After receiving significant criticism last night, SpaghettiOs has apologized for and removed a tweeted photo of its cartoon-noodle mascot waving an American flag in honor of Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day. The tweet prompted a series of disgusted replies, with some questioning "who is going to be fired tomorrow" and others appropriating #UhOhSpaghettiOs — the brand's own advertising slogan — as a hashtag. Comedian Patton Oswalt took a number of shots at the tweet as well:
Apple will kick off this weekend by launching iBeacons functionality in all of its 254 domestic U.S. stores, according to a new report by the AP. The location-based tech will work with the official iOS Apple Store app, and will allow Apple to do things like provide you with notifications of when your order has been assembled in the in-store stock room, to noticing that you’re in the iPhone section and offering you a notice about upgrading from your current device.
iBeacon transmitters use Bluetooth 4.0 tech, and can be dialed in to a range of different distance sensitivities, which means that it can work on a hyper local basis, sending specific information only when you’re in the area for demos and workshops, for instance, or next to a particular product display. At the same time, it can provide general alerts to anyone who enters a store’s doors.
The upside for retailers using iBeacons is two-fold: First, they can offer more specific, targeted information to customers, which in theory helps with customer service (and could cut down on minor requests that would normally occupy staff). Second, iBeacons provides them with hyper-local data regarding customer movements within a store (apps could contain an opt-in for allowing use of that info). That kind of granular look at shopper behaviour could pay huge dividends in terms of helping formulate evolving retail strategy.
Apple, however, told the AP that it doesn’t collect any info about the shoppers in its stores via iBeacons, which could mean that it’s using this mainly as a way of dogfooding – showing other retailers how the technology might be useful when implemented in a ‘best practices’ kind of way.
Apple isn’t the first to use iBeacons; Major League Baseball made headlines when it announced plans to implement the tech to delivery unique offers and content to patrons attending games at its stadium locations. That doesn’t go into effect until next year, however, and other projects like the iBeacons Newsstand subscription delivery service we wrote about earlier are likewise in a pilot phase. Apple’s use of iBeacons is likely the most mature and whole implementation to date, so it’ll be the one to watch in terms of something for other retailers to mimic.
“It was while looking at Google’s scan of the Dewey Decimal Classification system that I saw my first one—the hand of the scanner operator completely obscuring the book’s table of contents,” writes the artist Benjamin Shaykin. What he saw disturbed him: it was a brown hand resting on a page of a beautiful old book, its index finger wrapped in a hot-pink condom-like covering. In the page’s lower corner, a watermark bore the words “Digitized by Google.”
There are several collections of Google hands around the Web, each one as creepy as the one Shaykin saw. A small but thriving subculture is documenting Google Books’ scanning process, in the form of Tumblrs, printed books, photographs, online videos, and gallery-based installations. Something new is happening here that brings together widespread nostalgia for paperbound books with our concerns about mass digitization. Scavengers obsessively comb through page after page of Google Books, hoping to stumble upon some glitch that hasn’t yet been unearthed. This phenomenon is most thoroughly documented on a Tumblr called The Art of Google Books, which collects two types of images: analog stains that are emblems of a paper book’s history and digital glitches that result from the scanning. On the site, the analog images show scads of marginalia written in antique script, library “date due” stamps from the mid-century, tobacco stains, wormholes, dust motes, and ghosts of flowers pressed between pages. On the digital side are pages photographed while being turned, resulting in radical warping and distortion; the solarizing of woodcuts owing to low-resolution imaging; sonnets transformed by software bugs into pixelated psychedelic patterns; and the ubiquitous images of workers’ hands.
...read more
The New York Times is launching a new responsive Web app built with HTML5. The New York Times daily "Today's Paper" Web app provides digital subscribers of Times an app accessible through a browser on tablets or desktops with as close an approximation to the layout and content of the printed paper as possible.
The problem? The "Today's Paper" Web app misses the point of responsive design, a design concept that allows developers to create websites that run on any screen size on just about any device.
"Today's Paper" supports browsers for desktops and tablets including Chrome, Safari and Internet Explorer. It does not support Firefox or Opera on any tablet or the native Android browser on devices that do not use Chrome. "Today's Paper" will not work for the Silk browser on a Kindle Fire. The Web app is not optimized for a smartphone.
While the Times new Web app does support the three major browsers from Apple, Google and Microsoft, it loses some of the advantages of employing an HTML5 responsive design by not being able to support Firefox or Silk and to be optimized for smartphones.
The app features all the sections of the Times with articles and photos found in the print edition as well as some video. Times digital subscribers can access a week's worth of Times paper editions and offers offline access.
“Soon after we launched our experimental Web App we discovered that Today’s Paper was one of the most popular sections,” said Denise Warren, executive vice president of digital products and services at the Times in a press release. “This new reading experience is the next step in our ongoing process to develop new and valuable digital products that offer our subscribers other innovative ways to access our content.”
"Today's Paper" replaces the New York Times Web app for iPad which has been in beta since September.
The move to a responsive Web app for digital subscribers closely mirrors the decision of the Boston Globe to release a responsive version of its paper for its digital subscribers in 2011. BostonGlobe.com (which compliments the Globe-owned Boston.com) was one of the first major newspapers in the United States to release a responsive version of its paper edition as a standalone website built on HTML5. The Financial Times made an infamous decision a couple of years ago to eschew an app in Apple's App Store for a Web-based HTML5 responsive website.
Do you love going out for jalapeño poppers but hate the human interaction it always requires? Applebee's apparently knows the feeling: the middling restaurant chain is adding tablets to its tables and bar areas to let you order your food and pay the check without having to track down your server. There will even be games for times when you're eating alone, or with someone who makes you wish you were eating alone.
Tools will let you share what you're eating with Facebook buddies
The plan involves the purchase of 100,000 tablets from food service tablet maker Presto, which include a standard credit card reader as well as NFC to link up to mobile wallet apps. These are going out to 1,800 Applebee's locations in the US by the end of 2014....
Ever, Jane, the game that aims to let players live in "the virtual world of Jane Austen," is a go after hitting its funding this week. The Kickstarter project netted roughly $10,000 more than its $100,000 goal, and will take its current prototype into a completed game. That includes adding various game scenarios like dinner parties, hunting, and fishing, as well as expanding the world to include multiple villages. Some of the project's stretch goals (which were not reached) could have brought music, estate planning, and even virtual farming.
The whole thing started with a picture. An extremely tall fellow, Dan, peeked over a door—over a door—to watch TV. It was funny. Someone took a photo. Dan posted the photo to the image-sharing site Imgur. A lady named Briony saw the photo online. She's tall, too, and she likes tall guys ("they make me feel petite"). So Briony sent a message to Dan. And they kept messaging each other. Fast-forward a bit, and ... they arranged to meet. They went to a rooftop bar. They hit it off. As Briony announced afterward:
Dan and Briony may or may not make it as a couple, but they did get to enjoy a delightfully of-the-Internet meet-cute. And their date, when it finally took place, came courtesy not of OKCupid, not of Match, not of Facebook, not of TallPeopleLove.com ... but of an image-hosting site that is more commonly associated with juvenile memes ("WE KISSED") than with romantic schemes. This was a date born of Imgur. Dan, as an Imgurian, is better known as "altitudeguy." Briony is "brionyrae."
And their web-enabled meetup was enabled not just by a goofy photo, but also by a transformation that has taken place within Imgur over the past year or so: The platform that initially became popular for its mechanical efficiency has been exploring efficiencies of a more social variety. Last month, the service released a new chat system that allows its growing community of users to send and receive messages in real time. More and more, it has been emphasizing its homepage as a destination for users. Imgur is shifting: from image host to user community to public destination. In that sense, it's following the opposite trajectory of a Facebook or a Twitter or a similar sites—networks that are trying to become platforms. Imgur is a platform that is trying to become a social network.
Oh, and for the record? It's pronounced "IM-uh-jur."
***
IM-uh-jur was, like so many similar sites, born in a dorm room. It was 2009, and Alan Schaaf was a student at Ohio University in Athens, and Reddit was, at that point, primarily known as a link-sharing-and-discussion board. As that, it was immensely popular—well on its way to becoming "the front page of the Internet." But Schaaf, himself a Redditor, thought the site also had a problem. Actually, he thought, the whole Internet had a problem. "And that problem," he told me, "was that there was no place on the Internet to quickly upload and share images."
So he fixed it. Schaaf built Imgur, then posted his project to Reddit. (The announcement read, "My Gift to Reddit: I created an image hosting service that doesn't suck. What do you think?") As the Schaaf—MrGrim on Reddit—explained:
I got fed up with all the other image hosts out there so I made my own. It doesn't force you to compress your images, and it has neat things like crop, resize, rotate, and compression from 10-100. It's my gift to you. Let's not see anymore imageshack/photobucket around here ;)
Images, Schaaf points out, are not necessarily the same thing as photos. "Whereas a photo is typically something that is taken from your camera," he says, "an image can be much more broad: an animated GIF, or a drawing, or something you whip up in Photoshop, or a logo, or a screenshot." That distinction matters not only for images as cultural objects, but also for images as media products: They require a different functionality, and a different infrastructure, from what still photos require. And when images are made social—when they come, say, with their own comments fields—sharing them requires that they be not just uploadable, but embeddable. There's a lot of metadata in there.
Schaaf built Imgur to benefit from the photo/image distinction: He wanted an image-sharing site that would be, like Reddit itself—and like, at its best, the Internet itself—fundamentally simple to use. He wanted to minimize the friction that often came with sharing photos via any site that was not named Facebook. "I actually tried to reduce the number of clicks it took before your final image was online," he says. "I think it was, like, two clicks."
Schaaf's hunch—and his hack—paid off. "When I launched it on Reddit," Schaaf recalls, "people just loved it."
***
You probably know, in one way or another, the story from there. Imgur was an almost instant hit, growing to become one of the most-linked sites on Reddit—which is also to say, one of the most-linked sites on the Internet. Today, if you see an image on and/or from Reddit (the space dog, the rocketfrog, a high percentage of the GIFs and memes on Buzzfeed), there is a high likelihood that said image is hosted on Imgur. (And if you, like I do, spend daily time on Reddit and its environs, there's a good chance that several of your open browser tabs will feature Imgur's distinctive green-circle-in-a-black-square favicon.) "There's no formal relationship with Reddit," Schaaf says. "We just know the guys over there … but the relationship is more with the community than with Reddit itself."
In a very real sense, though, Reddit and Imgur—two of the handful of sites that drive the daily doings of the Internet—co-evolved with each other. Imgur, with its focus on memery and remixery and Photoshop and its allowances for easy comment-making, became one of the infrastructural backbones of Reddit—the platform through which users share some of the site's most viral content. Imgur offered up, through its assortment of images, the odd and the off-color. And the quirky and the sweet. And the vaguely porny. And the full-on sexist. And the weirdly faith-restoring. And the amusing. It hosted Seinfeldian observations. And glorified PSAs. And sriracha peppers.
Imgur, essentially, brought a new kind of sociability to the stock photo phenomenon: Its viral images, in the aggregate, helped to illustrate an otherwise text-heavy Internet. By 2011, TechCruch was naming it the "Best Bootstrapped Startup" of the year. By 2012, Imgur was being visited by 30 million unique viewers a month—and those visitors were generating more than 1 billion pageviews. In a period of five months later that year, it doubled those pageviews to 2 billion.
And then something crazy happened: The gift for Reddit began to outpace Reddit itself. For the past year, Imgur's traffic has surpassed Reddit's. Significantly. "The community is huge now," Schaaf says. Which is both accurate and an understatement: In late September, Imgur marked a significant milestone, passing 100 million unique users for the month. (For comparison, The New York Times has around 31 million monthly uniques. Reddit itself has around 85 million. Buzzfeed, that other image-happy viral juggernaut, just passed 130 million.) About a third of those 100 million Imgur visitors are, tellingly, coming to the site directly—a close second to the referrals Imgur gets from Reddit.
That kind of growth comes in large part from the fact that Imgur isn't, its origins aside, simply a non-sucky image-hosting service; it's also a community that is a self-fashioned and self-conscious virality engine. Members can, in the same way that Redditors can, upvote and down-vote image submissions—and, Schaaf says, "the average amount of points that an image gets is between 6,000 and 10,000." (In other words, "you're talking about 10,000 people voting on each of these images.") Members can also comment, and comment on other comments, and comment on the comments' comments, and on and on. Just as on Reddit proper, the comments become part of the content itself, appending it and amending it and otherwise spurring its virality.
The image-vs.-photo distinction, in that sense, becomes a social phenomenon as well as a categorial difference: An image on Imgur is a picture that is not only worth 1,000 words; it is also, often, accompanied by them.
Which is another way of saying that Imgur specializes in images that are not just ornamental, and not just documentary, but conversational. This is one of the crucial ways that Imgur differs from, say, Facebook, which remains the single largest photo-sharing service in the world. Imgur's images are, by and large, public, not personal. They skew more to the artistic than to the archival. If they were characters in Alice's Wonderland, their message wouldn't be "Look at Me." It would be "Talk About Me."
***
Witnessing Imgur's growth from within, Schaaf and his expanding team began updating the site in a way that would maximize its potential not just as a platform, but as a destination. In 2012, they updated the site to allow users to upload images directly into the Imgur Gallery—creating, effectively, a collection of the most popular and viral images on the site. The gallery fuses data both internal (views and votes within Imgur itself) and external (Facebook likes, retweets, votes on Reddit) to come up with what Imgur calls a "virality score." It then presents images according to the score's rankings, allowing users to narrow their selections (according most-viral and highest-scoring and user-submitted and meme-only—and, from there, according to either popularity or recency).
"It's super-dynamic, so it's changing multiple times a day," Schaaf says. Which means that, for users, "there's a reason to keep coming back." Imgur, like many sites, seems to owe the rhythms of its traffic patterns to the rhythms of the office workday. The site's peak traffic tends to come at 2pm Pacific time, Matt Strader, Imgur's COO, told me—the closing of the work day on the East Coast, and the tail-end of lunch breaks on the West. (Monday is usually the biggest day for Imgur traffic, likely the result of people settling back into the work week, and weekends are the lowest.) Imgur's servers, hosted on Amazon's Web Services, adjust their capacity accordingly.
With its 100 million monthly visitors, in other words, Imgur has pretty much made the move from host to destination; the next step for Schaaf and his team of 10, now based in San Francisco, is to figure out what kind of destination, exactly, it will be. And how it will be such a destination while also making money. The way it's currently financing itself? Ads, mostly, along with subscriptions to its pro accounts. (Imgur also does enterprise hosting—for clients including, as of this February, the Flickr-owner Yahoo.) There are also, unsurprisingly, many, many acquisition rumors: “People are literally—literally—sliding term sheets under their door,” one source told All Things D's Liz Gannes in October.
For the past year and a half, though, Imgur has also been experimenting with another way to make money: sponsored images—promoted content that lives on the site just like the organic stuff. "It's structured just like the other posts that users make, organically," Strader says. "We're just allowing brands to buy their way to the top." Under normal circumstances, the odds of making it to the front page of Imgur—just like the odds of making it to the front page of Reddit—are tiny. Sponsored images let brands essentially buy their way there. And "users can treat the ads just like any other content," Strader says. "They can vote on it, they can share it."
The point of this isn't just that sponsored content—ads that reach a slice of those 200 million eyeballs—can be lucrative. It's also, Schaaf and Strader insist, that they make for a better user experience than mere display ads. "Imgur is very user-experience-focused," Strader says. "There's only one advertisement on the site right now, and it's always been like that." The company could, he points out, put up another ad, increasing revenue from the stream. "But that's not going to be a good experience, so we're not going to do that."
What is a good experience, though, the company believes, is going to Imgur.com and being greeted with an assortment of images that have been hand-picked to go viral by a collection of far-flung curators. Which is sort of like TV, in its way, as an experience. Schaaf points out that, for many people, relaxing at night after a long day of work involves sitting on the couch and browsing through TV channels. "They aren't necessarily looking for something specific to watch; they just want to unwind from their day and be entertained." Appointment TV, and the remote routine that came with it, may be declining; Schaaf, however, thinks that Imgur can step in where TV is leaving off to provide diversion that is mindless in the best way possible. "That same sort of sit-back-and-relax-and-be-entertained feeling is what we're going for," Schaaf says.
As Strader puts it: "The overall plan is to become a household name for viral images." Imgur wants to be, essentially, TV—minus the actual TV. The company wants to take its growing-by-the-day collection of images and turn them into entertainment, into a new and very web-driven form of "appointment viewing." It wants to take all those puppies and pizzas and people and memes—the images that help give form to the Internet—and gather them in one place: your screen.
    
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As Christmas gets closer, it's something of an annual tech tradition for every company to summarize the past year. All these posts will show you what's been trending over the past year, but with its Year in Review 2013, Spotify has done things a little differently. Its page shows you all the most popular tracks (Macklemore's "can't hold us" is number one worldwide, in case you were wondering), albums, and artists globally over the year, but also lets you type in your Spotify credentials to see "Your Year in Review."
The personalized page tells you how many tracks you've streamed over the year, how many minutes you've streamed, your favorite artist, album, and playlist, and your top ten tracks. It'll also show you how many times you've...
Netflix's first original series for kids, Turbo Fast, will debut on December 24th. The show is a collaboration between Netflix and DreamWorks Animation, borrowing characters from the studio's feature film Turbo. But with its latest original programming, Netflix is deviating from the all-at-once release strategy it's followed for House of Cards, Orange is the New Black, and the fourth season of Arrested Development. Instead of releasing an entire season on day one, just five episodes of Turbo Fast will be available for streaming on Christmas Eve. Additional new episodes will follow "throughout the year" according to Netflix. It's an entirely different approach, but it's not surprising to see the company experimenting.
In its Q3 2013 l...
Depending on execution, parody can be one of the best or worst ways to get a message across. Today, we've seen examples of both lambasting Amazon Prime Air, the company's new plan to use drones to deliver packages to your door. Twitter reacted with the usual mix of humor, disdain, and nitpicking, while one of Amazon's regional rivals has created a parody video.
Waterstones is one of the UK's largest booksellers, and has unsurprisingly been affected by Amazon's international success. This morning the retailer posted a press release and video informing the world that owls would now be delivering its books thanks to "OWLS.", the "Ornithological Waterstones Landing Service."
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos spoke to CBS host Charlie Rose on his 60 Minutes program today, and revealed that the company is experimenting with delivering packages via drones within a mere 30 minutes.
The new delivery system — dubbed ‘Prime Air’ by Amazon — is something that the company has been working on in its R&D lab.
![prime air high resolution01 520x282 Amazon plans to deliver packages via drones within the next 4 5 years [Video]](http://cdn2.tnwcdn.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2013/12/prime-air_high-resolution01-520x282.jpg "prime air high resolution01 520x282 photo")
![prime air high resolution02 520x267 Amazon plans to deliver packages via drones within the next 4 5 years [Video]](http://cdn3.tnwcdn.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2013/12/prime-air_high-resolution02-520x267.jpg "prime air high resolution02 520x267 photo")
Drone delivery won’t arrive that soon though — Bezos tells Rose that the drones are expected to be fully autonomous and start operations in the next four to five years, and in the meantime Amazon is piloting a number of tests and is looking into the regulations required.
The drones can carry items up to five pounds, which means it covers up to 86 percent of the objects that Amazon delivers. The drones can also deliver in a 10-mile radius from a fulfillment center, so “in urban areas, you could actually cover very significant portions of the population,” Bezos notes.
➤ Amazon Experimenting With Drones That Will Deliver Packages In 30 Minutes [Business Insider]
Images and video via Amazon, thumbnail image via Joe Klamar/AFP/Getty Images
In all of its various incarnations, The Walking Dead is always about the same thing: how we cope with the end of the world. Usually the desperate humans are even scarier than the zombies. Browser game The Narrow Path goes in a different direction: your goal is simply to kill as much as possible, without discriminating between people and the undead. But you don't kill with a shotgun, instead you have an army of zombies to do your dirty work for you. The Narrow Path plays like a simple real time strategy game, letting you guide your zombified soldiers around the screen; once they get close enough to attack someone, they'll do it automatically.
You'll gather resources as you progress thanks to a helpful dog (which, for some reason, has a...
If you’re not aware, Strava is like a more aggressive version of Nike+, designed specifically for cyclists and runners. It tracks workouts via sport-specific apps for smartphones and from connected GPS devices like Garmin. Its interface and community are leagues beyond competitors in its verticals; this is most evident in Strava Challenges, which draw their own community and brand support.
My cycling buddy Ilya noticed an awesome new beta feature over the weekend: Strava Nutrition. Based on the looks of the sign-up page (accessible only after sign-in), it’ll use your workouts to customize a nutrition subscription program so you never run out AND have the right food for your particular training regimen. Presumably this is another way for them to monetize the platform, on top of the paid annual membership model.
When launched, this will be an amazing opportunity for Skratch, Nuun, Osmo, CLIF and others to drive trial, and probably a lower-cost option for distribution, with built-in marketing and fulfillment.
More than 30 creative studios have submitted posters for a new exhibition celebrating the design of Braun systems.
Systems was curated by Das Programm, an online archive selling products created for Braun by industrial designer Dieter Rams between 1955 and 1995. Designers Michal Polak and Giorgio Del Buono created the graphics and accompanying catalogue for the show, which opened in London on Friday.
Studios were asked to create an A1 print based on the theme of Braun systems - designers' responses include photographic, typographic and geometric prints, many of which feature the Braun word mark and Berthold’s Akzidenz Grotesk typeface. Fine artists Henry Coleman and Rupert Norfolk have also submitted artworks for the event.
New York designer Antonio Carusone's series is inspired by the slots on Braun products (top and below):
While Berlin studio Neubau's prints feature actual size illustrations of Braun designs. The studio has also produced a video on the making of the project, below:
Designer Tom Hingston's contribution is inspired by Dieter Rams' principle that good design should make a product useful, "whilst disregarding anything that could possibly detract from it":
Bibliotheque's abstract print uses the core elements of the Braun logo:
And London agency Spin's design focuses on the production of Braun systems, rather than their polished exteriors:
The prints will appear alongside iconic Braun products and archive material supplied by the company. They will also be available to order at dasprogramm.org and you can view the full set online at aisleone.net/systems
Systems is open until December 31 at the Walter Knoll London showroom, 42 Charterhouse Square, EC1M 6EA.
L2M3
Mark Gowling
Hey
Playgroup
Lundgren + Lindqvist
If there’s one takeaway from the $11,111 Blossom One Wi-Fi-enabled coffee maker, perhaps it’s this: There simply aren’t enough things for rich people to spend their money on.
Or maybe they just tend to be really ridiculously serious about coffee. After all, these owners can do everything from geeking out over beans and pulling up drink recipes to connecting with growers and other aficionados, all using this high-priced gadget.
Surely for these customers, that dark elixir is more than a mere cuppa to jolt the brain awake, and that machine is more than just an appliance. It’s a lifestyle, one that only the wealthy could really pursue.
Perhaps that’s only logical. Well-made kitchen appliances are rarely cheap to begin with, so naturally the first forays into the connected kitchen would be somewhat costly. But more options are emerging at all price points—from major appliances with advanced communication protocols to the little doohickeys that offer basic connectivity.
Appliance and accessory makers have been hot to connect our hearths for a while now. And they’re not letting up until Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and Near Field Communication become as common in the kitchen as our pots and pans.
Judging by vintage film footage and old magazine spreads, the 1950s and 1960s were heydays of futuristic living concepts. Among the most popular of these was the fully automated kitchen—the ultimate in convenience and control.
These days, companies have different ideas of how to make kitchens more efficient. You can pre-warm your GE Brillion oven with your iPhone or Android app. Check your the contents of your Samsung or LG fridge while you’re at the supermarket. You can even set your dishwasher to turn on when it senses energy prices are cheapest. The integration of sensors and Wi-Fi connectivity play major roles in the connected kitchen.
And LG’s not done yet. The company, which made a splash in 2012 at the Consumer Electronics Show with its touch-enabled, Wi-Fi equipped Smart ThinQ range of products, has a new technology up its sleeve: NFC. Short for Near Field Communication, the technology allows users to “klunk” two gadgets together so they can communicate. Usually hyped for mobile payments, the hardware and communication standard became popular in Android gadgets, and now appears to be heading to LG refrigerators, dishwashers, vacuums and much more.
The South Korean company announced its grandiose vision recently at Europe’s IFA 2013 tech show: “By simply touching their smartphones to the NFC Tag-on symbol on one of LG’s smart appliances and through Smart Control [for smartphones], customers can easily register and control their refrigerator, washing machine, robotic vacuum cleaner or oven and remotely monitor the appliances.”
LG imagines home cooks using Wi-Fi and NFC to monitor their ovens and research recipes on the spot, or hunt cooking info and tapping the appliance to transfer settings. It could also make diagnostic information easier to detect and transmit to authorized repair centers. Much of this can take place on users’ smartphones or even a LG smart television, which can display an alert when, say, the turkey’s ready to come out of the oven.
Of course, connected appliances aren’t cheap. LG’s current LFX31995ST Refrigerator and LRE3027ST Oven Range cost $3,500 and $1,400, respectively. Go beyond established appliance makers, and things don’t necessarily get less expensive.
The Monsieur robotic bartender not only mixes drinks and remembers favorite cocktail recipes, it also boasts support for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and Zigbee, one of the top home automation communication protocols. That means it can work with other automated gadgets and sensors. So, say you’re home from a long day at work. Monsieur can have your favorite martini ready for you moments after you come in the door. Of if your favorite football wins, it can help you celebrate with your libation of choice. It also works with a mobile app, which can monitor how much you drink, estimate your blood alcohol level and even summon a cab, if you’ve had too much.
Of course, none of this matters if the drinks aren’t up to snuff. The fine folks at Monsieur visited the ReadWrite office to demonstrate the unit, and I can say firsthand that the beverages were top-notch. But, erm, so is the price: Homeowners and businesses can pre-order this freshly Kickstarted machine for $4,000.
While some customers might be able to afford that, the rest of us may have to set our connectivity aspirations—and our wallets—a little lower.
Unlike the bank account-choking Blossom One coffee machine, the iKettle Wi-Fi-connected tea kettle lets users fire up a pot of tea using their smartphones. At $162, it won’t break the bank.
The iGrillmini cooking thermometer comes in at even less. It uses Bluetooth “Smart,” the version of the local wireless protocol featuring a low energy profile, so battery life lasts for an estimated 150 hours. The range also covers 150 feet—handy for times when I don’t want to remain tethered to my kitchen, just so I can keep an eye on my roasted chicken. The iPhone app can let me know that my bird has hit that 165 degree sweet spot, even when I’m away from the oven. And it’s only $40.
Cost alone may not be enough to turn a tech trend into a mainstream consumer trend. If there’s a recipe for success there, then it appears to be missing a key ingredient: demand.
Over time, smart kitchens have evolved and developed in different ways, and that might be intriguing enough for affluent early adopters or foodie tech geeks. But for all its connectivity, its still not connecting with the one thing that matters: everyday customers. I reached out to certified kitchen designer Susan Serra to get her take on advanced kitchen tech, and she told me, “I’m not seeing or hearing that consumers are running toward [these types of] smart kitchen appliances. Maybe a certain percentage are, but not the majority.”
Serra knows a thing or two about kitchen trends. She runs The Kitchen Designer website and offers advice to Google Helpouts as an expert, as well as Oprah.com, Better Homes & Gardens and HGTV, among others.
From Serra's vantage point, there's just not much of a demand for app-enabled kitchens. Not that consumers don’t want advanced features. They do; just particular kinds, she explained. Things like refrigerator interior shelving configurability, customizable humidity in drawers, ovens with both steam and convection features and new induction cooktops top the list. Compared to all that, connectivity is an after-thought—if it’s a thought at all.
It seems that, for all the chatter about specs and connectivity protocols, gadgets and mobile features, the message about what these technologies can actually do for people is getting lost in the shuffle.
But all that could be changing, and soon. “Technology truly seems to be racing forward,” added Serra. “I think it is definitely possible that 2014 could be the turnaround year when a bigger segment of appliance buyers are ready for more technology.”
And when they are, today’s companies are making sure the connected kitchen will be ready for them.
Feature and side image screen capped from YouTube video courtesy of nepley. Monsieur image by Adriana Lee for ReadWrite. All others courtesy of respective companies.
Nearly a decade after its release, Anchorman GIFs are still a common sight on Facebook and Tumblr, so now that it's time to promote the sequel, Paramount has its eyes trained firmly on the web. A new piece in Adweek details the studio's multi-front effort to promote Anchorman 2 on the social web, including GIFs, games and contests. The effort started by seeding the web with new GIFs from the film's official Tumblr, but in recent weeks, Paramount has gone even further, recording over 50 short clips of Will Ferrell reading relevant news for different countries. The clips are short, funny, and targeted locally to the film's different geographical markets, as in the Australia-bound clip below. "This has been the most comprehensive amount...
