Continue reading »]]> A friend of mine, Emily, is moving to New York to learn, as she puts it, a practical skill. After working in the arts for a while, and majoring in the arts, she decided drop the harsh, struggling lifestyle to learn a more generally applicable skill. You know, in a more technical profession where the skills are often utilized in any part of the world! What what did she decide on?

She’s pulling a Julie and Julia. Emily’s going to culinary school (and says she’ll even be blogging the experience)! I, similar to Emily and Linda from Better Off Ted, have secured a position in the time-wasters hall of fame by studying the arts. Thus, I’ve acquired a slight sort of envy for Emily… I thought about culinary school once, twice, thrice before… maybe more often. I love to cook. I love food. Okay, mainly, I love to eat! And these are reasons why I love Bing’s new detailed recipe results feature (brilliant segue, eh?).

Bing pulls from a variety of popular recipe sites, including Epicurious, Delish and MyRecipes.com. The feature also breaks down the search by rating, cuisine, convenience, occasion, main ingredient, course and cooking method. My only beef (pun intended!) with the feature? Not all search queries activate the detailed recipe search feature — simple is key here, it seems. Excited, I tried “coq au vin” and “lasagna,” but did not see the option for Bing’s new recipe search. Slightly disappointed, I tried simpler terms, “bacon” and “cheese” with success. Okay, so not the best recipe search utility — especially since simple terms give such a wide range of results. But that’s what the filters are for, right?

As someone that frequents Food Network and AllRecipes.com for food ideas, I think Bing’s new feature is awesome. I can’t wait to see how they will improve it. What about you? Do you agree?

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Continue reading »]]> Okay, it’s creeping me out. And nope, it’s not because tomorrow is Halloween that I have these fears. iPhones (and iPod touch) have apps capable of almost anything nowadays. Anything meaning they are just short of taking Rosie’s place in the Jetson Family. Based on statistics from AppShopper.com, there are over 100,000 approved apps and over 90,000 available apps. So where’s the “creepy” part come in?

Let’s start small…
Pizza Hut’s app recently reached $1 million in sales. The first national pizza chain to introduce such an app, Pizza Hut has even won an OMMA (Online Media, Marketing, Advertising) Award for their innovative and fun way to order pizza. There are also other food-related apps such as Jamie Oliver’s 20 Minute Meals (helping you shop, prep and cook meals with step-by-step photos, videos and recipes), Kitchen Calculator PRO (easily figure out kitchen math) and Mixologist (complete with 7900 drink and cocktail recipes). Not too eerie, right? Well, let’s keep going…

Up it a couple of notches…
Excelsior has successfully secured several comics from Marvel for their Comixology app. With renewed interest in Spider-Woman, sparked by the Secret Invasion storyline, Marvel has also started selling “motion comics” through iTunes (also viewable on your iPhone). Other literary ventures include an electronic Japanese-English/English-Japanese dictionary from codefromtokyo, a real-time translator for speech from English to Spanish and vice-versa from Jibbigo and even complete electronic versions of the Bible. Aren’t we staring at our computer screens enough at work these days that we would want to read an actual publication from time to time?

I, Robot realization within grasps… Will Smith, where are you?
BMW’s Mini brand has created an app that calls a tow-truck at the push of a button. Okay, no problem, it’s like speed dial with built-in 411 service. Toyota’s Scion brand has a fun app that allows wannabe DJs to time the beats per minute (BPM) of a song by tapping his/her phone (Scion has that whole affordable, cool, student aura going for them, hence, fun things for a MP3-enable phone that will connect via the USB interface in your Scion vehicle…). Pretty neat, right? So, here’s the one that, although awesome, takes the cake for me. An iPhone app that unlocks and remotely starts your car. Yep, it’s a key fob for your phone! From Viper, a leading car alarm company, comes the SmartStart app. I’ll let this video do the talking…

Know of other crazy apps? What apps could come next? Share your ideas, opinions, thoughts! I want to know if I’m alone on this matter… my self-esteem can’t take the social pressures of being solo.

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