New food search page
You’ll notice a new “Search” link in the menu bar. This page allows you to look up any public food in the Heads Up database, as well as your own private foods if you’re logged in. There is nothing really novel here for existing users; it is intended as a general resource and is accessible to non-members. At the time of this writing, Heads Up Eating has nutritional information for 18021 public foods, and that’s a tremendous amount of information that can be shared with the rest of the world. Hopefully that will bring in new members, and that means more public foods for existing Heads Up members.
Heads Up Eating is officially launched!
I know it’s sudden, but the time is right. After months and months of work, the site is finally ready to go live! The base URL http://www.headsupeating.com now works. I’m not going to be aggressively promoting the site for at least another month due to my schedule, but please go ahead and tell everyone you know who may be interested. You may use this tool I created to email them if you wish.
I’ve added several tutorials to help new users get up and running; many of you noted you needed a little help getting started so hopefully these will do the trick. I’ve made a bunch of little fixes and tweaks here and there. You’ll notice I’ve added some cool retro graphics to go along with the retro theme I’ve been envisioning the whole time. I’ve kept them as unobtrusive as possible.
I’ve still got many ideas in store for Heads Up, so the site will only get better and better. Feel free to contact me with any thoughts, ideas, or criticisms you may have. Keep in mind I may be slow to respond over the next month as I’ll have limited internet access.
hue.me
Since .me domains went on sale this morning, I decided to purchase hue.me as a shortcut for entering the entire headsupeating.com URL.
Check it out: http://hue.me
Kaiser Permanente study finds keeping a food diary doubles diet weight loss
One of the most comprehensive studies on weight loss ever has been performed, confirming of course what we knew all along: that keeping a food journal works better than anything else for losing weight!
Kaiser Permanente study finds keeping a food diary doubles diet weight loss
In light of this study, and the fact that I really want to get the site out there for everyone finally, as of now I’m freezing new features until after the official launch. I’m going to be concentrating on creating help documentation, tips, and tutorials.
User membership types
I’ve setup two different membership types. Premium members will have full access to the site, with unlimited numbers of saved meals and recipes, Heads Up Eating will always remember their daily journal information for as long as they stay members, and they won’t see advertisements. Free members will still have full access to the site, but they will be limited to 2 saved meals, 1 recipe, their daily journal history will last for 3 days at a time, and they’ll see unobtrusive advertisements. These small restrictions may evolve over time. I feel this will allow more casual users most of the benefits of the site, but if they really want to get serious about it, they will have some incentive to upgrade to a very modestly priced premium membership, with the income contributing towards the costs in maintaining the site. Premium memberships are available in month-to-month increments, or a greatly reduced-price yearly membership. All billing and credit card information will be securely handled and stored off-site on PayPal.com, probably the most reputable online payment site. International payments in most major currencies are okay.
As a thank you to my active beta testers, I’ve given you guys free lifetime premium memberships.
Improving your food search results
To help you improve your search results, it helps to know the algorithm the food search engine at Heads Up Eating is using. In this article I will explain how results are found and ordered, and give you some tips on finding foods as fast as possible.
Some terms you should know: “search query” refers to your entire search query, spaces and individual words included. “Search term” refers to an individual word in the search query. So if you type “pears raw” in the name field, your search query is “pears raw”, and your search terms are “pears” and “raw”. This article applies to search queries in the name field–obviously you can narrow your search down greatly by including the brand, if possible.
Private foods are listed first, followed by USDA imported foods, followed by public foods added by Heads Up members, all color coded. For this reason, you should copy foods that you are planning on using often to your private foods. There is a link to do this when you display USDA imported foods and public foods. Once foods are added to your private foods, they are very easy to find since they are always displayed first in any search. This is huge, not only because it will be easy to find, but Heads Up Eating will also remember the last serving size you used if the food is private, often saving you time. Also if the original food is a public food, and the owner for some reason decides to delete it, you’ll still have your copy.
Within the results of each type of food (private, USDA imported, and public), the results that start with your search query are displayed first in alphabetical order, followed by results that match all of your search terms anywhere in their name field, in alphabetical order, excluding the results already found. I know that sounds complicated, but basically remember, if you know the food starts with a certain term, searching for this term will help you find it since it will show up first. If you don’t happen to know the first term in the name field, you can still probably find it, but it may be hidden a few screens in.
Obviously if you can narrow your search down by brand, you’ll want to do this. If you’re searching for a whole food out of the USDA database, this is not possible however. If your first couple guesses for a search query are turning up fruitless, you probably just want to use the Food Tree, also on the food search page. Clicking on the category nodes and finally on a label will give you a nice concise search at that level, and this is often the easiest way to find foods. Again, once you find a food you’re looking for, and you plan on using it often, definitely copy it to your private foods.
And lastly, though this may be obvious, you can restrict the search engine to only certain types of foods (private, USDA imported, and public). If you still can’t find it, it’s probably not in there, so help yourself out and the Heads Up community by adding it yourself and making it public. The more people add foods, the more valuable of a tool Heads Up Eating becomes.
Invite friends tool
Even though I kinda don’t want you to use it until I officially launch the site (and the link is to the base URL which is invalid at the moment), I’ve added a tool to invite your friends to Heads Up Eating. I wanted to have this tool up and running and tested before launch. Besides letting your friends know about this ridiculously awesome site, the more people join, the more public foods will be added for you to use, so everyone wins. The tool includes a pretty cool little widget to import addresses from your address books. Oh and by the way, you can access the tool at the bottom of every page.
Food search more powerful, smarter
I’ve improved the algorithm used for the food search feature; it should now return more relevant results first. I’ve also made a bunch of small usabily enhancements, and updated the graphical look of the site a bit. Visually I think the site is looking pretty good, definitely let me know what you guys think. I just finished reading a book on Javascript/DOM/AJAX so expect the site to become even better (behaving more like a standalone application, less like a website) over time. Oh, and I also created this blog (instead of putting the site updates directly on the login page).
Edit and delete recipes, small usability enhancements
You may now edit and delete recipes. You may also sort by column when searching for foods to add, as well as in the food, meal, and recipe management page. Some minor usability improvements have been made as well.
Recipes are finally here!
Recipes are finally implemented! You can create new ones, and add them as meals or to meals, or convert them to foods. This is a powerful feature, so be sure to check it out. Still left to be done are managing recipes which includes the ability to edit and delete existing ones. A whole bunch of small aesthetic and usability improvements have been made as well.