Minggu, 23 Januari 2011

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Techies can be Foodies Too

Posted: 23 Jan 2011 11:00 AM PST

As an industry analyst for over 30 years, I have had to travel to over 55 countries for my work and spend countless hours on the road each year. And when I ended up with downtime in any location, I needed something to do other then ponder the future of tech. So early in my career I decided that I would learn about each country's culture and especially their food.

I have been what you might call a serious foodie since I was a teenager. My uncle was White House chef to Harry Truman and he introduced me to really, really great food at a young and impressionable age. He was Filipino so his food had major Asian overtones. In fact, I am half Filipino and half German so I grew up on rice and sauerkraut and was already familiar with food diversity. Going to each country and finding what would be their top national food dish and then trying many versions of it to see which is the best has become quite a sport for me. For example, when I am in Singapore I try to find the best Chili Crab, their national dish. Or when I am in Greece, I search for the best Mousakka. Or in Japan, I try to find the best and freshest Tuna (Toro) Sushi. You get the idea.

As I work with and talk to tech executives and workers who travel a lot I find that many of them have become foodies too. And many of them have become wealthier thanks to their tech work so some even take their love of food to new levels. A great example of this is Nathan Mhyrvold, former CTO of Microsoft, who after he left Microsoft went to the Cordon Bleu Culinary school in Paris to learn more about his second love, food. He has become a master French chef and in fact, he will release a 1500 page book entitled Modernist Cuisine sometime in 2011.

I recently had a chance to attend the Fancy Food Show in San Francisco to check out what was hot in the food world, but also to see how the Internet and social media is changing the ability to market their products. This is an amazing show. Every booth had some great food to show off and in many cases, they had products for you to test. That means getting bites of the best Iberico ham (I tasted 20 of them) or taste-testing the dozens of new balsamic vinegars or even the latest and greatest in Jelly Bellies. Think of it as one giant appetizer party with hundreds of h’ordeuvres to choose from.

As I talked to the many vendors at the show, all of them told me that the Internet has dramatically changed their business. Before the Internet, most of their products were sold locally or marketed through special mailings to resellers or distributors. But thanks to the Internet, they now have a world audience for their foods, as well as the ability to market them directly to customers.

But social media has also had an important impact on the food industry. For example, stores like Whole Foods and Trader Joes use Facebook and Twitter to keep customers abreast of food trends and specials. However, where social media really shines and has actually enabled a major trend in the food business, is with food trucks. I learned at the show that food trucks are becoming a hot idea and they owe their success to Twitter. The best example of this is the Kogi Truck in Los Angeles. The Kogi Truck marries Asian food with Mexican twists. They are famous for their Korean taco that serves Korean BBQ in a taco. While the food itself is great and unique, it was not until they started using Twitter that their business really took off.

Before Twitter, they would park their truck in some crowded area and hope people would come by. But by using Twitter, they can broadcast where they will be each day and now people from all over the city come to eat there, with lines sometimes an hour long. Here in Silicon Valley, Sams Chowder Mobile is the hottest truck that also draws long lines. But we also have our own version of the Kogi Truck called Seoul On Wheels, and new ethnic entries such as the Indian themed truck Curry Up Now, a French food themed truck called Spencer On The Go, and my personal favorite, Filipino themed AdoboHobo.

And it turns out that these food trucks, thanks to Twitter, are growing by leaps and bounds. Just Google "Food Trucks" and put in your city or county and you will find a list of those in your neck of the woods. For example, I Googled Food Tucks NYC and got the great article from New York Restaurant Magazine on the 25 best food trucks in NYC.

I also heard that some of the very high-end restaurants are now using iPads to deliver their menus and especially their wine lists, with quick links to the wines pedigree and ratings. It was pretty clear from talking to these food industry folks that technology and especially social media is having a major impact on their businesses.

As for the food part of the show, I did see some interesting things here as well.

The coolest thing I saw was a picture of the Mona Lisa done in Jelly Bellies.

Most interesting Food trend: bacon everywhere. There was bacon-infused foods of all types, which seems a big trend and I even found it in chocolate. But the best thing I tried that was bacon related was Smoked Bacon SeaSalt. This was awesome and a little of this on any food gives it depth and of course, a hint of bacon flavoring. It’s made by Caravel Gourmet. And another favorite, Bacon Jam, which can be put on hamburgers, sandwiches and blended with balsamic vinegars and to add depth to sauces. I am a big fan of bacon and pig products so I was in hog heaven so-to-speak.

Most interesting product: When I started traveling to Japan, I often hear the word Umami, which is Japanese for the 5th taste after sweet, salty, sour and bitter and one that loosely means deliciousness. Someone has tried to create a product that delivers this Umami taste experience in something called Umami Taste #5. Check out Dean and DeLuca's description of it and you get a sense of how it could enhance the flavor of stews, soups, pastas, etc.

On the candy front, Jelly Belly introduced something called Jelly Bean Chocolate Dips in Very Cherry flavor. Tastes just like chocolate covered cherries. Also comes in chocolate covered Orange and Coconut flavors.

This is the one show I get to cover each year that I actually look forward to, and as a certified foodie, I love the fact that I could marry my interest in tech and food into quite a fun and informative day at the Fancy Food Show.

Looking for the best Android and iOS apps for Foodies? Check out the top SlashApps selection!

SlashGear Week in Review – Week 4 2011

Posted: 23 Jan 2011 07:47 AM PST

Welcome to another edition of the SlashGear Week in Review. Moneaul Labs pulled a cool new chassis out of the shadows for people that are building up an HTPC for the living room. The chassis has LCD on the front so you can see widgets and other content from the PC called the Dual Screen PC case. We had a lot of news about the iPad two this week with the tidbit surfacing that the new tablet will have a multicore SGX543 GPU. That GPU claims to deliver twice the graphics power that the original iPad GPU has.

The PlayStation phone landed on another video preview this week. If you are really looking forward to the device the new video may be worth a watch. You may be familiar with aerogel, which is hailed as the world’s lightest solid material. Scientists used carbon nanotubes to make that material even lighter this week.

A crazy Taxi concept for NYC that is split with a tunnel down the middle was shown for a contest to find future taxi designs for the city. The taxi has split seats and the tunnel in the middle is to allow bicyclists to go through without changing lanes. The HTC 7 Pro finally went on sale in Germany last week. The smartphone hit O2 and carried a retail price working out to $39 with a new 2-year agreement or $796 without a contract.

Consumer Reports has no love for the iPhone 4, they have already pulled their recommendation for the AT&T iPhone before. The publication is now “cautious” on the new Verizon iPhone 4. We reviewed the Lenovo U260 IdeaPad Notebook early in the week. We really liked the machine and it starts at a very nice price, lacks tons of crap ware, and performs well.

An interesting app surfaced for the iPhone this week that is called iCar Black Box. The app is a recording program that comes on automatically when an accident is detected to record what happened. A cool new Swiss Army Knife with a secure SSD inside was spied. The new device is from Victorinox and has a 256GB SSD inside. A really cool concept Mercedes turned up this week that looks like the car Tron might drive if he had lots of money. It’s called the Blackbird Mercedes and it’s really cool.

A special BMW edition of the Lexia X1 camera turned up this week. The camera has nothing new to offer but a different finish and BMW stamped on it along with an extra $1000 tacked onto the price. The Sony PSP2 is set to land on January 27 and the PlayStaiton Phone will hit at MWC 2011 according to tips from insiders that were offered mid-week. The renders of the PSP2 I have seen look a lot like the PlayStation Phone.

Starbucks rolled its mobile payments solution out to all stores in the nation this week. You can now get the official Starbucks app and pay for your coffee using your Blackberry or iPhone. Verizon is offering some of its subscribers $200 back if they upgrade to the iPhone 4. The user had to buy a new phone in the month leading up to the iPhone 4 announcement and then has to pay full price and get $200 back on a Visa gift card.

The Nintendo 3DS has been talked to death and now we know that the console will hit the US on March 27 for $249.99. That seems really expensive to me for a portable game system. The Nintendo 3DS has hit pre-order on Amazon as well. The pre-order price is the $249.99 that I just mentioned.

A really cool Andorid Flip Phone with three flexible OLED screens turned up in concept from mid-week. The phone has a triangle design and was designed by Kristian Ulrich Larsen. Facebook for feature phones launched this week with free data use on some carriers. None of the free data carriers are in the US though.

The wholesale price of the Nintendo 3DS turned up in the UK this week. The portable console has a 1/3 markup meaning it has some profit built-in for sure. Google co-founder Larry Page is going to replace Eric Schmidt as the CEO of Google starting on April 4. Schmidt will be taking the Executive Chairman position within the company.

A hack for the Apple TV XBMC turned the cheap STB from Apple in to a 1080p media center. The hack uses the official Apple VideoToolBox API allowing 1080p for non-Apple streams. The Notion Ink Adam tablet finally started shipping last week and it turned up on an official unboxing. The box converts into a desk stand to prop the new tablet up.

Some evidence turned up in the latest iOS SDK that points to the rear camera on the iPad 2 having only 1MP resolution. That really makes no sense considering the much higher resolution cameras out there. The Razer Onza Xbox 360 controllers hit pre-order this week. The $49.99 Tournament edition sold out for pre-orders already but the normal version for $39.99 was available late last week.

The Holocube grew to have a much larger screen than the original. The new version was spied Friday with a 70-inch screen large enough to project a full size holographic human. Duke Nukem Forever has taken…forever… to get an actual launch date. The official trailer for the game was released Friday and it looks really cool.

The Ferrari FF was unveiled with four-seat design and a weird style that looks a lot like the four-seat Porsche Panamera. The car is ugly to me, but the four-seat Porsche has sold very well in the US making the Ferrari offering likely to be popular with the rich needing four seats. The App Store officially hit 10 billion apps downloaded. The lucky soul that made the magic download has $10K coming in a gift card from Apple.

Android Code Copying Evidence from Florian Meuller Found Weightless

Posted: 22 Jan 2011 06:27 PM PST

If you’ll remember yesterday, a rather big bit of news (if proven true) seemed to be a story by the name of Android code copying evidence lends weight to Oracle suit. In that article, a man by the name of Florian Mueller provided what he saw as evidence that Android had used code written by Sun Microsystems, now owned by Oracle, without permission, this evidence thus lending itself mightily toward Oracle’s current lawsuit against Google. Today there’s a rebuttal written by ZDNet’s Dev Connection writer Ed Burnette saying that the entire proof is bunk, primarily due to the face that most, if not all of the files in question were not included in the shipped Android product.

And as you may already know, if they weren’t sold, they’re not illegal. Burnette’s notes begin by stating his title, that being an expert developer more than qualified to disprove everything said by Florian Mueller whom he says is indeed “neither a lawyer nor a developer although he plays one on TV.”

Burnette then continues by writing that there are two sets of files that are in question in this situation. The first set of 7, those being the ones titled PolicyNodeImpl.java, AclEntryImpl.java, AclImpl.java, GroupImpl.java, OwnerImpl.java, PermissionImpl.java, and PrincipalImpl.java. Each of these, Burnette says, are part of the unit test area, and are only used internally to ensure quality in the software they’re testing, and of course are not shipped with the final product (Android.)

Furthermore, this first set of 7 are identical to files published on Sun’s website, in place to help developers test and debug their own code. These files, Burnette says, are odd in that it appears that either an Android or Harmony developer decompiled the rebuilt them instead of using fresh ones from Sun. These files were at some point subject to an auto-pasting of an Apache license at their tops – the solution to this puzzle? They should have simply been replaced by the original Sun files. Also, of course, again, they’re not shipped with Android.

The second set of files in question is a set of 37, all of them sitting inside a file called MMAPI.zip, this zip file then sitting in a directory used otherwise for native code audio drivers. Burnette writes that he double-checked the make files here and found that not only is this zip not shipped with Android, it was (more than likely) uploaded to the location it was found by mistake, and it aught to be deleted.

At the end of Burnette’s rebuttal he notes that on top of all this, Google had already taken care of all seven of the first set of files in question. One of the seven, PolicyNodeImpl.java, was deleted on 30 Oct 2010 from the source tree, while the other six files were deleted on 14 Jan 2011. A Google developer by the name of Dan Bornstein attached the note "Remove pointless tests" to the deletion as a commit comment – Florian Meuller missed all of this? Pretty big things to miss, says Burnette.

At the end of the article by Burnette, he notes his total sadness at the idea that his article wouldn’t receive as much attention as the original knife-throwing post by Florian Meuller. It’s super sad and I almost cried reading it, so I had to post the article you’re reading now so I didn’t weep my eyes out. Also it’s posted because it makes a lot of sense. If this was the extend of Oracle’s lawsuit, they don’t really appear to have one – but it can’t be, so now again, we wait.

[Via Android Community]
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