Chai tea is a complicated thing, and startup Chime wants to give it the same geek upgrade coffee has seen over the past five years. Though you wouldn't necessarily know it to drink the syrupy Starbucks beverage claiming to be a chai latte, a proper cup of chai tea takes some serious effort to prepare: Chime is promising to address all that, with the convenience of a Keurig but the authenticity of a hand-made drink.
The Internet of Things wants to invade your kitchen, and a new breed of high-tech, high-price appliances is the gateway. Samsung has followed up its oddball Family Hub Fridge - which puts a big touchscreen tablet interface on the front of a double-door fridge-freezer - with another connected gadget for the kitchen, a WiFi-enabled range.
For the coffee lovers out there, Keurig may have been one of the best things to happen to the hot drink since Starbucks. The handy little pods allow you to make a single cup of Joe in the flavor of your choice, in short order. Unfortunately the pods are made from a non-recyclable plastic, which means that they continue to pile up in landfills everywhere.
Wine lovers are always out for cool gadgets that will keep their wine fresh and ready to drink, which is exactly what the Somm wine dispenser that has landed on Kickstarter does. The device is designed to sit on your counter and holds special containers of wine called Sylos with 2.25L of wine inside. That is about the same amount of wine that you would find in three standard bottles.
People who like wine, but don’t drink it fast enough to keep it from going bad once opened end up pouring lots of it down the drain. A new project has hit Indiegogo that claims to keep you from having to pour out your wine, at least for a month. The Kuvee smart wine bottle claims to keep the vino fresh for 30 days letting you enjoy a glass at a time as you feel the need to self medicate.
Wine drinkers who lack the commitment to finish the whole bottle will soon have a digital solution, as the Internet of Things attempts to wirelessly-connect yet another part of our lives. Kuvée is hoping to give the wine bottle some smarts, with a WiFi-enabled sleeve that brings Keurig-style convenience to casual drinking - albeit at a price.
iRobot's Roomba robots already suck: now they can spit, too. The iRobot Braava Jet isn't rude, though, it's actually intended for bathroom and kitchen floors, as well as rooms with wood and laminate surfaces. Cheaper than its vacuum siblings, it's also considerably smaller so that it can dart behind your toilet. I cornered it in a bathroom to see how it worked.
I'll be honest, I'm pretty lazy when it comes to my food. If there's a shortcut that I can take, without losing too much on the flavor side, I'll take it. The only thing I really struggle with in that department is butter. I hate scraping cold butter over toast, but I'm also not a fan of the artificial butter-substitutes that you can spray (yes, I can believe that's not butter). Well, all of my butter-related issues have just been solved by one new gadget.
Back to the Future had a very interesting take on what the world would be like in the year 2015. Well, we already know how 2015 turned out, and very few of Robert Zemeckis' predictions came true. While hoverboards, flying cars, and Mr. Fusion were all nice, there was one invention that I really wanted to see. I'm talking, of course, about the oven that rehydrated and baked a pizza in almost no time.
Kitchen geeks, beware: your sous-vide may just have been overshadowed. Panasonic's latest countertop cooker may look like a dull black box, but inside - so the company claims - is some serious culinary magic. Dubbed the Countertop Induction Oven, it's a multi-purpose device that threatens to replace most of the ways you commonly prepare food.
I've got a water pitcher that I keep in my fridge, for when I want to drink a glass or a bottle of water. As you can guess, it has a filter in it, to keep all the bad stuff out of my drinking water. Of course, I have a bad habit of forgetting when it was that I changed the filter last, as it doesn't have anything on it to tell me when to replace it. Well with the latest Brita pitcher, I won't have to think about when to replace the filter, or even have to remember to buy a new one.
While LG's new OLED TV's took the spotlight at their press conference this morning, it wasn't the only part of their new signature line that was worth a look. While I'm not one to get excited about kitchen appliances, their new LG Signature Refrigeratior had a couple of interesting features worth looking at.