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Roland Heersink had a problem. He wanted to use his iPad in the kitchen, but his wife vetoed any and every space-hogging countertop stand. So Roland, smart Gadget Lab reader that he is, decided to make his own. And not only did he come up with the The Original Kitchen iPad Rack. he turned it into a business.

Roland’s rack takes up precisely zero space on the countertop, instead suspending the tablet from the overhanging kitchen cupboards. The rack comes in two pieces of clear acrylic. One attaches permanently, out of view, beneath the cupboard. The other hooks onto this mount and forms a sloping or vertical stand for the iPad, keeping it handy, but out of the way of spills. When you don’t need it, just toss it into the cupboard above.

The rack will cost you $30, and should you have a big kitchen, you can choose kits with two or three mounting brackets, at $5 extra per bracket. I think Roland’s idea is pretty ingenious and, if coupled with my own low-tech waterproof iPad case, would make for an almost indestructible kitchen iPad setup.

The Original Kitchen iPad Rack [Kitchen iPad Rack. Thanks, Roland!]

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Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

My childhood was remarkably low-tech for an American kid growing up in the 1980s. I didn’t have cable TV or a computer until I went to college (1997), and didn’t play video games outside of an arcade until we got a NES in 1990. So I always thought microwave ovens came into existence in 1988, when my family got one. In fact, they’d already been in commercial production for more than 40 years.

Stacy Conradt at Mental Floss gives an appropriately accelerated history of what she calls “the Not-so-microwave“:

The first oven intended for commercial sale in 1947 was almost six feet tall, tipped the scale at 750 pounds and cost $5,000 in 1947 dollars. The second version, produced in 1954, was better but still needed work: it gobbled electricity and cost $2,000 $3,000, at a time when the average cost of a new car was about $1,700… Regular households didnt care much about microwaves until 1967, when a relatively low-energy model costing just $500 came out.

You ever wonder how microwave ovens work? It’s just slightly more complicated than this, but basically microwaves (which are like radio waves, but with a frequency closer to the infrared spectrum) pass over food, creating a weak alternating electromagnetic field. Water molecules — which are basically in everything we eat — also have a weak electromagnetic charge, and they all realign themselves to match the polarity of the microwave radiation — kind of like passing a household magnet over a pile of iron filings. When the water molecules move, the temperature raises (because molecular motion is all temperature is). Get those molecules moving fast enough and long enough, and baby, you’ve got a stew going.*

*I know, it’s the second time I’ve used this Arrested Development reference in as many weeks. It just feels right.

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Fun fact: Did you know that if you take a tinfoil-covered item from even the hottest oven, you can remove the foil with your bare fingers quite safely? Just don’t touch anything other than the foil. This handy trick works because the foil is so thin it cools almost instantly when you remove it from the oven.

Of course, this doesn’t work with the oven shelves, but if you upgrade them with these neat Silicone Oven Shields, you can toss the oven-mitts away (don’t toss them too far, though, as you’ll need them to get the actual pot out of the oven). They are safe up to 450-degrees, and because silicone is so non-conductive, they stay cool-ish to the touch.

Even if you don’t want to drag the shelves back and-forth with bare-hands, these shields are a good idea. I have lost count of the cigar-shaped burns I have seared into my thumbs and the backs of my hands whilst turning food or just poking in an instant-read thermometer. These shields would have stopped my branding my hands.

Available in kitchen stores like this one for around $10. And one more thing: in the product picture, somebody is cooking a pizza. Shouldn’t it have a stone or metal tray underneath it?

Silicone Oven Shields For Forgetful Chefs [Oh Gizmo!]

Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

If you have kids, you’re going to love the Squishy Circuits Project: it involves cooking and electronics, although not at the same time.

Squishy Circuits is a great sets of recipes from Samuel Johnson and Dr. AnnMarie Thomas at the University of St. Thomas, Minnesota. Essentially you will make two batches of Play-Doh, one conductive and one non-conductive, and preferably different colors. The dough can then be formed into any kind of circuit and, with the addition of some wires poking into the dough and some batteries, motors and light-bulbs, you can have yourself some sticky, squishy, educational fun.

The recipes are almost exactly the same, both based on flour, water and oil. The insulating dough has added sugar and granulated alum in the mix to keep the electrons from flowing through, and its water must be distilled. Otherwise, you already have everything you need in the pantry.

I wonder just how complex the circuits can be? My first experiment, after testing the properties of the two batches of dough, would be a swiss-roll capacitor. Imagine how useful that would be: if your phone runs out of energy, you could recharge it. If you run out of energy, you could just eat it. Yummy. I’d better just check on the toxicity of that alum first, though. I remember something about that from crystal-growing back when I was a kid…

OK, I checked, and we’re good to go: Alum is only toxic to humans in doses of around an ounce. This recipe uses a teaspoon, or just 0.167 fluid-ounces. Now we just need some non-conductive cocoa-powder for some really tasty science.

Squishy Circuits Project Page [University of St. Thomas via OhGizmo]

Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Gadget Lab reader John Costello sent in his ingenious invention, one of those ideas so simple that you slap your forehead and wonder why it hasn’t been done before. John has designed an induction hob which uses LED “flames” to stop you turning it up too high.

While induction hobs give the instant control of a gas flame, there is no way to see how high you have set the heat (there are numbers on the knob, but that’s hardly intuitive). John noticed that people would set the controls too high, so he decided to fix it.

His hob uses LEDs arrayed around the perimeter of the heat-rings. these project a light onto the pot which varies in height depending on the amount of heat dialed-in. As the power creeps higher, so do the “flames”, giving visual feedback that can be read by anybody, even from afar.

I love it. I still use gas, as I like to melt the plastic handles off my stovetop espresso pots every few months, but if I went to electric, it would certainly be induction, and I’d like to have John’s electric blue flames licking up the sides of my saucepans.

Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews