According to DS Fanboy, Nintendo DS users will no longer be able to avail themselves of the free WiFi that McDonald's was formerly offering.
While you won't be able to get your free online game on under the Golden Arches, you can use Nintendo's handy hotspot finder to go wireless for free.
From Designboom's "Dining in 2015" design competition comes this device above, created by an Iranian team that says, "Your car exhaust is a barbeque now.. Stop the car when you are hungry, install the device to the exhaust and back to drive. You'll have a hamburger in no time. This way you don't need fuel for cooking while commuting and a large amount of energy would be saved."
Great, guys. Now get to work on that carburetor-based bun-baker, and we'll have burgers coming and going.
Just to be clear—you're not actually cooking the burger with the exhaust but with the heat of the exhaust. The clamshell chamber is sealed, and the fumes bypass it. After the jump, a photo that shows how the thing works. [via Gizmodo, thanks to "Hamburger" Matty]
produkter05_300dpi, blogged to AHT from the Flickr photostream of eatmydesign
Interesting essay from a branding-marketing standpoint on the nature of user interface as brand identity. (Think iPod — the clickwheel interface and white headphones are instantly recognizable without the need for the Apple logo on the product's face.) Carry that through to food, as the folks at Information Architects did, and you have the McDonald's cheeseburger:
... The cheeseburger has the easiest food interface one could think of. No forks, no knives, no spoons, no plates, no chopsticks. Like a sandwich, but softer and sweeter and above all: Standardized. No alarms and no surprises when eating a cheeseburger.The standardization makes the cheeseburger’s interface a branded one. Only a McDonald’s cheeseburger looks like a a McDonald’s cheeseburger. I unwrap it and look at the bread and the meat and the ketchup mustard color pattern: McDonald’s cheeseburger it is.
The Interface of a Cheeseburger [Information Architects; via "Hamburger" Matty]
As you know, A Hamburger Today rarely deviates from its burger content. Despite daily temptations to blog about other worthy topics, we remain relentlessly on-message here. So I'm glad to have this excuse to tell you about one of my favorite podcasts.
It's called Escape Pod, and, as you can tell from just a brief glance at its logo, it's a science-fiction podcast. Escape Pod is produced by Steve Eley, who puts together weekly doses of engaging and imaginative short stories, ultrashort stories, and reviews that you can listen to on your computer or MP3 player at your leisure. I discovered it on Boing Boing a few weeks ago and have been rocketing through its archives, nearly exhausting all the available audio to date. Mr. Eley is an astute and professional editor, and the stories he buys for the show—all authors are paid for their contributions—rarely fail to entertain me. And, unlike many podcasts, the audio quality is, with a few exceptions, high. (The episodes' audio quality is subject to, and varies with, the recording equipment used by various guest readers.)
I finally had a chance to listen to Escape Pod Episode 2, a reading of a story called "Feng Burger," by author John Aegard. What follows is an excerpt of the story from the Escape Pod site, but it doesn't begin to hint at the surprise ending. I already know you're a burger fan, but if you're also a science-fiction fan, you would do well to download the story and give it a listen.
The Chinese are particular about their designs, and for good reason. A design with good feng shui—one that satisfies the universe’s sense of metaphor—attracts chi, the energy that raises mountains and pushes rivers and draws good fortune near and keeps tax collectors far away. Whether by accident or design, no one can say, but the Burger Pods have potent feng shui. Where normal men would see nothing but gleaming stainless-steel cabinets and a charbroiling grill, a feng shui practitioner would see arms and hands, cradling the Burger Pod’s occupant and bathing her in chi.
Escape Pod rates this particular story PG—for "sexual innuendo, mild profanity, and food service employees slacking off." (Did I mention Mr. Eley has a good sense of humor, too?)
Feng Burger [escapepod.org]
Subscribe to Escape Pod [escapepod.org]
snipshot_pu459polb, blogged to AHT from the Flickr photostream of Slice
Happy days are here again!
I moved to New York City long after the last of the Horn & Hardart Automats (right) closed. Of all the photos of yore of a Manhattan I never knew, however, the images that have intrigued me the most have been of these establishments. I mean, what's not to like about put-the-money-in, open-the-little-door, get-the-food?
That's why I can't wait to try Bamn. Especially considering some of its offerings:
bite-sized burgers, mac & cheese, pizza, chicken strips, grilled cheese, hot dogs, pork buns, and lots of other great stuff - made fresh throughout the day.
Looks like Gothamist went already and took some photos.
Judging by the G'mist pix, the machines look like those of the Netherlands's FEBO (left), which is basically the same thing: treats of deep-fried goodness nestled in cubbies alongside burgers and other sandwiches. I sampled lots of FEBO while visiting Amsterdam in February, and if Bamn is anything like it, then happy days, indeed.
Bamn [official site]
The Automat [theautomat.com]
FEBO [AHT Archives]
A Taste of Bamn [Gothamist]
Meat, meet mobile phone. Mobile phone, meet meat:
The campaign encourages Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. customers to shoot photos of themselves on their cell phones as they devour a burger, and to e-mail these to the chains; photos can also be uploaded from digital cameras to the chains’ Web sites. Each chain is posting the photos on its site, where visitors can vote on who they feel is the “Burger Slayer of the Month.’’ The winners of each chain’s contest will be determined by visitors’ votes and judges from CKE and Spacedog; they will receive 31 free hamburgers and have their photos posted on the chains’ sites.
Burger Lovers Say ‘Cheese’ [New York Times; link via Tien Mao]
Brave new world, eh? Witness:
What if the next burger you ate was created in a warm, nutrient-enriched soup swirling within a bioreactor?Edible, lab-grown ground chuck that smells and tastes just like the real thing might take a place next to Quorn at supermarkets in just a few years, thanks to some determined meat researchers. Scientists routinely grow small quantities of muscle cells in petri dishes for experiments, but now for the first time a concentrated effort is under way to mass-produce meat in this manner.
Henk Haagsman, a professor of meat sciences at Utrecht University, and his Dutch colleagues are working on growing artificial pork meat out of pig stem cells. They hope to grow a form of minced meat suitable for burgers, sausages and pizza toppings within the next few years.
Reading Chez Pim today, I came across some alarming info:
One of the Internet's great strengths is that a single blogger or a small political group can inexpensively create a Web page that is just as accessible to the world as Microsoft's home page. But this democratic Internet would be in danger if the companies that deliver Internet service changed the rules so that Web sites that pay them money would be easily accessible, while little-guy sites would be harder to access, and slower to navigate. [New York Times editorial desk]
So, I'll participate in Pim's Day Without Foodblogs
FURTHER READING
Why You Should Care About Net Neutrality [Slate]
Keeping a Democratic Web [New York Times]
Catching the Web in a Net of Neutrality [Washington Post]
This day is without foodblogs [Chez Pim]
I saw on New York City weblog Gothamist that Google has released a new whizbang feature: Google Trends, which lets you "see what the world is searching for." Naturally, AHT ran hamburger through the machine:
No surprise that the peaks and troughs are due to high-profile burger news items, which the tool maps out using letter markers, while giving a key as to what the letters correspond to:
The really cool thing about Google Trends, though, is that you can compare different search terms. So we gave hamburger vs. cheeseburger vs. burger the once over, suspecting that "burger" would come out on top. (Hey, it's easier to type):
Naturally, we ran a burger vs. pizza deathmatch. Looks like pizza won. I seriously would have predicted a burger victory, but whaddaya know?
Google Trends Guide to New York [Gothamist]
Shackwatchers: a site that monitors the length of the line at the Shake Shack in New York City's Madison Square Park via images posted to Flickr. Here are the three latest views of the line:
| www.flickr.com |
Update (4/19/06): Gothamist has discovered that Shake Shack will be adding a webcam next week. They received the following email:
Thanks for your interest in the Shake Shack. I work for Union Square Hospitality Group and just noticed your blurb suggesting a web cam. I wanted to give you the heads up that we have purchased a web cam for our website, www.shakeshacknyc.com, and we expect this to be live on our site by Monday. It will display a new still shot of the line every 15 seconds. Let me know if you have any questions.
Not as cool in that DIY way, but way more useful.
Shackwatchers [via VJArmy.com]
[Julissa] Vargas works not in a restaurant but in a busy call center in [Santa Maria, California], 150 miles from Los Angeles. She and as many as 35 others take orders remotely from 40 McDonald's outlets around the country. The orders are then sent back to the restaurants by Internet, to be filled a few yards from where they were placed.
McDonald's hopes the practice will shave a second or two off each transaction—which would add up to significant time if multiplied by the billions and billions served by the burger giant.
Great. It's already hard enough to understand the garbled speakers without the order-taker being MILES AWAY.
The Long-Distance Journey of a Fast-Food Order [New York Times; via Get In My Head Or My Belly]
Big Brother is watching you—all to get that Quarter Pounder into your gut a few seconds sooner.
With the advent of ubiquitous surveillance cameras in our lives, it's almost refreshing to see observation technology being put to such delectable use as it is in "HyperActive Bob." Bob is the newest high-tech doohickey from Pittsburgh upstart HyperActive Technologies. Employing rooftop cameras, the system alerts the kitchen when the drive-through is on its way toward a traffic jam, then specifies how much food to prepare.
Currently being tested in Pittsburgh-area Mickey Ds, Taco Bells, and Burger Kings, Bob also seeks to make predictions based on personal and vehicle demographics—whether it be incoming Escalades full of rappers with Big Mac munchies or minivans full of post-AYSO Happy Meal and orange drink fiends with salad-prone chauffeurs.
According to the Associated Press, the technology has been a success with owners, employees, managers, and customers so far, slashing wait and training times dramatically. The company's website states, "HyperActive Bob directly commands kitchen workers, through touch screen interfaces, to produce just the right amount of food at just the right time, ensuring that restaurants never run out of hot, fresh product, while minimizing food waste."
We're all for increasing the efficiency of getting burgers in our gullets as quickly as possible, even if it means yet another situation where profiling by type and invasive technology are utilized in the United States. We're tired of so-called "fast" food restaurants whose inept bungling keep us waiting endlessly for substandard burgers. It's time we use 100 years of industrial know-how for something we can chow on.
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