SmartShopper: A Real Yo-Yo of a Device
A visitor from the future has landed on my refrigerator door. Its name is SmartShopper. It's an electronic shopping list, and catalogs like Sur La Table and The Sharper Image are pushing it this holiday season. And if your idea of fun is getting into a screaming fight with your fridge, I highly recommend you pick one up.
SmartShopper is about the size of a Big Grab of chips and weighs a pound. It's solidly built, takes four AAs, and sticks firmly to our refrigerator. It has a built-in thermal printer. And it's easy to use. Just press the blue "Record" button and say what you want to add to your list. SmartShopper will present you with its three best interpretations of what you said. For example, earlier today I pressed the button and confidently intoned, "Yogurt." SmartShopper replied:
YO-YO
YELLOW CAKE
VEAL
Yellow cake? Now I know where Saddam Hussein actually procured his radioactive material: the Quality Food Center in Seattle.
It only took three tries to convince SmartShopper that I was not building a dirty bomb (or shopping for a yo-yo; how often do you buy a yo-yo?). That's a lot better than my wife, Laurie, did yesterday when I came home and she said, "I do not like the SmartShopper." It had taken SmartShopper six attempts to recognize "eggs."
You can train SmartShopper to better recognize your voice, but it has to be done for each individual item. You can also add items that SmartShopper doesn't have in its database. The interface for doing this is as convenient as teaching a baby to read Tolstoy.
When it's time to print, SmartShopper helpfully sorts your list into categories by supermarket section. Unfortunately, it's often wrong about this, too. I needed fresh ginger root. "Ginger," I told SmartShopper. It filed this in the "spices" section. (I was supposed to ask for "ginger root.")
So, as digital companions go, SmartShopper is more HAL 9000 than Holodeck. Still, like HAL, it offers entertainment value. When I put mackerel on my list, it not only identified it correctly, it gave me this list of guesses:
MACKEREL
NIPPLES
RED BULL
Sounds like a hell of a weekend to me.
SmartShopper: $150 from smartshopperusa.com and other retailers, including Amazon.com
About the author: Matthew Amster-Burton lives in Seattle. His work appears frequently in the Seattle Times and Seattle magazine. He also maintains the blog Roots and Grubs. His favorite food is pad Thai.
Add a comment:
Previewing your comment:
HTML Hints
Some HTML is OK: <a href="URL">link</a>, <strong>strong</strong>, <em>em</em>
Comment Guidelines
Post whatever you want, just keep it seriously about eats, seriously. We reserve the right to delete off-topic or inflammatory comments. Learn more at our Comment Policy page.
If you see something not so nice, please, report an inappropriate comment.
12 Comments:
"Sounds like a hell of a weekend to me."
LOL. Reminds me of Major Kong in Dr. Strangelove: "Survival kit contents check. In them you'll find: one forty-five caliber automatic; two boxes of ammunition; four days' concentrated emergency rations; one drug issue containing antibiotics, morphine, vitamin pills, pep pills, sleeping pills, tranquilizer pills; one miniature combination Russian phrase book and Bible; one hundred dollars in rubles; one hundred dollars in gold; nine packs of chewing gum; one issue of prophylactics; three lipsticks; three pair of nylon stockings. Shoot, a fella' could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff. "
Adam Kuban at 4:04PM on 12/12/07
truly, the smartShopper would have bought something more hi-tek for $150. like a small pad of paper styled vertically with lines, a pen, and perhaps a nice pair of winter boots. the interface is dweeby. and i am even more so for saying dweeby in public.
nataliepo at 4:09PM on 12/12/07
wow, i'd get it for entertainment reasons..
talida at 4:33PM on 12/12/07
MACKEREL
NIPPLES
RED BULL
that made me throw up a little bit in my mouth. :)
Perhaps it need a PG rating for the little one.
i8alot at 6:39PM on 12/12/07
Adam, now that you mention that, I'm sure I stole that joke from Dr. Strangelove.
i8alot, my 3-year-old loved the SmartShopper and its dumb mistakes and was sad when I sent it back.
mamster at 7:30PM on 12/12/07
If you really need an electronic shopping list, try the online one at WeGottaEat.com. No yelling required. You can customize your own list entries and catoegories with ease. I use the little notes to track prices. And it's free, leaving you more to spend on Vegas. The site also has other features, but I have been playing with the shopping list a lot lately.
matriarchy at 11:48PM on 12/12/07
Let's see...
$150 for this...
$.50 for a pad of paper, and $.12 for a pencil...
hhhmmmm
:)
suburbangourmet at 10:16AM on 12/13/07
That is the second-stupidest food-related product I've ever seen. The first:
http://www.amazon.com/Waring-WM007-Professional-Electric-Martini/dp/B000VWAK6Q
jb_dc at 11:14AM on 12/13/07
Oh my God, jb, that is awesome. But why doesn't it have a printer?
mamster at 4:36PM on 12/13/07
I have a free program that does this paper free on my palm pilot, which cost less than $100. What a scam!
I'm currently working on getting the new iphone to do the same...
Not to mention I have a bit of trouble with voice recognition. I often find myself screaming into my phone at work at the top of my voice before I realise everyone is laughing at me...
jennywenny at 6:33PM on 12/14/07
Do people REALLY have THAT much of a problem keeping running stock of their kitchen in their head? These labor saving devices to me seem like anything but... How could this be in any way superior to writing a grocery list? I swear, people want a gadget for everything now.
Ravara at 1:53PM on 12/15/07
Ravara, I have occasionally wished I could access my fridge online and see what's in it, but usually I can just call home and bug my family to look in the fridge.
mamster at 8:10PM on 12/15/07