My iPod Nano has been getting scratched raw, such as it is that I don't have a case for it. With all my iPods past and present, I've resisted a case because I've felt they only bulk up the device without adding the proper amount of visual interest. If this one, meant to look like thin strips of shabu shabu beef, was available in the U.S. and not just in Japan, though, I'd wrap it around my iPod in a second. [via The Gizmodo]
Stephen Colbert interviews inventor Dean Kamen (best known for the Segway) to talk about his vapor compression distiller, a machine that takes contaminated water and turn it into pure drinking water without the use of filters or chemicals. Colbert tests the distiller by adding Doritos to the "contaminated water" container.
The technology behind vapor compression distillers isn't necessarily new, but Kamen's invention looks a lot more compact than already existing vapor compression distillers. Since Kamen appears to have just announced his distiller on the Colbert Report last week, there isn't much information available about it yet.
Watch the interview, after the jump.
Japanese restaurants already have the habit of displaying menus in the form of realistic plastic models to give customers a clear idea of what they're ordering. What's the next step? Tables with LCD touch screens that display 3-D pictures of the food. It's the future.
Researchers in Japan are working on a new smoke detector/fire alarm that uses the strong odor of wasabi to wake up the deaf. Watch the alarm in action with this video from BBC News.
Today in 1879 pioneer nutritionist Elmer McCollum was born. "He isolated the growth-promoting factors now called vitamins A and B, distinguishing fat-soluble and water-soluble forms.... McCollum and biochemist-in-training Marguerite Davis gave the 'factors' letter names, because their structures had not yet been determined to give them proper chemical names."
The Readybot will be the indispensable cleaning tool of the future! The far off future. Right now this dishwasher-size prototype is still learning the ropes and can only do less than half of your common kitchen chores. Adam summed up the robot's speed pretty well: "Mold would grow faster than that robot could clean it."
Watch our little robot friend clean up a kitchen mess after the jump. [via Engadget]
First there was the hamburger phone from Juno and then the sandwich phone. Now comes the toast phone. This concept from Brazilian design student Renata Quintela comes with two bread phones and a toaster charger. [via Gizmodo]
The New York Times reports today that the first Korean astronaut will be bringing some of that nation's beloved kimchi into space with him. The Korean national dish, a powerful, extremely pungent fermented cabbage, is not exactly shelf- or space-stable, so finding a way to bring it safely into space required a costly and time-consuming effort:
Three top government research institutes spent millions of dollars and several years perfecting a version of kimchi that would not turn dangerous when exposed to cosmic rays or other forms of radiation and would not put off non-Korean astronauts with its pungency.
Related: Space Food Sticks
Chemical engineers at Nestlé have invented a machine that can distinguish between good and bad espresso nearly as accurately as trained espresso tasters. The machine is meant to be used as a quality control device in the coffee industry. [via engadget, title from Chris Fredette]
Instead of reading the headlines off a newspaper, why not read them off...a cup? The Yuno PC designed by Jason Farsai is a computer in the form of a coffee mug. Using the mug's touchscreen display you can check weather, time, traffic, stocks, and more. [via engadget]
The Col-Pop: emerging technology from South Korean fried chicken chain BBQ Chicken. Popcorn chicken rides up top; cola chills out below.
Proving yet again that South Korea is light years ahead of everyone else in fast-food technology is The Col-Pop. The nation that brought the world the spiral-cut potato on a stick and hot-dog-stuffed pizza ushers in a new era of snack portability with this mashup of drink cup and food container that holds popcorn chicken up top and a cold drink in the bottom.
The Col-Pop is the brainchild of BBQ Chicken, a South Korea–based fried chicken chain that has recently set its sights on worldwide chicken domination (though at this time, it only has locations in New York, New Jersey, and North Carolina). From the looks of this container, on-the-go America will certainly eat it up. It's perfect for handy snacking while walking, driving, talking on the phone, or—as we discovered the other day—blogging.
And the genius doesn't stop at popcorn chicken. In South Korea, sister company BHC Chicken also offers spaghetti, french fries, and fried mozzarella balls in Col-Pop containers. The Col-Pops we inspected come in two sizes: small (20 ounce cup) and large (32 ounce).
Kraft Foods is developing new food products that contain intestinal worm-killing chemicals. These products will not be sold in the United States but are aimed towards rural Asia, Africa and Latin America, where millions of children are afflicted with illnesses caused by worms.
Researchers at the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology have developed a robot farming "exoskeleton" suit designed to help aging farmers lift heavy objects and perform manual tasks more easily. The current cost for each suit is about 500,000-1,000,000 yen ($4,500-$9,000) but may drop to 200,000 yen ($1,800) when they aim to mass produce it in four years. [via Boing Boing]
That does it, folks: As was expected last week, The FDA today officially declared certain cloned livestock safe to eat. From the L.A. Times:
Initially, only a small amount of steaks, pork and dairy products derived from clones will become available in grocery stores. But over the next three to five years—after ranchers have time to clone their most prized animals and those clones are able to breed—the products will become routine on store shelves, industry executives said.
Cloned cattle, pigs, and goats are aces to eat, the agency said, but as for cloned sheep—well, there's not enough info regarding them or other species for the government to OK. So put down your knives and forks if you were waiting for cloned lamb, chickens, or—I don't know—squirrel.
Pitchforks are raised. The battle is on: Italian farmers fight cloned food.
Said a document release Friday by the European Food Safety Agency: “It is very unlikely that any difference exists in terms of food safety between food products originating from clones and their progeny compared with those derived from conventionally bred animals."
It's a prototype, and who knows if it'll ever go into production, but a British tinkerer has introduced jetlike fan technology into the toasting process. He was frustrated with his plodding toaster while making his favorite meal, beans on toast. "The design came out of sheer frustration that by the time the toast is ready, my beans have gone cold," he said. [via Cold Mud]
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:
Mega link-aggregator site Digg adding new categories tonight. Says Digg founder Kevin Rose, "... we're adding a whole new 'Lifestyle' category with topics like Autos, Food & Drink, and Travel." One more place for food lovers to watch.
Wired puts your Thanksgiving feast under a microscope.
In the future, sidewalks won't be covered with black spots of ancient gum, nor will students hands unintentionally brush against hardened gum wads hidden underneath their seats. Chemists at the University of Bristol have invented a less sticky chewing gum called Clean Gum that can be simply removed with water. Professor Terence Cosgrove explains that by adding a special polymer, the typically hydrophobic gum becomes hydrophilic, allowing water to disintegrate the gum over time or to form a film around the gum, releasing it from whatever surface it would normally stick to. Taste tests have already proven Clean Gum, which is expected to be released commercially in 2008, to taste as good or better than conventional gum. It won't be long before Singaporeans are allowed to chew gum again. [via Candy Addict]
Clipped permanently to a leaf during the growing season, the sensor would monitor moisture content and chemical signatures that can indicate when the plant is undergoing water stress. The chemical signs, such as an increase in salt and sugar content in the cells, occur much earlier than physical signs, such as drooping leaves, that many farmers rely on now.
$6,000 is a lot of a money to spend on an oven but the NYT's Julia Moskin thinks it just might be worth it for the TurboChef, a super-fast oven used in commercial kitchens that's looking to make its way into homes this year. The TurboChef site has videos of Chicago star chef Charlie Trotter using the oven, including one of him cooking a rack of lamb in six minutes—a dish that usually takes 45 minutes properly done in a kitchen!
Between Moskin's piece and Trotter's videos, I'm convinced I would spend the money if I a) cooked regularly and b) owned my own apartment to put it in.
Johnny from Popgadget discusses how beef with a pedigree could make us safer: "TraceBack is a new system for DNA testing cattle and swine, and then recording the movements of the butchered meat. A butcher would be able to take a small sample of beef and cross-reference the DNA against an IdentiGEN database to verify that the meat is from a healthy animal." Alternately, health departments can use TraceBack to identify the source of contamination during outbreaks, from the point of sale all the way back to the farm and to which particular animal was sick.
Laura Shapiro on gender and molecular gastronomy in the New York Times, Kitchen Chemistry Is Chic, but Is It a Woman’s Place?:
Maybe all the machines and chemicals are contributing to a revolution other than the one about frozen air and warm gelatin. “Restaurant kitchens were organized like military brigades, because that was the only way to turn out such a volume of work and make all the fast decisions that were necessary,” said Mr. Goldfarb of Room 4 Dessert. “Now it’s more like the modern military, using technology as opposed to brute strength.”
But many women dreaming of a restaurant career still may not see the appeal of a laboratory kitchen. Ms. Yung and Ms. Sanchez have been struck by how few women are in high-end restaurant kitchens of any sort. “We’re always wondering where the girls are,” Ms. Yung said.
If you've read recent articles about women in technology, this article pretty much runs through the same old tropes as those do, just set in kitchens instead of boardrooms.
It began in law school when I was miserable and lonely and sick of sitting in my apartment with study guides and hardcover texts splayed about the floor. I needed to get out and I needed to get out regularly. Where I ended up is where many other people end up these days in similar situations: a coffee shop. Specifically, Starbucks. There was one near my apartment so I went there and ordered a froufrou coffee drink, sat with my books, and ogled attractive people while pretending to study.
And that's been the formula ever since. I'm writing in a coffee shop right now: Tea Lounge in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn. I'm leaning against a brick wall, I have my laptop on my lap and I'm watching a mother and son play Pac-Man.
A coffee shop is like a greenhouse for my brain. At home I have too many distractions: TV, TiVo, DVD player, DVDs, Netflix movies piling up (Eraserhead on pause because Craig fell asleep). A coffee shop is a vacation for my brain. Despite the people, despite the noise, I can home in on my work and not cave into temptation. Unless, of course, the coffee shop has a wireless Internet connection, in which case I'm in trouble.
You know tele-conferencing? Chicago-based Accenture, the Telegraph reports, is working on bringing it to dinner.
The virtual guest's image is then projected on to the screen, and the solitary diner no longer feels that she is eating alone.
Sad or fantastic?
How about hangover-free alcohol? Or programmable soda whose flavor you'd control by twisting the cap a certain way, like a locker combination? Someone's actually working on this. Whose priorities are these? Personally, I wish they'd tackle the hangover-free alcohol instead.
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