TightWind is written by Kyle Baxter. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

When I released Basil a year ago, I had no idea what to expect. Not only was it my first iOS application (or application altogether), but it was the first real thing I’d conceived, designed and built for people to use.

The last year has been incredible. Not only has Basil sold fairly well on the App Store, but it’s been useful to a lot of people, and something they’ve loved to use. It’s incredibly gratifying that Basil is helping people to store their own recipes, find new ones, and cook them. Since it was released, though, there’s been one request people have made that’s dwarfed all others in terms of quantity: photos. Surprisingly, people want to save photos along with their recipes. (Okay, well. It’s not so surprising.)

Today I am releasing Basil 1.5. You can go get it on the App Store, check out the new website, or keep reading for the details.

There are four big new features, but the headliner is that Basil now has full support for photos. When you save recipes from supported sites with photos, the photo will be, too. For other sites, you can add the photo as well. And as you’d expect, when you’re creating your own recipes, you can add photos of your own recipes.

Being able to see what the recipe looks like makes browsing your recipes more engaging and makes Basil much more useful, because you have a much better idea what the finished meal will end up like. It’s sometimes difficult to picture it in your head from a recipe’s description and if you haven’t looked at a recipe in a while, it’s easy to forget, too. When I was thinking of how to build in photos, I wanted to do it in such a way that it added all of that, but also so it didn’t detract from what’s special about Basil, which is its focus on making sure there’s nothing in the way of you and the recipe while cooking. I think that’s exactly how it ended up; it took what’s good about Basil and made it better. I think you’ll agree.

Photos is the big new feature, but there are three more large additions to Basil as well. The first is the ability to import and export your recipes to Dropbox.

Dropbox

When you’ve taken the time to enter in all of your favorite personal recipes, and to collect recipes from the web as well, keeping them safe is even more important than finding new favorites. Recipes aren’t quite as important as family photos, but they’re definitely important, and very personal to people. Some have been handed down from parents and grandparents, others created by you, and many are a part of past memories or memories yet to make—special dinners for special people in your life, parties, family events.

That’s why Basil can now export its recipe library to Dropbox and import it as well. Now, you can periodically export your library to Dropbox and never have to worry that you’ll lose your recipes. Basil always backed up its recipes when you backed up your iPad to iTunes or iCloud, but this will make it much easier to restore your library or to transfer your recipes to another iPad.

Unlike a typical backup/restore feature, importing will not replace your current recipe library; instead, it will add recipes that aren’t currently there. That way, if you delete a recipe that you’d like to bring back, importing from an older export file that includes that recipe won’t wipe out the recipes you’ve added since—it’ll just add back the one you deleted.

This isn’t the most exciting feature in the world. But I think it’s going to prove useful to a lot of people—make their recipes more secure, make it easier when setting up a new iPad or giving recipes to a spouse—and I think that’s pretty great.

Notes

Here’s another feature many people have asked for and I think is really useful: you can now add notes to each recipe. I’ve found this really useful for making smoked brisket in particular, because I usually adjust something each time (the rub, what kind of wood I used, whether I mopped it while it was in the smoker, et cetera). You can use it to note any changes to the recipe or method you made (“I used half the salt,” “sauté the onions for 5 minutes longer”), or even specific instructions for how certain people like it made. Whatever you want to remember for next time. It’s a very simple feature, but also quite useful.

Cross Off

This is my favorite new feature even though it’s the simplest. (Maybe that has something to do with it, actually.) Now, while cooking, you can “cross off” ingredients you’ve already used by tapping them. Basil will turn them gray and put a line through them, so when you look at the ingredients list for the next step, your eyes will be drawn to the remaining ingredients—no need to scan a long list of ingredients. It’s ridiculously simple, but it’s also ridiculously useful while cooking.

I am incredibly excited for you all to finally be able to use this version of Basil. I’ve been using it for the past couple of months, and there’s no doubt that it’s a superior application. Better looking, more flexible, more powerful, and makes cooking easier.

One last note: I love adding features like cross off, notes and automatic unit conversion. My goal is to add new capabilities to Basil that make cooking an easier process but don’t at all distract from cooking itself. They should be purely additive: if you use them, they help out, but if you’re not use them (or don’t want to use them), they aren’t in the way. Hopefully I’ve achieved that, and I am working away on some new ideas there, too.

Go get the update! And if you don’t already own it, go get it on the App Store!

Last week, Google announced they are shutting down Reader. Many people were upset by the move, especially because so many of us depend on Reader for reading RSS feeds even if we don’t directly use it. I’ve settled into using NetNewsWire on my Mac (which I have for years) and Reeder on my iPad and iPhone, and this set up has worked very well for a long time. It certainly is a pain to figure out a new workflow.

Some, though, have suggested that Google could charge for Reader or for developer access to its (private, undocumented) API if they really wanted to, so this is more evidence that Google believes so much in free-with-advertising they’d rather forego that revenue and kill the service than keep it around and charge.

I think that’s a misread of the situation. First, Reader was released during a very different part of Google’s history. In 2005, Google experimented with many different services that didn’t necessarily fit an obvious plan; instead, the strategy seemed to be to plant many different seeds, see which ones grew, which ones sprouted beautiful flowers, and which ones didn’t. And even within that environment, Google’s leadership was apparently unsure about Reader from the very beginning. I believe, then, that Google’s mistake was in releasing a product they cared little about, and for refusing to develop it into something more that could contribute to Google’s top and bottom lines. One of Google Reader’s creators, Chris Wetherell, wrote in 2011 that Google was ignoring many opportunities with Reader; specifically, it was a direct publishing mechanism from content creator and audience, and a huge opportunity to direct it toward information junkies (journalists, etc). The opportunity was there, but Google didn’t take it.

That’s a smart criticism, but it’s different than criticizing Google for shutting down Reader. Since Larry Page took over the company two years ago, Google has revamped their products to form a cohesive whole, largely in orbit around Google+, and have eliminated products, projects and teams that don’t fit their new focused strategy. Google’s management team apparently doesn’t believe that Reader is a part of that, and that seems more than valid to me; a pure RSS reader (which is, more or less, what Reader is) doesn’t have much opportunity, whether it’s monetized through a developer API or not (and, to be clear, there’s not much money there anyway). So they cut it, so they can focus their time and resources on projects they believe are important to Google’s future. That’s the right move.

I think this is a tiny part of a much larger movement within Google to follow a more integrated approach with their products. Until 2012 or so, Google used Android as a means to control the mobile market and to commoditize hardware, which together would make Google the dominant company in mobile and put them in position to make it their next big revenue source through advertising. This hasn’t been successful, though. Google makes relatively little from Android while one company—Samsung—makes more operating income from Android than Google as a whole. Think about that! Google is doing the hard work of developing the operating system and applications, but Samsung is capturing all of the revenue and income. Google’s Android strategy failed.

I believe that Google is streamlining and re-focusing its products around Google+ so they can create integrated products. Rather than just create Nexus devices (manufactured by other companies) that have been little more than reference designs, Google instead intends to combine Android/Chrome, their services (Gmail, Maps, Google Now, Google+, et al) with their new-found ability to create great hardware, and create first-class computing devices. Phones, tablets, notebooks, and wearable computing, all designed by Google, under the Google name and sold by Google.

This makes a lot of sense. Not only can Google create better products by doing so, and better push the bounds of the technology industry, but this also answers how they’re going to make money from Android: sell devices. Everyone is better off. Except, of course, for Google’s “partners” on Android. Samsung certainly isn’t, but HTC and the many others that make Android-based phones will be hurt as well. Perhaps Samsung will decide (or already intends to) fork Android and develop their own platform, but I don’t think that really hurts Google at all; Google already receives basically zero benefit from Samsung’s use of Android, so making and selling their own hardware and losing Samsung in the process seems like a worthwhile trade to me.

I want to say, too, that I not only think this is exactly the right thing for Google to do, but it’s exciting that they are. This embraces what makes Google great—their obsession with pushing the bounds of what’s possible in ways that are useful to everyone—but does so with a bring-it-to-market focus. This isn’t the old days of forever “betas” that we are used to; I don’t think it’s any accident that we’ve been hearing so much of Google’s X lab recently, considering that in years past, all of Google was effectively a lab.

Google’s undergoing a transformation before our eyes, and I love where it’s headed. I’ve been quite critical of Google Glass, but it’s part of a much bigger change at Google that I think is not only necessary but positive.

For the past few months, I’ve been working on a big update to Basil. It’s probably large enough to call it a 2.0, but I’m going with 1.5. There are a number of features I think you are going to love, but the big one is photos. Photos for recipes from the web, photos for your own recipes, browsing through your recipe’s photos—it’s all there, and it turns Basil into an entirely new app. It’s awesome to be able to look through your recipes and browse their photos to see what you want to cook, especially when they’re photos you’ve taken.

The release is coming soon, and I am beyond excited. To be notified the second it’s out, you can sign up here.

I have another announcement, too. I’m going to do something a little special for this release. Signing up there will also give you the chance to win a Baratza Virtuoso coffee grinder and a few bags of fantastic coffee courtesy of Tonx!

It’s hard to go wrong with that combination, whether you’re already a, uh, coffee enthusiast, or are just starting. I hope you are all excited for the new version of Basil and for the chance to get a Baratza grinder and Tonx coffee!