Don’t know what to cook for dinner. Pull out that cookbook and find something good to eat. Ah, but you’ll have to go shopping or scrounge around for the ingredients already in your cupboard.

Or you could power up the browser and head off to a number of cooking websites that can help you find that next meal.

Many recipe websites offer everything from photos to shopping lists to reviews by other users. No more guessing how it will turn out when you try it yourself. Photos of the dishes from multiple viewpoints and users help to show what the final product should look like and any tricks you should try.

If you have a couple of ingredients you want in your meal, there are tools to search for recipes that include some of or exactly those ingredients. It’s like the opposite of a cookbook. You won’t need to go to the store, or at least not tonight. Need to reduce the number of proportions? There are tools that split or multiply the quantity of ingredients by the number of servings you need.

There’s also the social networking side of meal planning. Need something new and refreshing?  A popular recipe could be the answer. Stay away from those recipes that are rated least popular.  You can even discover people who have similar tastes and look at what they recently cooked.

And don’t forget that these receipes are not just in text and photos, but include video clips as well. You don’t have to sit through a whole 30 minute or hour long show waiting for that one dish to be completed and placed on the table (often through some magic of television).

If you become an expert at cooking, you can share your recipes with the members of the community. You may even receive critiques and suggestions like adding another seasoning to make your dish even better or a variation like chicken instead of beef. Maybe even a vegetarian version that you would never have considered.

You can learn a lot about cooking from the community. Are you hungry?

Terms of service (TOS) for a website is an interesting legal document that few bother to read when registering for a website. It’s the overly long and complicated text that covers everything that could ever happen to the service, data, and usage, just to name a few.

It’s suppose to tell the user what is and is not appropriate for the service, such as harrassment and using the service in a method that could violate law. User conduct is important because the service itself could be compromised and be responsible for damage to other users.

One common item is the limitation of liability. Access to the service can be terminated at any time. There is no guarantee that you will be able to access the service. Data stored is not backed up. You’re responsible for your password and account. Basically, they are not responsible for anything. You are.  They want to avoid lawsuits that could put them out of business.

The TOS usually is pages long with 10 point font. There are very few who sit there reading every word and would agree to having their data be marketed or accessible with an unrevocable license to use without further compensation. Users don’t care, or at least not enough to disagree (also know as not accepting the terms) and be denied entry to the service.

When I see new websites that have simple TOS documents, as in less than a page, my first thought is that they are careful with the use of their service. But being so young, they haven’t experienced any legal issues with their users yet. Once that happens, they join the same boat and have bloated TOS themselves.

A website TOS online isn’t the only instance a long legal document. Cell phone contracts, cable services, car warrenties, and many others have legal documents waiving the right to claims against the makers. Doesn’t anyone care about the quality of the products they provide enough to take some responsibilities themselves?

The web was once very primative with a limited amount of content. Most of this was academic, sharing knowledge between institutions. Email was the main communication channel, and user feedback was sent through this medium.

With Twitter, FriendFeed, and blogs galore, there is a tremendous amount of data being uploaded to the web. What used to be managable for users to consume has blown up to years of reading, all created within seconds. And with even less time in the hectic lives of users, how can we consume all this information.

Information overload is becoming a problem. A user rarely visit each website and determine manually what is new and what has changed. The human memory cannot take on this much responsibility or withstand the fatigue that such effort would create.

Services like Google Reader help limit a firehose of information and present it in a smaller, easier digestable chunks. Google Reader presents a user interface that greys out any RSS items you have viewed, among other techniques to speed up analysis of what’s important.

But this can cause another problem. The attention spans of children and teens reading on the web has shortened. Instead of reading thousand word essays, they have become accustomed to 140 character content chunks. The small amount of information contained in these chunks is easy to consume quickly. Sometimes too quickly and can negatively shorten the attention span.

The always on and always available content never ends and can become addicting. The goal of getting through all the content is never fulfilled and can be detrimental for someone who needs to reach goals in their life. Are you missing something valuable by going to sleep without finishing reading the long list of content that just came in?  Just a few more minutes should do.

During breaks and downtime, reading an entry here or there keeps the brain working constantly, and can lead to never resting and relaxing. The already shortened attention spans become even shorter, impatient and an always on attention spans.

It’s important to realize that sometimes having access to everything isn’t always the best.  Use caution when near the firehose of information.  It’s okay to step away.

Buying tickets a couple of years ago meant going down to the stadium and standing in line to see what (good) seats were left. Hopefully the lines were not too long, and the interaction with the person behind the window was pleasant and could guarantee a decent seat with the right choice of words.

Fast forward to today where you can go to sites like Ticketmaster and buy tickets without getting dressed, often considered paradise. Tickets are shipped and all you have to worry about is how you’re going to get to the stadium (and whether your friend will ditch you at the last minute).

The online purchase method cuts down on the staffing needed and security around the stadium. Let people take a few minutes and figure out if they want the seats shown to them or not.  And  invite people to a pre-sale event to buy tickets before the general public.

Tickets are shipped by regular mail for free or via express shipping. If you feel so inclined, you can even pay to print an e-ticket. Forgive me if I’m cheap, but they charge you per ticket to display an e-ticket for you to print out at home. That means you pay for the privilege, for the ink, and for the paper on top of the ticket cost. The privilege costs more than the ink and paper.

If that wasn’t already a fantastic experience to look forward to, you get to solve a captcha while still waking up in your PJs.  And to put even more pressure on you after you get through the captcha, you have a specific amount of time to complete each step of the process. If you don’t load the next page before the time is up, you forfeit your “best tickets.”

If you don’t mind the extra fees they tack on for the convenience and the show, it’s a great deal.