Nommy Food Porn at Nom.ms

This content originally appeared on my former Chicagosphere online-media blog, hosted on the Chicago Tribune's ChicagoNow network.

Has your inner foodie ever wanted to gave voyeuristically across a dining room to appraise the wonder of some culinary delight being enjoyed at a table of strangers? Boy, have I got a website for you. Savor the food porn--without feeling dirty--at Nom.ms.

When all-around Internet Renaissance man David Kadavy (@kadavy) returned to his native Midwest from the Bay Area last year ("I missed trees, brick buildings, and seasons..."), he and coding buddies Rodrigo Guzman and Chad Glendenin wanted to have a little fun. So they did what any self-respecting web geeks would do to relax...they entered a 48-hour coding competition to design a new web site.

The result of their two days at the digital beach is Nom.ms, a self-described "tweet what you eat" photo blog for Twitter users. Anyone with a Twitter account is free to register with Nom.ms by sending a photo of food they're about to eat to new@nom.ms. A follow-up email offers instructions for linking your Nom.ms profile to your Twitter account.

Once that's done, any food photos--called, appropriately enough, "nomms"--that you email to the same address will be posted to the Nom.ms site and tweeted on your Twitter account. The subject line of your email becomes the title of your photo submission.

After you email your personal food porn, you can sign-in to Nom.ms and write a note to describe the food, where you bought it, how you made it, etc. (The site's instructions could be more clear in this regard, but following the steps I've told you above should keep you out of trouble.)

A core gang of "nommers" already displays a wide variety of culinary goodness in the site's public timeline. (As you might expect from my aging waistline, I'm already there.) By way of brief example:

(Photo: Surf and Turf Kebabs from jamisonhiner.)

(Photo: Modified ants on a log, sans log from beckybloom.)

(Photo: Sapori Trattoria Panna Cotta from kadavy, himself.)

Kadavy says the idea for Nom.ms came to him at local brunch chain Orange, when he TwitPic'd a plate of frushi (explanation via local blogger Rachelle Bowden) and thought how neat it woud be to aggregate all such microblogged photos of food heaven in one place for all to see.

"I thought creating a repository for pictures of food could one day combat what I call 'menu anxiety,' which is the feeling of stress I get when I look at a menu," Kadavy tells me. "It's all just a bunch of words to me - I want to see what I'm ordering. Also, I've been known to forget what dishes I've had at particular restaurants - and whether I've enjoyed them or not."

That's certainly an explanation this ADD-infused blogger can get behind.

Kadavy says he and his coding cohorts are treading carefully with potential future plans for the site. Right now they're watching the creativity of their new foodie community develop. I think it's a killer idea and a great adjunct to Twitter. More than that, it's fun.

Foodies, go forth and nomm.