It’s here: The official invite for Apple’s September 9 annual iPod event. It kicks off at 10AM Pacific—that’s 1PM Eastern—and we’ll be there bringing it to you live, as always.
What do you think we’re gonna see next Wednesday at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts? iPods with cameras? MMS for iPhone in the US? A time machine that’ll take us back to 2005, like this dancer? (Maybe they’ll be dragging Mick Jagger and Keith Richards through it, judging by the caption. Does that mean no Beatles? Hmm.)
One thing it looks like we won’t see, if the photo is any indication, is a coffin for the iPod classic. Update: Okay, since the headphone jack is on the bottom, indicating it’s an iPod touch, maybe the classic will die after all.
Green Screen Toy Puts You Inside The Movies Things have changed since I was a kid. Back at the end of the 1970s, while my brother was singing into a hairbrush in front of the mirror (thankfully he manned-up later in life), I was watching a Saturday morning Television spot on Industrial Light and Magic, the FX team behind Star Wars, demonstrating blue-screen […]
Things have changed since I was a kid. Back at the end of the 1970s, while my brother was singing into a hairbrush in front of the mirror (thankfully he manned-up later in life), I was watching a Saturday morning Television spot on Industrial Light and Magic, the FX team behind Star Wars, demonstrating blue-screen shooting*.
Fast-forward thirty-something years and not only have hairbrushes become passé, but blue screens turned green and this magnificent future-tech is now available at home. Yoostar is a green-screen kit which comes complete with “studio-grade webcam” (whatever that is), green-screen, stand and remote control. Now, you could use this to make your own astonishing films, but instead Yoostar wants you to defile the memories of great movies in your own virtual hairbrush/microphone game, and to this despicable end 12 movies scenes are included for your insertion pleasure.
Further, once you are bored of these, there’s a whole marketplace where you can buy extra clips for $2 each. This appears to be very much like the cellphone ringtone market: overpaying for snippets. The Yoostar kit will cost $170 and has one saving feature. There are clips available from the best movie ever made, a movie I’ve seen nearly 50 times. A movie whose dialog I know backwards. What is it? Here’s your clue:
Oh well, he’s very popular, Ed. The sportos and motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, waistoids, dweebies, dickheads - they all adore him. They think he’s a righteous dude.
Induction stoves might be making their way into restaurant kitchens, but for home cooks they’re still a mystery. Fortunately, Wired product editor (and food geek) Mark McClusky volunteered to enlighten us:
It took me almost an entire evening in the the kitchen at Alinea before I realized what was weird about it. Sure, there’s the stunning intensity of the chefs as they prepare Grant Achatz‘ intricate dishes, and the nearly-operating room level of cleanliness. But that’s not what struck me one night at the end of service. What struck me is that I didn’t know where the stove was.
You see, in most restaurant kitchens—like most home kitchens—the stove is the focal point of the room, the place that all the action revolves around. If you’re running the sauté station in most huge restaurants, you’re the man, the line cook who’s banging out the most food in the hottest, most extreme environment. You’re the alpha cook.
Not so at Alinea. Of course there’s a stove, but it’s much smaller than you’d expect for a kitchen that puts out a couple of thousand plates a night, just four burners and a flat top. Instead, the chefs at Alinea do the vast majority of their cooking using induction burners, portable ones from CookTek.
Induction is just plain cool. Instead of using a flame like gas, or radiant heat like standard electric burners, induction burners use a magnetic field. The field creates heat through the property outlined in Joule’s first law—you do remember your thermodynamics, right?—in which current passing through conductive material generates heat.
So what? Well, a couple of things. First, induction is super-efficient. Induction burners convert about 85% of the energy you pour into them into heat, compared to about 70% for electric burners and 40% for gas. That means you’ll spend less to cook on induction.
And since the burner itself doesn’t create heat, it stays cool to the touch—take the pan off, and you can put your palm on it. That also means that they don’t throw off ambient heat like gas or electric, so the kitchen stays much cooler.
Then, there’s the responsiveness of induction. Like gas, when you turn it off, there’s no residual heat from the burner, just the pan. Plus, there’s the flexibility of portable burners like Alinea uses. Frying something smelly? Got an outdoor power outlet? Set up a portable burner, and you can keep the stink out of your house. Want to keep soup warm at a party? Throw a burner on the buffet, and you’re good to go.
The one thing to keep in mind is that your pans do have to be magnetic. That might be a pain in the ass, especially if you’re hip deep in anodized aluminum pots. But the good news is that some of the cheapest (and most fun to use) cookware around—cast iron—works amazingly on induction burners, as will all your fancy pots as long as they’ve got some stainless steel kicking around in them. If in doubt, grab a magnet from your fridge door to check.
As far as specific models to check out, Circulon makes a nice burner, and Spanish appliance giant Fagor has one. For the best combo of power and price, check out the Max Burton 6000, which puts out 1800 watts for just $125 retail.
That’s how to cook like they do at the ideal restaurant in America. Or, really, it’s how to cook with the same methods. The talent is up to you.
Mark McClusky is products editor at Wired magazine, and one of the authors of the Alinea book. You can follow him on Twitter @markmcc. Also check out his special section, The Future of Food.
Taste Test is our weeklong tribute to the leaps that occur when technology meets cuisine, spanning everything from the historic breakthroughs that made food tastier and safer to the Earl-Grey-friendly replicators we impatiently await in the future.
Instapaper: A $5 App That Justifies Your iPhone Purchase Marco Arment’s Instapaper is one of two* killer apps for the iPhone: It’s so useful that it just about justifies the phone’s purchase price all by itself. Now Arment has cut the price of the Pro version in half, to $5, and you should purchase it. Instapaper started out as a simple web service. To use it, […]
Marco Arment’s Instapaper is one of two* killer apps for the iPhone: It’s so useful that it just about justifies the phone’s purchase price all by itself.
Now Arment has cut the price of the Pro version in half, to $5, and you should buy it.
Instapaper started out as a simple web service. To use it, you drag a special “Read Later” bookmarklet to your browser. Whenever you find something that you’d like to read but don’t have time for at the moment, just click that “Read Later” button. The article gets added to your personal page on Instapaper. When you’ve got time later, just visit that page and read away. Conveniently, every article is automatically reformatted (all excess HTML and graphics are stripped out) leaving nothing but highly-readable text.
The Instapaper iPhone app lets you view all those saved articles in an iPhone-friendly format. The free version is so useful that I use it several times a day: On my commute, in the evening, during the odd moments of downtime.
In effect, it turns the iPhone into a super-convenient mini-reading tablet, great for catching up on the news, reading long-form articles, and more.
Instapaper Pro adds a couple new features. It now downloads articles in the background, so any time you’ve it open, it’s updating the list of stories for you to read. It handles the “graphical version” (with photo) of articles superior than the free version. It lets you archive articles that you’ve read more easily. And it adds some minor interface enhancements, such as a reversed mode (light text on a dark background, good for reading at night) and tilt-scrolling.
And, it adds features that let you optionally share your articles with the wider Instapaper community, or read popular articles that have been shared by others.
But even if you don’t feel like you need those features, you should still get the Pro version. It’s only $5, and most of that goes to Arment. For developing such a great app, he certainly deserves it.
One side note: Instapaper pro is rated “17 and up” for “Frequent/Intense Mature/Suggestive Themes,” which is an indication of Apple’s bizarre and arbitrary approval and rating policies.
* The other killer iPhone app is Tweetie, a $3 Twitter client that, if you’re a Twitter user and have multiple accounts, is as indispensable as a needle to a heroin addict.
It rotates. It has blinking lights, a disco ball, and a pole. And it’s probably one of the wrongest toys you can give to any girl. Because, unlike the USB Pole Dancer, this one is actually for kids. [Thanks David]
According to an analysis by the Cleantech Group, the Kindle is more environmentally friendly than plain ol’ paper books, assuming you’re not a freak who reads less than five books a year.
The analysis compared carbon emissions from the production of electronic books to that of traditional book publishing. Despite the manufacturing and mining process required for the Kindles being taken into account, they still came out as the more eco-friendly contender since the Kindle doesn’t exactly compare to a single book as Emma Rich, who conducted the analysis, explains:
The roughly 168 kg of CO2 produced throughout the Kindle’s lifecycle is a clear winner against the potential savings: 1,074 kg of CO2 if replacing three books a month for four years; and up to 26,098 kg of CO2 when used to the fullest capacity of the Kindle DX. Less-frequent readers attracted by decreasing prices still can break even at 22.5 books over the life of the device,
We found the “fullest capacity” of the Kindle a bit pleasing. Sure, the study compares the number of books you can have on a Kindle at a given moment, but what about the infinite number of deletions, downloads, and books stored on your computer for syncing?
Either way, the gist of this is that if you only read 22.5 books or less each four years, then you don’t have to feel guilty about mucking up the environment by not using an electronic reader. The rest of us though are going green and ordering a Kindle. Well, at least I’m. [CNET]
Bokeh, which is the out-of-focus light distortion in the background of a photo, is more and more seen as an aesthetic element of photography. This lens brings it more attention by shaping those blurs into stars, hearts, and more.
The Bokeh Filter is a physical lens that attaches to any mainstream DSLR and blocks out small pieces of light to create the desired patterns. Changing the cool blurry streetlights behind your ladyfriend into hearts? Cheesetastic. But used subtly (that would mean using no shapes that are also found in a box of Lucky Charms), this could bring a really cool element to some photos. And hell, if you’re going for outright cheese, might as well do it naturally and not in the edit room, right? [Bokeh Filter via Geekologie]
Marco Arment’s Instapaper is one of two* killer apps for the iPhone: It’s so useful that it just about justifies the phone’s buy price all by itself. Now Arment has cut the price of the Pro version in half, to $5, and you should buy it. Instapaper started out as a simple web service. To use it, […]
Marco Arment’s Instapaper is one of two* killer apps for the iPhone: It’s so useful that it just about justifies the phone’s purchase price all by itself.
Now Arment has cut the price of the Pro version in half, to $5, and you should buy it.
Instapaper started out as a easy web service. To use it, you drag a special “Read Later” bookmarklet to your browser. Whenever you find something that you’d like to read but don’t have time for at the moment, just click that “Read Later” button. The article gets added to your personal page on Instapaper. When you’ve got time later, just visit that page and read away. Conveniently, each article is automatically reformatted (all excess HTML and graphics are stripped out) leaving nothing but highly-readable text.
The Instapaper iPhone app lets you view all those saved articles in an iPhone-friendly format. The free version is so useful that I use it several times a day: On my commute, in the evening, during the odd moments of downtime.
In effect, it turns the iPhone into a super-convenient mini-reading tablet, great for catching up on the news, reading long-form articles, and more.
Instapaper Pro adds a couple new features. It now downloads articles in the background, so any time you’ve it open, it’s updating the list of stories for you to read. It handles the “graphical version” (with photo) of articles better than the free version. It lets you archive articles that you’ve read more easily. And it adds some minor interface enhancements, such as a reversed mode (light text on a dark background, good for reading at night) and tilt-scrolling.
And, it adds features that let you optionally share your articles with the wider Instapaper community, or read popular articles that have been shared by others.
But even if you don’t feel like you need those features, you should still get the Pro version. It’s only $5, and most of that goes to Arment. For developing such a great app, he certainly deserves it.
One side note: Instapaper pro is rated “17 and up” for “Frequent/Intense Mature/Suggestive Themes,” which is an indication of Apple’s bizarre and arbitrary approval and rating policies.
* The other killer iPhone app is Tweetie, a $3 Twitter client that, if you’re a Twitter user and have multiple accounts, is as indispensable as a needle to a heroin addict.
Review: Fagor Portable Induction Cooktop Won’t Burn Down Your Home Cooking with a hotplate? Awesome. Burning your dorm room down because you went to the Phish show for 6 hours and left stated hotplate on? Not so much. That’s where a device like the Fagor comes in. Yeah it’s basically a hotplate designed to stoke your macaroni and cheese but it won’t serve as an […]
Cooking with a hotplate? Awesome. Burning your dorm room down because you went to the Phish show for 6 hours and left said hotplate on? Not so much. That’s where a device like the Fagor comes in. Yeah it’s basically a hotplate designed to stoke your macaroni and cheese but it won’t serve as an impromptu space heater. Why? The device uses magnetic induction to warm your pots and pans, not your drapes. Here’s a breakdown of the tech.
And while you’re at it, here’s a review of Fagor’s machine by Bryan Gardiner:
The cooktop brought three cups of water to a full and violent boil almost twice as fast (in just over four minutes) as our gas stove. You’ll also get five power levels to choose from, depending on whether you want to slow melt some chocolate or sauté the hell out of a bag of shrimp.
For all its speed, however, this induction cooker isn’t quite perfect. First, with no visible flame or glowing red coils, fine-tuning the heat levels is a tad tricky, particularly on the lower power settings. And despite the company’s claim of even and precise heating, there was a very discernible hot spot in the middle of our test pans.
It’s here: The official invite for Apple’s September 9 annual iPod event. It kicks off at 10AM Pacific—that’s 1PM Eastern—and we’ll be there bringing it to you live, as always.
So what? Well, a couple of things. First, induction is super-efficient. Induction burners convert about 85% of the energy you pour into them into heat, compared to about 70% for electric burners and 40% for gas. That means you’ll spend less to cook on induction.
Marco Arment’s Instapaper is one of two* killer apps for the iPhone: It’s so useful that it just about justifies the phone’s purchase price all by itself.
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