It's been a busy past four days as I perused about a million technologies at the CES conference. Sadly, there weren't too many food-related items. However, Microsoft
had set up a portable home at the conference showing off their networked and smart appliances. I was hoping to see their
smart countertop technology, but, alas, they were more focused on the big plasma displays and their media center
products.
One appliance that caught my eye was their intelligent oven that can be programmed to cook at a certain time over the internet. So, I suppose you could put in your roast and leave to go somewhere, and then suddenly remember you had a roast in the oven, but forgot to turn on the oven. Then, you could simply use your PDA to turn on the oven. Practical? Perhaps not. But this oven can also act as a refrigerator after it cooks. Therefore, you could simply leave that pork roast in the oven instead of taking up room in the fridge.
As always, the idea of intelligent products might theoretically be a good one, but I don't think it's mature enough to really be that useful for the average consumer. Who needs a blender that connects to the internet to get drink recipes? I'm sure we all already know how to make our own favorite drinks.

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3-07-2006 @4:58PM J erdelsky said... This might be a bit late but watch the idea of a patent on the algorithem to cook to perfection. A company called Robertshaw, now doing business as Invensys Controls worked it out back in the 70's. Put in the food, ham - beef - pork -etc, weight, and rare welldone etc and out popped the cooking time and temperature.
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1-09-2006 @4:08PM joe said... It'd be a lot cooler, if say, the oven rack was also a scale that could be zeroed out (for the weight of the pan and your mirepoix, of course). Then, you'd be able to just hit a 'Turkey' or 'Pork' or 'Beef' or 'Lamb' or 'Tofurky' button and it would calculate the lbs, crunch it through an algorithm and cook your items to perfection....
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1-09-2006 @5:22PM James Yu said... You know, that is an excellent idea. You should patent that.
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