Red Pepper Flakes. A blog by Imelda Suriato

Mini-wave

This is too cute! Heinz collaborated with microwave expert Gordon Andrews and Stephen Frazer from Frazer Designers and here comes Beanzawave, the world’s smallest microwave. Powered via USB to your laptop, it uses the combination of mobile phone radio frequency to create the heat to cook both on the outside and within in under a minute.

So now you can eat a warm, nutritious super mini-meals without leaving your desk. Of course you can heat up 8 mini-meals in a row if you want. But that’s not the point, is it?

Me No Speak Language Guide

Perfect travel companion. Just point to the picture and voilà! Available for travel to China, Japan or Thailand.

The Dumping Guide

The write up on Barnes & Nobles for Dump ‘Em: How to Break Up with Anyone from Your Best Friend to Your Hairdresser is hillarious. I love the one comment about finally breaking up with her hairdresser of 20 years because the guy eventually died. Touché!

Début Art

Sam Summerskill from Début Art visited Squeaky for a nice show-and-tell on Friday. He then asked for suggestions on lunch places around Squeaky office  where he can get a burrito (he really felt like having a burrito). Nice chap.

And then I realized he left the new Début Art reference folders. He didn’t tell me if it’s for us or he just left it while hurrying on his quest for burritos. I guess I’ll Take One.

Thanks, Sam!

Wolfram|Alpha

This thing is really intelligent! It gives you answers from food & nutrition to physics and linguistics. Even when we ask it if it sleeps, it says “no, I can’t.”

Try “bacon” or “gravy” and it gives you the nutritional facts. Try “Coca Cola” and it spits out all the company info. Try math or physics and you’ll be blown away.

A little tricky to figure out the right way to input your questions though. Maybe because we’re so used to keyword search, not smart, computational algorithm offered by this engine. The site offers some tips for good results:

• Wolfram|Alpha answers specific questions rather than explaining general topics
  Enter “2 cups of sugar”, not “nutrition information”
• You can only get answers about objective facts
  Try “highest mountain”, not “most beautiful painting”
• Only what is known is known to Wolfram|Alpha
  Ask “how many men in Mauritania”, not “how many monsters in Loch Ness”
• Only public information is available
  Request “GDP of France”, not “home phone of Michael Jordan”

And the worst part is, I still get stumped on how to best enter my questions. Yes, I’m not as smart as Stephen Wolfram. 🙂