Appliances and Kitchen Gadgets

Stay on the diet with a fridge photo frame

The preponderance of digital photo frames has been a standard rant in this space, and for good reason. Not only are they overproduced and overmarketed in every iteration, from keychains to cubes, but they can also be found in practically every size imaginable.

Yet here's one that may prove to be a good idea despite its original pedestrian concept: a tiny digital magnet for the refrigerator door. Rather than having a virtually useless display all of 2.4 inches and 320 x 240 resolution, we've got a far more practical application. If you're trying to lose weight, … Read more

Kitchen helpers, green and small

What's new in the kitchen? We explored the International Home + Housewares Show in Chicago in March to find out.

The trade show, which is closed to the public, is known as the largest of its kind, attracting store buyers from more than 100 countries.

Among the items attracting attention this year were a microwave and handheld espresso maker, both billed as the world's smallest. Eco-minded shoppers could find plenty of options for making the home a bit greener, and people with a sweet tooth could find contraptions for making doughnuts and gummy candies.

During the show, we covered … Read more

For this coffee maker, the crystals aren't sugar

If we were to ever give it much thought, we probably would have ventured to guess that coffee makers and Swarovski crystals probably wouldn't make a great combination. But that's what happens when one works for Crave: The irrational exuberance of some gadget makers forces the most unthinkable thoughts to the surface.

Indeed, the mere sight of the hideous "Nespresso Crystal Coffee Machine" from the U.K.'s infamous Goldstriker is enough to cause temporary blindness, but the $4,000 price tag will afflict the digestive system too. There is some amusement to be had, however, … Read more

Four ways to play with your food

My RSS reader is packed with food, gadget, and shopping blogs, and whenever I see something that might be worth sharing here I try to bookmark it for when I have time to write it up. Cruising through my bookmarks earlier today I started to notice a trend: I've been marking lots of products that are explicitly designed for playing with food. Apparently my inner child thrills at the thought of a mechanically assisted way to launch her broccoli across the room. So for her sake and yours, here are four tools for merging meal time and play time.

Air Fork One lends some credibility to the whole "here comes the plane into the hangar" story you try to sell to your toddler every night. So far, it's a design concept only, but creative types can probably cobble together a reasonable facsimile on their own.

Apartment Therapy's gadget blog recently featured these Icetris ice cube trays. Use your freezer… Read more

Finally, a cool kitchen computer (concept)

Forget space, it seems as if the kitchen is the final frontier for computing. Companies have tried for years to create a computer that offers the right mix of design, functionality, and price so that people feel comfortable incorporating it into the household hub. (See also 3Com's Audrey, or even our recent post on Pandigital's kitchen TV.) As our Webware colleagues tend to roll their eyes at "yet another social network," so we kitchen geeks often scoff at yet another kitchen computer.

But even a jaded geek like me has to admit: the Kitchen Sync concept … Read more

Pandigital debuts kitchen TV with extra perks

Pandigital, which is making a name for itself in the digital photo frame market, is branching out into kitchen televisions. As part of the upcoming International Home and Housewares Show in Chicago, the company will be showing off a new 15-inch LCD HDTV that can display digital photos and act as a digital cookbook.

Here are the highlights and specs from the news release:

TV's resolution is 1280x720. Preloaded recipes are included. Plus, additional recipes can be copied onto the frame's internal memory. Copy digital photos onto the frame's memory via the memory card reader or by … Read more

You cook, Readybot cleans

Don't get me wrong: I'm all for domestic robots. I own a Roomba. I professed my admiration for the Robot Chef. But the humanoid dish-washing robot we saw last year creeps me out. (Blame it on watching too much Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.)

Fortunately, that doesn't mean I have to give up hope of ever having robotic help in the kitchen. Readybot, a proof-of-concept kitchen-cleaning robot built by a club of Silicon Valley engineers, looks totally non-threatening, like a boxy R2-D2. Because it's put together by a group of enthusiasts, the robot uses common, mass-produced … Read more

The incredible folding chopsticks

In Singapore, a lot of us eat with chopsticks. Most of those you get these days are the low-quality disposable kind that leave strands of wood in your food and are way too thin for a good grip. If you feel strongly against using these horrible tree-killing utensils, the Brunton FlipSticks folding chopsticks could just be your thing.

The ends of the FlipSticks which pick up food are made of bamboo, just like regular chopsticks, but the rotating ends are stainless steel. They fold to half the normal length for storage and fit into a handy case for transport, as … Read more

Your own private kegger for St. Paddy's Day

So much for our trend-spotting skills. We thought for sure that, where beer dispensing is concerned, the next big thing would be built-in taps, whether they be for the fridge or the game console. Instead, what seems to be taking hold is the portable version, we assume for reasons of practicality.

Case in point (so to speak): The Heineken "BeerTender," which Gizmodo says it wrote about nearly four years ago, at long last is arriving on U.S. shores. The attractive dispenser accommodates a 5-liter mini-keg, though the long delay means it'll face some stiff competition. Even … Read more