Cool Kitchen Gadgets That Don't Seem So Once They Arrive

What kitchen in the country doesn't have one of those cool kitchen gadgets that kind of look like they just might be able to do the thing they promise, but never do? The magic peeler, the magic juicer or dicer-slicer or whatever - who hasn't at least bought one or two of these zany cool kitchen gadgets and cursed themselves for their gullibility?

When we buy one of these, we can never bring ourselves to admit that they don't work. Who wants to admit that they've been had? And so, those super gadgets will take up counter space or drawer space somewhere in the kitchen for the next five years until someone one day just gets sick of it and throws it out when you're not looking.

One reason these cool kitchen gadgets never actually make it to being useful devices is that their designers just have the wildest imaginations. They make these things for very very specific needs. Even when we do need them, we don't need them more than a few times in a lifetime. That's not the way to design anything for the kitchen. The kitchen needs multipurpose stuff - not one-trick ponies.

But you know - after all these years, you would think that we would know better than to pick one of these strange contraptions yet one more time. They continue to churn out out these strangely cool kitchen gadgets because, hey - you keep buying them.

And it isn't even just those crazy gadgets. When we travel to another country, often, we will come across some kind of device that they use in their local cuisine - handmade sushi knives from Japan, a pasta maker from Italy or something. Those things can seem great over there where they know how to use them. Once we get them over here, when they don't have the magic of their native culture around them, they just seem useless.

Perhaps the mistake we make is that we plan for things that never happen. When we get a beautiful pizza maker, we imagine that there will be these family get-togethers and everyone will be a nice happy family talking and munching on delicious pizzas altogether.

As it turns out, those family get-togethers are few and far between, and people don't feel like home-made pizza then.

It isn't even just exotic stuff like this. Take a simple food processor that comes with a million attachments. Or a simple thing like an oven. Who would think that an oven was a useless kitchen gadget? But there are plenty of us who just don't do that kind of cooking at home. We just like to trick our kitchens out like that.

Great Smart Phone Apps You Didn't Know About

Just imagine what it would be like if we didn't have smartphones. We would need a phone, a videogame player, a television, an MP3 player and a laptop. And that is only a very limited listing of everything that smart phone apps do for us. Our lives wouldbe infinitely poorer if we didn't have them. But perhaps, a lot of people out there don't really realize how good smart phone apps are. They don't realize how many things there are out there that they never knew about.

Of course, if you're an artist or an engineer or a doctor or something, there are a number of super-specialized apps that could transform your life. If you don't know about those, you won't be really missing out. We, on the other hand,are talking about apps that matter to all of us. You really need to know about what smart phone apps there are out there today that anyone on earth could use and find very useful. Let's look at a few of those.

For instance, how many people know that any camera-enabled smart phone is now a scanner and PDF converter? That's right, you can take a picture of a newspaper or a business card or any document, and right away, a two-dollar app like TurboScan can turn it into a clean scanned document. If you have an app like CardScan, it will even file your card away on your virtual Rolodex.

A couple of years ago, the New York Times star tech reviewer David Pogue made a huge deal about how there was this little pocket device that could not only connect to the Internet through 3G, it could act as a hotspot and connect any laptop in the area through Wi-Fi as well. It was amazing back then.

Today, you can create a mobile hotspot with your smartphone just like that. You can connect to the Internet on your smartphone, and anyone could go on it. Of course, this one isn't a smart phone app - its a feature.

Have you tried the Google Goggles app for Android phones? Goggles is an app that will identify any object for you. One day, it can maybe just take a picture of anyone walking on the street and you'd know everything about them. For now, you can snap a picture of any painting, any building, any storefront and so on - and Google will scour the Internet for what it is and bring you an answer. That's a killer feature.

A lot of TV stations come with their own special apps. Download it, you get access to that channel. There are lots of Internet service providers who offer apps for the streaming all kinds of channels, too. The best part is, the best app probably hasn't been made yet.

Apple TV Review

To fans of Apple's devices everywhere, the day Apple announced their new iPad was the biggest day ever. While the iPad and the iPhone are major franchises to Apple though, they don't represent what the company is totally excited that right now. To Apple, a good part of their future rests on how their new Apple TV turns out. It's that important to them. My Apple TV order arrived in the mail in the second week of March. As you'll see in this Apple TV review, for the most part, their new and reworked model almost totally delivers.

People always complain that Apple's products are not the best value for money. They feel that they can always get better bang for their buck buying a Windows or Android device or anything else. Not so with Apple TV though. At $99, Apple TV is the company's cheapest product - just about. But they don't skimp on the features for the money.

Basically, people buy products like Apple TV just for a few simple things that they wish to do with it. They want to see YouTube on it, they want to download and watch movies from Netflix, and they want to buy stuff from iTunes and watch them. Looking closely at the product for this Apple TV review though, I found that  Apple TV has many more useful tricks up its sleeve. The home screen has NHL Game Center, MLB TV, Flickr, Wall Street Journal Live, Vimeo - and a whole lot more to help you waste your time in a very pleasurable way.

Most people don't even need to be told an Apple product is easy to use. But you know - an Apple TV review does have to include that information. It'll take you two minutes from the time you get your product in the mail, to get it connected to the TV or to your computer, and then to get it running.

They have this new feature on Apple TV called Home Sharing. Whatever stuff you've got on your computer and your phone and other devices, you'll get it on your television screen through Apple TV in just a couple of minutes. You don't even need an Apple Match subscription for this.

If there's anything to complain about in the way Apple TV connects your iPhone, it's just that the iPhone app that promises to be a remote control for your Apple TV, never really gets its act together.

Apple is really good at completely integrating everything they make, for a completely flawless and seamless experience. Since your Apple TV is not an all-in-one device though (that will probably come day one day soon), the experience is not that seamless. The remote causes one problem. The other is that you can't control the volume without looking for your TV remote. That's a decided oversight.

The last problem is not actually a design flaw. It is a lost opportunity. Have you ever thought about how there is no App Store for Apple TV?