The Breakmate was supposed to revolutionize how we consumed soda, on par with the advent of the soda fountain and soda bottles, and bring delicious sugary soft drinks to millions of disenfranchised American office workers. So why did Coca-Cola's foray into small-scale commercial vending during the 1980's flop so miserably?
Why does the UK get all the good ads? As our friends at Gizmodo UK report, The Lego Movie bought out an entire commercial block tonight, showing popular ads from companies that would have gone there—except in Lego. Absolutely brilliant.
You might've heard about Under Armour's crazy new zipper that only requires one hand to zip. Though the futuristic magnetic clasp jigsaws nicely with the company's high-performance standards, the zipper was originally had more humble origins: helping a sick man lead an easier life.
This six-wheel-drive remote control robot snow plow is the best thing to happen to snowy mornings since able-bodied kids desperate for an allowance. Powered by six 24-volt 127RPM electric motors, its 52-inch wide blade can clear a sidewalk in one pass, and your driveway in no time, all from the comfort of inside your toasty-warm home.
This Justin: Twitch Interactive has replaced Justin.tv, Inc. as the company's corporate umbrella name, though Justin.tv remains a product under the primary Twitch brand. Twitch, a video streaming service focused on games, recently reached 1 million...
Out of fear of receiving the dreaded "B" or "C" grades from the Health Department, more and more restaurateurs are turning to consulting companies that will conduct fake health inspections of their restaurants. Leon Lubarsky and Rada Tarnovsky, who founded Letter Grade Consulting last spring, offer inspection drills, plus representation at violation appeals and advice on navigating the murky DOH system. They charge restaurants $250 for one-off inspections, or thousands of dollars for a year-long contract, which for restaurants like the Flatiron Room involves inspections every month. In comparison, DOH fines for a single violation can range from $200 to $2,000, plus there's the loss of business over bad grades, and the fact that some landlords have now added an "A" grade to the requirements of the lease.
Eventually, a legislation package in the works should create more resources for restaurants from the DOH itself, including free practice inspections for new restaurants, and a hotline for questions and complaints. In the meantime, the NYC Hospitality Alliance, which has been active in pushing reforms to the inspection system, offers its own mock inspections to members for $150 an hour.
· Doing More to Make the 'A' [WSJ]
· All Coverage of the DOH Chronicles [~ENY~]
In a presentation for the Visualized conference, Jonathan Corum says that he looks for the "weight of rain" when working on data graphics.
So when I'm looking at data, or working on an explanatory graphic, these are the moments I'm looking for. Little "Aha!" moments that I can point to, and say "Look here, something happened," and then try to explain. Often those small moments can help lead a reader into the graphic, or help to explain the whole.
The actual non-metaphorical weight of rain is surprisingly heavy; an inch of rain on an acre of land weighs 113.31 tons.
Tags: design infoviz Jonathan Corum weather
    
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US banks and merchants are shifting to a more secure way of authorizing credit card transactions in which customers will enter a personal identification number (PIN) at checkout instead of signing a receipt.
The US is the last major market in the world using the signature system, which is part of the reason why a disproportionate amount of credit card fraud happens here. The change is especially relevant given the massive fraud perpetrated against customers of Target in the fall. During a Congressional hearing last week, Target CFO John Mulligan said the company is accelerating the $100 million effort to switch to the so-called "chip and pin" system.
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The NSA's surveillance programs are often used to help carry out drone strikes on targets, according to a new report, and sometimes there are unintended victims. An anonymous former drone operator for Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) told The Intercept — a new publication helmed by Glenn Greenwald, who broke the first of many NSA revelations last year — that the US military and CIA use the NSA's metadata analysis and phone tracking abilities to identify airstrike targets without confirming their veracity on the ground. The claims were corroborated by documents provided by the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
The Batman: Arkham Origins support page is full of frustrated players after community manager "Mercury" wrote that the Origins development team would be focused on completing story DLC instead of fixing the game's numerous, game-breaking bugs.
"The...
Keeping your commute functioning in winter often means keeping the tracks unfrozen. That's why when temperatures dropped to well below freezing last week, the Long Island Rail Road needed to do something to keep all the moving parts working. And this crazy-looking fire mechanism is how they did it.
[Krieger]
Levi Dalton, Eater Wine Editor: Time was, I used to be at 'inoteca. Not occasionally, or sometimes, but all the time. Which wasn't that unusual back then, because everyone else was there, too. At least that was how it seemed at the time. Chefs, bartenders, wine folks, girls, guys, whatever hipsters were called before that term got overused, they were all there. It was pretty much always packed at 'inoteca.
Now that the place has one last service left, tonight, I reached out to a few people who used to work there for some memories. First up: Jeff Tascarella, now GM of The NoMad, once a wine guy at 'inoteca. Here's what he said:
[Krieger]
Jeffrey Tascarella, GM of The Nomad: In the early part of last decade, when the crew at Fiamma had finished dividing the evening's spoils, there were a few ways things could wind up. If the night had been populated with bankers and movie stars and our pockets were heavy, we would head to Blue Ribbon to drink Champagne and eat oysters. If it were the middle of the summer, and money was tight, we would head to Milady's to dull our sorrows with Guinness and Marlboro Lights. Most nights, though, we headed to 'inoteca.
Goddamn we had fun.
They were open until 3 a.m. back then, and there was always a wait. We were regulars and in the business, and we could usually get those high tables by the windows. In the summer, those windows would be open, and we would watch the late night spectacle that was the still-gritty Lower East Side.
We would order platters of cheese and charcuterie, and they would be cheerfully delivered by that old lady with the short pink hair. There were always truffled egg toasts (better with bottarga), panini (legendary), and my favorite, those little crustless spicy chicken salad sandwiches (tramezzini).
The first time I enjoyed a beet was in the salad with orange and hazelnuts. The eggplant lasagna made a good case for vegetarianism. The pancetta-wraped prawns agro-dolce were near-genius. And even if the sauce on those giant meatballs was a bit too citrusy, they were pretty wonderful.
[Krieger]
While the food and the vibe were amazing, you really came to 'inoteca for the wine. My buddies and I were all just getting started in restaurants, waiters and line cooks. We were all beginning to learn about wine, developing a passion for it, but we didn't have a lot of money to spend on the stuff. 'inoteca was not only our bar, our hangout, but it was also our school.
The wine list was presented without explanation or apology. A dense document, only organized by large divisions of Italy's regions ("South and Islands"), offerings were listed curtly: vintage, a fantasy name or appellation, producer, and price. Come to think of it, the food menu was in minimalist Italian as well, as if to say, "You don't know what suppli are? Fuck off."
'inoteca expected you to be able to navigate the byzantine Italian wine world; you should know that Foradori's "Granato" was a teroldego from Trentino Alto-Adige, or that Le Terrazze's "Chaos" was a montepulciano-merlot-syrah blend from Le Marche. Duh.
If you couldn't handle it, virtually everyone on the staff could passionately guide you to The Next Cool Thing, albeit a bit more Comic Book Guy than the Madrigales and Pastuszaks of today.
This encouraged experimentation. This, and the fact that a lot of the wines were under 40 bucks. It was here you had your first taste of the rustic beauty in an bottle of aglianico or gaglioppo. Funky, cider-like, oxidative ribolla gialla was had for a bargain. You could chip in on a Barolo from the '70s, or a blockbuster from Quintarelli. How about a side-by-side tasting of the wines of Valle d'Aosta? Or a vertical of Brunello di Montalcino? You would head home, lips and teeth stained red, drunk, stinking of robiola cheese, a little smarter, and be down roughly 50 bucks.
The next day, at work, at our restaurants, we would share tales of what we had tried and struggle to learn a little bit more about Taurasi or the wines of Sardegna from our worn copies of Vino Italiano.
After my 100th truffled egg toast or so, they offered me the job as the Wine Director. Joe Denton, one of the owners, was a cool guy. He taught me how to rock a Le Tigre zip-up, introduced me to a ton of music, and was great at working the room, popping corks, as they say.
I told him there was no way I could handle the job; I was a novice, at best, and this was one of the craziest wine lists I had ever seen. He made me a deal: He would give me a sort of oral exam in one week's time, and if I passed, the job would be mine. If not, no hard feelings.
I studied as much as I could and met Joe at the restaurant as discussed. It was a brutal exercise: What grapes are allowed into this blend? What are the aging requirements for this DOC versus that one? It went on and on. I think out of 15 questions, I was correct once.
"I still would like to offer you the job," Joe said.
And because I'm psychotic, I took it.
It was the hardest job I have ever had. The fact that I was completely under-qualified didn't help.
It was so, so busy. I would come into work at one or two in the afternoon and get my ass kicked on the floor for 12 hours straight. We'd be on a two hour wait at 5:30 p.m. and I'd be on my fifth espresso. I would close the restaurant and clear everyone out by 4 a.m., finish my paperwork by 4:30 a.m., 5 a.m., and make my way through the sunrise over the war zone that was an early Sunday morning on Rivington Street. Humid, sticky, overflowed-trash can summer mornings were particularly rough.
[Krieger]
We had no business having a wine list of that size with the cellar and the available space we had. Wine was everywhere, in any nook we could find. Cases of Jeroboams and rarities were stacked floor to ceiling, and guests would only order the wines that lay at the bottom. Refrigerators of varying sizes and efficiency overflowed with Franciacorta and Lambrusco. One night, an avalanche of La Spinetta Barbaresco rained down upon my head and smashed my eye socket.
I did a terrible job at organizing the wines. Ordering, storing, and selling them was a Sisyphean task.
Sidebar: David Lee Roth (yes, that one) lived upstairs; he was a paramedic (yes) at the time. He would come by for a triple-espresso at the start of his shift, and would swing by to hang out on his way home. We would drink wine and I would make him sandwiches after the kitchen had closed. He would tell me stories from the ambulance ("A kid in Harlem drank Drain-o, man!"), talk to me about music ("If you don't think the West Side Story soundtrack rocks, you're not really listening to it, man!"), and talk shit about Eddie Van Halen ("He didn't know how to talk to a woman 'til he met me, man!"). It was awesome.
The problem: I was still learning, and being in charge of a program as prestigious as this, people did not expect this to be the case. This was the place where chefs and restaurateurs ate and drank after work. This was where people taking their master sommelier exam studied. I had David Lynch and Joe Bastianich asking me questions about my wines—-I was using their book to look up the answers! I was struggling to remember what role molinara played in juxtaposition to rondinella and these guys and their brethren were hardcore.
I was a fraud. A fake. I fudged my way through as long as I could.
[Krieger]
But you know what? I got tough. I learned about wine the way Navy Seals learn how to take over a beach. I was empowered to buy what I wanted, run the program the way I wanted. I was entrusted to run a lot of the aspects of a business. My time there was invaluable and I am extraordinarily thankful for it.
I would argue that the entirety of the world of wine and wine bars owes a lot to the Denton Brothers and their two little cafes. They were life-changing for me, and I can't imagine that I'm the only one. Tonight, their closing night, I will be there, crushing a few bottles of Emidio Pepe and paying my respects.
Thank God I can make a (halfway) decent truffled egg toast at home.
Stay tuned for more reflections on 'inoteca tomorrow.
· All Coverage of 'inoteca [~ENY~]
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The creator of Flappy Bird, the difficult, barebones mobile game whose mere existence roiled video games discussion over the past two weeks, says he will remove the game from the Android and iTunes marketplaces within 22 hours. "I cannot take this anymore," Dong Nguyen tweeted today.
Sometimes simple thrills and basic fears just aren't enough for crazies so they combine adventures and challenges into a sort of super extreme Frankensteinian dance with danger. That's how we end up with guys trying to walk a tightrope across the sky that are connected by two hot air balloons. If you fall, you plummet to the ground (like skydiving).
Well, well, well. Isn't this good to know? Turns out, you can strain all the ice cream out of cookie dough ice cream and use its dough to bake cookies. Surprise! It's actually cookie dough! It's not just factory made cookie flavoring made to make you crave ice cream more (even if it still is all that).
You've probably seen many edited wingsuit jumps with a music soundtrack. They're fun, but I think those are nothing compared to these unedited flights. There's something about them—perhaps the anticipation and the actual sound—that really puts me on edge.
California grows a mind-boggling amount of the nation's produce: 99 percent of artichokes, 97 percent of kiwis, 97 percent of plums, 95 percent of celery, and on and on. That's why the record-breaking drought (yes, it's finally raining—no, it won't help much!) can affect your grocery bill, even if you live nowhere near California. But with almonds—the state's most lucrative agricultural export—the effect could reverberate for years.
I was poking around for interesting Portal 2 maps to play, and instead found an entire mod that replaces the portal gun with a gun that shoots the blue and orange gel from Portal 2. Even better, it has an entire storyline with a new character.
iOS 7.1 is currently scheduled for release in March, according to 9to5Mac. The long-awaited update is said to include numerous bug fixes and slight tweaks to iOS 7's user interface. Apple recent distributed the fifth beta of iOS 7.1 to registered iOS developers, so 9to5Mac's timeframe isn't by any means unreasonable. The site previously reported on some of the visual changes included in the betas so far; Apple has made small changes to the dialer, Music app, and users also now have the option of turning off wallpaper motion, or the "parallax" effect, while keeping folder animations turned on.
Vernon Silver, writing for Businessweek:
I’ve been paying my bills with iPhones. Not with apps or on bank sites — I’ve been using the Apple hardware as currency.
It started by accident in December, during a business trip to New York. I live in Rome, where domestic work comes cheap and technology is expensive. An unlocked, gold, 32-gigabyte iPhone 5s that costs about $815 with tax in the U.S. goes for €839 (about $1,130) in Italy, roughly a month’s wages for workers who do laundry, pick up kids from school, or provide care for the elderly. When one worker heard I was visiting the States, she asked me to pick her up an iPhone in lieu of the equivalent cash for work she’d done. Lining up inside the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue, I was surrounded by shoppers speaking languages from around the world. The salesman looked stunned when I said I wanted an unlocked iPhone. Just one?
Chris Plante, writing for Polygon:
It’s typical for an app to ask the player to submit a review after it’s been played for a few hours. A prompt appears, pointing to the app store, where the player can select 1 through 5 stars and leave a blurb of text.
In Dungeon Keeper, if the player selects the “1 - 4 Stars” option, they’re directed to a private feedback submission page. Only if the player selects the “5 Stars” option will they be taken to the Google Play page, where they can leave any rating they wish along with a blurb. The system is designed to make good feedback public and visible, and to allow EA to keep negative feedback hidden so it can be dealt with privately, or ignored entirely.
I’ve seen screenshots from a slew of apps — including Facebook — that use similar chicanery so that only users who intend to rate the app with five stars are actually forwarded on to the store. EA should be ashamed of themselves, but they’re far from alone.
In principle, these app store user ratings are a fine idea — but only in an ideal world where all such reviews are honest and legitimate. Here in the real world, developers are gaming the system.
Somewhere between Snapchat’s rise and the NSA spying revelations, it became en vogue not to have our daily adventures and thoughts etched in stone on a timeline or profile page.
Capitalizing on this trend were Whisper, Confide and then Secret.
Now there’s Wut, from one member of Square’s founding team, Paul McKellar.
It’s a very, very, very simple app. Just a text screen with a fluorescent background. You type in what you want to say, and then it shoots out as a push notification to all of your friends. You never reveal who you are. (But people might be able to guess because they’re your friends, after all.)
“It’s an ambient pulse of what your friends are doing and using,” said McKellar, who quietly launched the app a few weeks ago with Beamer Wilkins.
Like Secret, it riffs off Frank Warren’s PostSecret project.
But Wut’s updates are even more transient than Secret’s. They live on the lockscreen, and then they disappear. You can’t go into the app to find them.
“Wut’s messages don’t build up over time. You don’t have to go back and read 47,000 tweets. The most you can see at any time is five messages,” McKellar said.
The app’s deceptively simple design — no content in a feed and nothing to look at inside — made it difficult for Apple’s app store reviewers to understand Wut’s purpose. They kept sending it back to McKellar until he had to literally record a video of himself using two phones for it to make sense.
The messages I get on Wut are pretty frivolous (see the attached screenshot where I asked a bunch of people to send me messages. Wut wut?!).
Occasionally, memes run through the community. Last week, it was about saying who you were having dinner or coffee with that day or night.
Wut’s push notifications are also silent, meaning the app won’t interrupt you if you aren’t looking at the screen.
“You’d never get woken up in the middle of the night by this,” said McKellar, who was most recently an entrepreneur-in-residence at SV Angel after leaving Square.
The hope is that this might take off amongst teens, who are used to being bombarded with messages all day long and get the idea of self-destructing content from products like Snapchat. Wut is currently bootstrapped.
It's not clear when this Burger King on Pittsburgh's South Side was stripped of its corporate affiliation — or what, exactly, precipitated the change — but in any event, it looks like management was able to hold onto its sign and tried to forge ahead as if nothing had happened. The menu boards and employee uniforms were all official Burger King, but if this Reddit thread is any indication, management ran out of Whoppers a while back, dropped all the dipping sauces except for ketchup, started pouring soda into jumbo white-foam cups, and packaged their mystery burgers into brown paper bags. They even refused to honor Burger King coupons. Management apparently explained to a local news reporter that the store is in the process of re-branding, right before he kicked her off the property and hastily took down the fast-food signage. Straight ahead, more on the place one reviewer called "skeevy, trashy, dangerous, and just unpleasant."
Bogus Burger King? Customers say South Side restaurant isn't the real deal [WPXI]
Read more posts by Hugh Merwin
Filed Under: flame embroiled, burger king, fake burger king, video feed
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