Frankly, this may be a case of a product in search of a problem. If you really do have an issue remembering to read the expiration dates on food and other household goods, however, this may well be the perfect product for you. The device is a little digital clock in the shape of an Apple (either red or green). Plug the date into the device and it will count down the days until the product goes bad, up to 999.
The first alarm reminds you that you’ve had the food for a while. A second alarm lets you know that it’s expiring soon. The third and final alarm tell you that it’s gone bad and may kill you–or just taste really gross.
Axis Technology’s Expiration Date Reminder works in the fridge but isn’t recommended for the freezer.
We love DIY projects here at Lifehacker. Whether we’re building computers, backyard projects, or turning office supplies into artillery, we’re always tinkering. Today we’re taking a peek at the most popular DIY projects of 2009.
Inspired by a tutorial we posted last year, we decided to make our own DIY sun jars. The trendy summer time lighting accessory retails for $30+ but we were able to make ours for around $10 each. The sun jars proved to be our most popular non-computer DIY of the entire year and readers shared their own creations with us.
Building your own computer is a great way to get exactly what you want, the way you want it, without being constrained by the limits and high-prices of mass produced computers. We showed you how to build a computer from start to finish and have fun doing it.
What’s standing between you and some office mayhem? Certainly not a lack of Sharpie markers and keyboard dusting spray. Combine the two with this fun DIY project and you’ve got one of the most awesome pieces of office-machinery we’ve ever featured.
You need to be properly erasing your physical media: all the time, every time. Our guide will show you how to get the job done and done right whether you use software to scrub your disks or you send them to the great data mine in the sky with a 21-gun salute.
Why settle for a digital picture frame when, in the same wall space, you could mount an entirely functional computer/slideshow player/TV tuner? One Lifehacker reader turned an old laptop into a super-charged digital frame.
We’ve always been keen on DIY laptop stands, but reader Aaron Kravitz—inspired by an attractive $50 stand—went above and beyond, creating one of the most attractive DIY laptop stands we’ve featured to date.
If the Hive Five on best home server software got you excited about setting up a home server but you’re not keen on another unsightly PC in your home, check out this DIY IKEA NAS.
We’ve shown you how to make an air conditioner (even for as low as $30), but what if you wanted something you can put in your car and take with you? While it’s no substitute for a fully-charged and factory-fresh AC system, it’ll keep you cool.
Who hasn’t dreamed of having a mystery-story-style secret passageway? While a trick bookshelf is pretty awesome in itself, this secret passage hides a home office with clever style. One industrious Lifehacker reader and his girlfriend had grown tired of seeing their office from their living space, so they hid it behind a wall of books.
You’ve ripped a movie on your laptop, and now want it on that fancy new home theater PC next to your TV. If you’ve got the time, wiring your house with Cat-5e cable could make transfer times a distant memory.
We’re all about creative cable management here at Lifehacker, so we were instantly drawn to reader Seandavid010‘s rain-gutter cable management setup. He was awesome enough to send detailed photos and step by step instructions to help other readers recreate his setup.
The lights went out on analog television this year and we were there with a guide to help you build a great DIY antenna for boosting your reception and getting that crisp digital picture you crave.
Lifehacker reader Matt Lumpkin saw our monitor stand from door stoppers post and thought we might like his laptop rack hack as another space-saving desktop solution for laptop-lovers. He was right.
Suppose you were inspired by the cheap DIY home pizza oven—but weren’t so sure your home insurance would cover oven modifications. It’s time to build a safer, more eye-pleasing oven, and we’ve got a thorough guide.
Two years ago we highlighted how to crack a Master combination padlock for those of you who may have lost the combination to your bulletproof lock; now designer Mark Campos has turned the tried-and-true instructions into an easier-to-follow visual guide.
We’ve covered the invisible floating bookshelf once or twice before, but if you liked the idea but weren’t keen on ruining a book in the process, weblog May December Home’s got you covered.
Instead of storing your books upright on top of the shelf, the inverted bookshelf holds all of your books in place using elastic webbing so you can hang them below the shelf—all the while allowing you to still take them out and put them back on as needed.
If you’d like to have delicious home-grown tomatoes but lack a garden to grow them in, you’ll definitely want to check out this ingenious and inexpensive self-watering system.
A few years ago, blogger Jimmie Rodgers’s camera was stolen while volunteering in an impoverished Brazilian community, so he did what any sane person would do: He bought a new camera and made it ugly. With his uglified camera, Rodgers was able to snap pictures freely during the rest of his trip without worrying too much that his ostensibly crappy camera would end up stolen.
Nothing adds space to a desk or home theater setup like a simple monitor or TV stand, and weblog IKEA Hacker details how to build your own stand on-the-cheap with a few inexpensive items from IKEA.
You don’t need to run out and buy a new TV because of the DTV switchover. If you did anyways, Make Magazine has put together quite a guide to giving old TVs new life.
If you need some cheap and novel ambient lighting for your next party, you’re only a box of ping-pong balls and a string of lights away from solving your lighting worries.
DeviceGuru blogger Rick Lehrbaum, inspired by the cheaper set-top boxes, made his own higher-powered “BoxeeBox” for the free, open-source media center. He posted all the parts, the how-to details, and lots of pictures.
You already shelled out your hard earned cash for a swanky laptop, why drop more cash on an overpriced laptop stand? Cardboard alone can do the trick, as detailed in this step-by-step tutorial.
Have a favorite DIY from 2009 that wasn’t highlighted here? Sound off in the comments with a link to your favorite project. Want to see more popular DIY guides courtesy of the ghost of Lifehacker past? Check out our huge DIY guide roundup from 2008.
Fuji Heavy Industries in Japan has announced what it’s calling ‘the first’ autonomous farming robot. This bot, which is about six and a half feet long and runs on gas, sends and receives laser signals to orient itself by way of reflective plates placed every 30 feet, using them to judge distances. This bad boy can grow fruits and veggies all by its lonesome, and can even operate in a greenhouse. The farming robot — which is expected early next year — will run about $100,000, but we’d suggest you buy two so he can have a buddy.
Cooking tablets and recipe readers have been pretty limited (and not very good) in the past — but this one looks extremely promising. Called the Qooq, the 10.2-incher boasts — in addition to a bunch of recipes, of course — complete meal prep videos, instructions and advice on choosing ingredients, shopping lists, meal planners — all which can be updated monthly via a subscription service. Specwise, we’re looking at a glass touchscreen, Ethernet and USB ports, an SD slot, WiFi, and a built-in stand. The custom UI looks pretty attractive, but there are some drawbacks. The Qooq does not have a browser (though it’s got built-in weather, digital photo viewing, and internet radio apps), and it’s only available for French language speakers for now. If you do speak the language of love, you can get one of these puppies for €349 (about $513), with the subscription service running an additional €12.95a month (about $19).
Few brave souls will even attempt to consume the Windows 7 Whopper, and fewer still will achieve that first dyspepsic bite — as you can plainly see in this video. Indeed, we were sure that this was some sort of promotional stunt for Microsoft in Japan, but now reports are filtering in that these have been available in Texas for years now. Of course, in the Lone Star State it’s not called the Windows 7 Whopper, it’s called “lunch.”
Confirming our belief that Japan is at once among the coolest and craziest places on this planet we all call home is Burger King’s exclusive Windows 7 Whopper. Seven stacked beef patties extend your usual Whopper to over five inches in height and the whole thing costs an appropriate ¥777 (or $8.55). It’ll be available for one week only — or seven days, get it? Join us past the break to see the full towering size of this meaty monstrosity.
Update: Andy Yang, our Engadget Chinese editor, has read the smallprint and noted that in fact only the first 30 customers each day will get the Win 7 Whopper at ¥777, with the rest shelling out a cool ¥1,450 ($17.10) for the privilege. Way to break with the number 7 theme, guys.
Nihonshu (日本酒) is the real name for sake, or rice wine. It is basically the Japanese version of gin or whiskey, and is made from fermented sugar and starch. The quintessential Japanese drink, its origins go back centuries and its use is both ceremonial, religious, and recreational. Nihonshu has many connoisseurs and its manufacture is like an art form.
But here’s some Nihonshu that is certainly not traditional. “Ice Cream Magic” (アイスにかける魔法) is aiming for the same sort of market Bailey’s has cornered effectively. Made from Hokkaido rice and matured at room temperature for three years, this dark amber colored Nihonshu has a taste like brown sugar and an alcohol content of 17.5%.
Released by Kobayashi Miki in August 2009 for a strictly limited run of 500 bottles, consumers pour this syrupy juice over vanilla ice cream for a potent after-dinner treat. 180ml of “Ice Cream Magic” sets you back $11.
It can be called a success, not least because nobody once said, “When will this stupid theme week end?” In fact we heard from many of you asking for our food-tech coverage to continue. So while the week’s festivities have ended, we pledge to keep playing with our food, and to talk with our mouths full. Good enough?
Thanks to all the staffers and contributors mentioned above. Special thanks to Mark Wilson, my wingman on this outing, and extra-special double-secret thanks to Nick Kokonas, who worked tirelessly writing and editing 24/7 for us, even while launching a project of his own, Alinea Wine. Here’s hoping he one day finds a solution to Alinea’s food-flattening quandary.
Taste Test was our weeklong tribute to the leaps that occur when technology meets cuisine, spanning everything from the historic breakthroughs that made food tastier and safer to the Earl-Grey-friendly replicators we impatiently await in the future.
Food writer and culinary expert Michael Ruhlman didn’t want us to get through a week of celebrating kitchen gadgetry without singing praise of the digital scale. Damn the cups and tablespoons, cooking by weight is the only path to awesomeness.
The kitchen is a place where tools, gadgets, and gizmos—that is, the very non-human objects that entrance guys—are in continual use. I, like every cook I know, love my tools. The breakfast chef instructor when I was at cooking school reportedly slept with her omelet pans. She understood. Cooks throughout America go kind of silly in the head when they go into a cookware store (I pretty much want everything I see even when I don’t need anything).
While important to remember—as American’s chief food geek Alton Brown has noted here and elsewhere—you don’t want unitaskers in your kitchen (unless it’s an air-popper used to toast pine nuts!), things like hand blenders and cable thermometers with wireless remotes are incredibly useful.
But for all our gadget hunger, America has yet to embrace what is one of the most important tools of all in the kitchen. A digital scale.
Why is a scale important? Because recipes work better when you weigh ingredients. A cup of flour can weigh between 4 and 6 ounces. That means if you’ve got a bread or cake recipe that calls for 4 cups of flour, you might measure out 16 ounces or 24 ounces—a 50% difference in the main ingredient! No wonder people are so afraid of making their own cake. Measuring is easier and cleaner and results in fewer dirty measuring cups when you use a scale. You can measure everything right into your mixing bowl. Have you ever tried to measure out a cup of shortening? It’s a mess.
Another example: If you know pasta is three parts flour and two parts egg, fresh pasta dough takes about two minutes to put together. Put your bowl on a scale, crack in your eggs and add 1.5 times as much flour. Two large eggs are about 4 ounces, so you’d add 6 ounces flour. Need four portions? Put four eggs in your bowl and add 12 ounces of flour. Recipes scale up and down multiple times and always work.
Pancake batter, in fact all quickbread batters, are essentially equal parts flour and liquid and half as much egg. You can measure out all your ingredients into a big measuring cup with a spout for easy pouring. If I’m just making pancakes for my 10-year-old kid, I use one egg. If making for me as well, I add another egg. If my wife wants some, then I make a three-egg batch.
Moreover, this kind of proportional cooking by weight works in grams, ounces, whatever unit you want. Whether you mix 20 ounces of flour and 12 ounces of water, or 500 grams of flour and 300 grams of water, it’s going to be good bread dough.
So as more and more of us head into the kitchen, I’ve been on a mission to urge people to embrace the scale. I’ve become a scale evangelist.
I use a My Weigh scale and love it. It works great and doesn’t cost a fortune. Thomas Keller and his gang at French Laundry, Per Se and Bouchon use A&D scales, which are very sensitive but a little pricey.
My Weigh recently came out with a new one that does something really cool. It measures by percentage. Which is how a lot of bakers measure. The standard baker’s percent of bread, for instance is 100% flour, 60% water, 3% fresh yeast, 2% salt. With this scale, you simply pour in the flour, hit percent, then the “tare” or zeroing button, and begin adding the water till it reads 60. Zero again and add your next ingredient.
This is a tool that really does make cooking easier and faster. So the next time you need a gadget fix, skip the panini press and buy a scale.
Michael Ruhlman couldn’t have writtenCharcuteriewithout a scale, and his most recent book,Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking, is devoted solely to cooking by using proportions by weight. It is the opinion of at least some Gizmodo editors that Michael’s recently publishedElements of Cookingis a must-have for people who take their own cooking (and eating) seriously. He also blogs at ruhlman.com.
A gadget site Taste Test week wouldn’t be complete without a hat tip to that fictional food-creating staple of the Star Trek universe, the replicator.
A replicator was a device that used transporter technology to dematerialize quantities of matter and then rematerialize that matter in another form. It was also capable of inverting its function, thus disposing of leftovers and dishes and storing the bulk material again. [Memory Alpha]
Yes, I know it’s not real. We got that bit out of the way right up there in the lead. Now we can have some fun hypothesizing and waxing all futuristic like about how these fantastical infinite buffets could (stress could) be possible some day.
In fact, in the most primitive sense, there’s a form of replication happening in manufacturing shops around the world right now. Called 3D printing, the technique isn’t even that new, with roots extending back to the 1990s. They were really expensive then, of course, but today they’re relatively ubiquitous in companies large and small. The technique is pretty simple. In layman’s terms, a user creates or downloads a 3D model of real world object on their workstation, and then a special printer works to recreate that object using resin or plaster or plastic or whatever the material may be. Voila. Instant prototype, and you can have all the tchotchke trinkets your heart desires, on demand, beamed to you from anywhere in the world.
But you can’t eat a resin hamburger. And you can’t drive the mockup that just got spit out of your rapid prototyping rig. The replicator could do both these things.
What we need is something that physically assembles atoms and molecules into tasty shapes so we can tell some uber supercomputer with a soothing female voice to get us some Tea. Earl Grey. Hot. Oh, and it has to create a little glass cup for us to drink it in too (Quick trivia: What did Picard do with all those dirty dishes? Answer above!).
This is where things get a bit sticky (food!), exciting (recent discoveries!) and depressing (its a LONG way off!) all at once. Theoretically, people are debating and thinking about “molecular assemblers” right this instant. In fact, these hypothetical machines would implement some form of nanotechnology, which is already used in everyday items like batteries, fuel technologies and even bikinis. Hell, there’s a Wikipedia page for molecular assemblers up right this instant—our replicator must be right around the corner, right?
Unfortunately, current nanotech implementations are almost what I’d call “dumb” deployments of the technology. We’re just coating a material with some nano bits to repel liquid; or we’re placing nanorods in a battery to improve efficiency… nothing, in other words, that would have Geordi doing a double take. Certainly not that Wesley Crusher kid either, for that matter (More asides: Wes, my man. Your replicators could produce anything you wanted—what the hell was up with that rainbow jumper?!).
But there is some hope. As recently as November, scientists had silver nanoparticles self-assembling into specific structures. Now, Guinan can’t serve us up a plate of silver, so that doesn’t really count as a replicator just yet, but it does drive our research in the right direction. The same direction that saw IBM scientists imaging molecular bonds for the first time ever on Thursday:
By “seeing” these bonds scientists think they can better understand how to manipulate them. For IBM scientists that means quantum processors and such in the far future. For guys and gals like you and me, it might mean snacks on demand as we start to understand why snacks look and feel the way they do on the molecular level.
While we’re down at the molecular level, I’d be remiss not to mention the nano pinhole camera some enterprising Russian scientists created in June:
In their atom pinhole camera, the atoms act like photons in an optical pinhole camera, but instead of light traveling through a lens, it travels through a pinhole on a mask and creates a high-res inverted image on a silicon substrate. This camera is capable of resizing nanostructures down to 30 nm-10,000 times smaller than the original. So, a camera with say 10 million pinholes could produce large numbers of identical (or diverse) nanostructures simultaneously.
It’s the most promising “replicator related” discovery in recent memory, but even so we joked that the Giz crew would probably be slurping pureed baby food and soiling our adult undergarments by the time it came to fruition. Then there’s the matter of energy and resource consumption, both of which add an exponential level of complexity onto any replicator roadmap. That IBM discovery above, just as a quick example to wrap things up, took a solid 20 hours of unmoving observation with a specialized microscope just to get that one black and white image.
Still, the research is there, and every month IBM or the CERN folks or someone else who’s much smarter than I am is firing off a new research paper about manipulating the world of the very, very small.
The replicator, in short, would be a paradigm shift the likes of which the world has never seen. It’d be worth the effort; the expense. Famine? Potentially gone forever. Shortages? See ya. Alinea? First place to get one. You and I? Optimistically speaking, we’ll probably need some Depends by the time one comes along. Silver lining is we can crap to our hearts content and dispose of the mess in our replicator. Then it’s lunch time!
Taste Test is our weeklong tribute to the leaps that occur when technology meets cuisine, spanning everything from the historic breakthroughs that made food tastier and safer to the Earl-Grey-friendly replicators we impatiently await in the future.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
We love DIY projects here at Lifehacker. Whether we’re building computers, backyard projects, or turning office supplies into artillery, we’re always tinkering. Today we’re taking a peek at the most popular DIY projects of 2009.
Why settle for a digital picture frame when, in the same wall space, you could mount an entirely functional computer/slideshow player/TV tuner? One Lifehacker reader turned an old laptop into a super-charged digital frame.
You’ve ripped a movie on your laptop, and now want it on that fancy new home theater PC next to your TV. If you’ve got the time, wiring your house with Cat-5e cable could make transfer times a distant memory.
The lights went out on analog television this year and we were there with a guide to help you build a great DIY antenna for boosting your reception and getting that crisp digital picture you crave.
Food writer and culinary expert 
