password.

4. As a condition of use, you promise not to use the Services for any purpose that is unlawful or prohibited by these Terms of Use, or any other purpose not reasonably intended by TasteSpotting. Be nice to other users, okay?

5. Have integrity. You are responsible for your Submissions and the consequences of posting or publishing them. Make sure you have permission to submit a picture, either because you own it, or you have permission to post it. TasteSpotting will remove submissions if it infringes on another's rights. If you are an owner and have an issue with your photos being submitted to this site, please email [email protected]

So if you're one of the thousands of people who have visited Deep Dish Dreams mourning TasteSpotting, your misery is over. Sign in, sign up or just go and perve. If you're registered you can collect your favourite images there too. Or if you've got some porny food shots - get 'em up there! (Or Food Gawker where many fans have thronged in the interim)


Back to the subject of their widget, I wonder how I can retrieve it?

My meagre TasteSpotting submissions are located
in my profile on their site- here - but I feel the urge
to also submit something from recent posts today.

What should it be?



POSTSCRIPT July 6:

Well it took a few days to appear but my photo of the Saffron Milk Cap mushrooms popped up on July 5 - after I had thought they had been rejected. So if you've uploaded an image, hang in there, all may not be lost. I'm hoping that my flaming satay photo makes it in over the next few days.

I know it's impossible to please everyone, but I must admit that I'm not a fan of the new format on the site, which clusters posts or images of like subjects. I can also imagine that for vegetarians - for example - looking at a dozen grill pictures in a row might be quite disconcerting. The old jumbled approach with colour synchronicity was much more stimulating. After all, you can do a search there for grills or berries or chocolate etc if you want a mass selection of similar themes.


Also worth a look: The 'Food Interviews' Blog has posted an interview with TasteSpotting's new owner - Sara J Gim - where she candidly discusses the selection process, hints, tips, rival sites and her plans for improving the new TasteSpotting.

FoodBuzz fairy

“The greatest gift you can give another
is the purity of your attention.”

The Food Buzz fairy has been again.


The first time was to send me little business cards with which to promote my blog, and I was well chuffed. Then today a 100% organic calico bag arrived, with a badge stamped with my blog name. I liked it and guess the badge will come in handy to wear to Bloggers Banquets. It will be an effective way for FoodBuzz to get their name into the minds of those fascinated with food.






Now that's good thinking Marketers. After seeing so many people trying to hook clumsily into the blogging culture, these people actually get what makes us tick. No sock puppetry, no spamming - nice work.


If you've not heard of FoodBuzz, it is still in its Beta phase as a fairly new form of social networking among food bloggers. Via seeding, your blogs can be viewed there and it still count as views to your site. You also have a feed reader facility there to keep abreast of your favourites and primarily it is an excellent way to discover other like-minded sites and bloggers both locally and globally.






Clicks through to FoodBuzz from your site earn remuneration via PayPal, but I'm not fussed about that. I just enjoy browsing there and seeing what's happening in the Blogosphere. I suppose it's a move on from Tastespotting where rather than just perving, you can interact and show your interests in other people's posts by 'buzzing' them. You receive newsletters which direct you to the sites with the most buzz and email updates on how things are going with the development of the site.


If you like podcasts, FoodBuzz show theirs on BlipTV, which can be subscribed to on iTunes and downloaded to your Pod. I love watching these sorts of things when I'm flying - it generally beats the inflight telly.


So thanks again FoodBuzz - love your work.

View Melbourne Bloggers on FoodBuzz here.

View posts on Melbourne

Sign up here

Tastespotting update. Liqurious

The delicious outrage of the loss of Tastespotting continues, bringing thousands of readers to my blog to read the old post about the stalker, in search of possible reasons for their sudden loss and hoping to find a replacement. Copy cats have sprung up, you can see the comments section of my last Tastespotting post for that.

And now, young web entrepreneur Jean Aw of NotCot has spoken again by updating the Tastespotting website and by revealing her latest enterprise, Liqurious - a Tastespotting for cocktails. Bring it on! www.liqurious.com

Tastespotting.com UPDATE 19 June 2008:

In trying to resolve this situation, TasteSpotting.com is in the process of having a new owner. She would like you to know that "we're just marinating a bit longer, but tastespotting will be back shortly...

(Update - TasteSpotting is up and running again)

Tastespotting is dead. RIP

thats it. the last year of my life living tastespotting. i read it from the time i send my kids off to school until i tuck them in at night. what am i supposed to do? this has ruined my life. i dont know what to do with myself now. someone needs to pick up the ashes. maybe i should. would anyone want to help? this HAS TO HAPPEN so many people relied on this for inspiration. this is... i dont even have words to describe how i feel right now.
:-(

Permalink | Reply

meatwad3030 Jun 13, 2008 01:27AM CHOWHOUND

I noticed that the Tastespotting food porn image aggregator had stopped updating in the last couple of days and had presumed that their server was struggling. Someone even joked to me that it was a Friday the thirteenth prank.


Then this evening when I checked my StatCounter results, I found that I had been inundated - with views by the hundreds via Google and forum posts. They were all reading my post on the Tastespotting Stalker.


On closer inspection it seems that the Tastespotting site was dead and thousands of fans appear to be pouring out their sorrow online. Two had even linked back to my Stalker post - about online harassment by a sick individual with multiple personality disorder who ritually posted inflammatory remarks on blogs appearing on Tastespotting - as a possible cause of the meltdown.


The most obvious conclusion people have been drawing is that NotCot have been threatened by litigation and shut down the Tastespotting site as a consequence.


By soliciting content, Tastespotting encouraged people browsing the web to steal appealing images to post on the Tastespotting site. Thereby attracting a huge audience and hence cashing in on sponsorship and advertising, leaving the door wide open for litigation.


What impact then does that have on NotCot's other sites, that do the same on topics of Design and Fashion? Are they to be spared? Or could it be that someone has become embroiled in the case of the Tastespotting Stalker - Charles Treuter - and has involved NotCot in their litigation? Perhaps none of these?


Could it be that resources were stretched or that like Scrabulous they have been threatened by a large corporation? Speculation I expect will be rife over the next fews days.


What is amazing however is the legions of fans who integrated the site into their daily routine. Google search 'Tastespotting Gone' to see how it is reverberating around the Blogasphere. Like a strangulated gasp the lament is global from Estonia to Guam and Helsinki to Nicaragua. With the number of posts being made, I feel like hosting a Pot Luck wake on my blog for Tastespotting.


A quick Google search turns up discussions on forums including MetaFilter, The Nest and ChowHound, which then lead back to me. Perhaps they should now peruse Flickr where there are plenty of sumptuous spots.



I expect on a smaller scale this sense of loss also occurred when Food Porn Watch wound down. I know the number of hits on my blog dropped significantly when they packed up recently. No doubt sites that relied on Tastespotting to supply traffic will suffer in the same way.



As Bloggers become more the focus of Marketers and Advertisers via approaches with lashings of flattery to promote products for free, they are becoming more savvy to the economic opportunities opening up to them online. Sure, the scraping of your intellectual property will bring traffic to your blog, but why would you line the pockets of another person's website with advertising revenue, when you should be getting a cut? Is this where the seeds of litigation lie?




What will spring up in it's place? There is quite clearly a demand for this kind of thing. Google was successful in winning the legal right to display thumbnails from other sites on Google Image Search, so what is the correct way to go about delivering a food image aggregator?

Recipes2share has stated at Serious Eats that
they'll be working on building their own version...here
(I'll update the comments section with any others that spring up)

What are your thoughts?

The TasteSpotting Stalker

…When she mixes her state of Florida psychotropic drugs
(mandated after her SECOND suicide attempt) with alcohol she goes onto numerous blogs and posts non-sensical ramblings such as the one above, using a Proxy Server so as to hide her IP address and to attempt to avoid further harassment lawsuits.

She claims to be a Professional Chef, a Pastry Chef, a SeriousEats advisor, and other "things".

An excerpt from a comment left by a Gastro Troll.
Reproduced from Gastronomy Domine, December 2007

When The Grocer, Purple Goddess & I launched our new Meat Pie review blog I was allocated the task of promoting our new baby. Thinking that it was a site that would be appreciated by homesick expat Aussies I submitted a snap of the pie above and permalink, with a tie in to Australia Day on TasteSpotting.

For those unfamiliar with TasteSpotting it is a site where you can flag food blog posts you like, by inserting a piece of food porn and a permalink. The material may not be yours; the sole requirement is that you should register with them.

Now TasteSpotting can bring you a thousand hits if the viewers love your snap, but to our surprise it also delivered something more sinister.

It came in the form of a comment which set about deliberately to inflame us and other readers. It was childish, bigoted and a little twisted. It was couched as being written by a woman but to me seemed obvious it was from a man. Some derogatory responses ensued from others and I began to suspect that we had now become the focus of entertainment for a person with Multiple Personality Disorder.

We discovered that this Internet Troll had been doing the same on other blogs flagged by TasteSpotting. It was all put in perspective by a comment from ‘Elizabeth Anne’ with a link to a website that had posted an article from 2003 on a person in the Baxter Bulletin, which told of the troll's conviction for harassing several people in North Central Arkansas, USA. Elizabeth Anne also mentioned that he had appropriated the name of another Blogger, whom he had also been stalking. I suspect that the Blogger mentioned is just one of his personalities though.

I have since been researching this person and he has many pseudonyms, probably to the full range of his personalities. There are comments as Liz and Elizabeth claiming to be the wife of the stalker - that must be one of his personalities - the intro comment is an example of this. He mentions bashings and homophobia on other sites, possibly the trigger for his illness. I know that he uses search engines to see who’s talking about him, so will not mention his name or unique pseudonym’s, as this would give at least one of his personality’s great delight.

Bloggers be warned. If you post on Tastespotting, be wary. This man is targeting Food Blogs. He has visited many. It has been said that if he takes a fancy to your profile picture he will harass you by email as well. He is all over bulletin boards, chat rooms and travel forums. His Blog and Myspace page are testimony to his illness, and comically the other personalities in his head leave comments there too as readers.

If you see something fishy in your comments from a TasteSpotting reader, delete it. Don’t give him/them the time of day or satisfaction.

The Food Pornographer wound up posting the following after tiring of his harassment.

“Please read this before commenting. Due to recent events, all comments will be moderated from now on. Therefore, your comment may not appear immediately after posting. If you've left a legitimate comment I assure you I will do my best to moderate comments as quickly as possible. Any abusive or obscene comments, and comments which convey prejudicial sentiments such as those against persons of particular sexualities, races and backgrounds will be removed. Any comments which are intentionally inflammatory and specifically written against the spirit, context and culture of this site and/or its owner will be removed. In other words, trolling comments will not be tolerated. You may express your opinions courteously and disagree with something I've written, of course- I do not expect everyone to agree with my opinions 100% of the time, but I will not tolerate abuse from anyone. This also applies to any emails you may send to me. If these terms are violated I will take further action according to my discretion, which may include banning your IP and reporting you to your ISP. To the genuine readers and supporters of this site, I really appreciate your comments and support. I apologize for this rigamarole and hope you will continue to enjoy the site. Simple maths spam protection is in effect as that allows me keep spambots under control.”