The apps make the phone
I caved and got an iPhone. No, I didn’t get AT&T and lock myself into their egregious pricing and business policies. A very kind friend upgraded to the 3G and donated his 1G 8MB phone to me! It is unlocked and worked on T-Mobile (and will work with any SIM card I so choose).
The form factor is great. Sleek and elegant. I miss the keyboard, but not terribly since the predictive typing is excellent. What makes the phone is the software.
My smartphone journey started with the Blackberry in 2002. It was an incredible email device and everything synced with my work needs - contacts, calendar etc. In 2005, searching for more functionality, I switched to the Treo. What was great about it was the Palm OS and the plethora of apps available. I had a very customized alarm clock, the NYC subway map in the palm of my hands and a whole load of little games to keep me occupied.
But the Treo’s form factor was terrible - it was just too huge. And it handled media relatively poorly. Especially music.
The iPhone is like the Treo on steroids. The form factor is great, the integrated music, videos and photos are excellent and most importantly, the apps make the phone.
Right now, I have a whole bunch of apps on it that I could not imagine living without - organizational apps, to-do apps, location-based recommendation apps, games, the much loved NYC subway map… I basically walk around with almost all the critical data that I need while mobile.
But… while the apps are great, the basic OS is merely acceptable. It is slow - when I hit the SMS icon, it takes a while to load up the messages, same with address book and other apps. It doesn’t offer basic functionality - like the much talked about cut and paste, and most importantly, it is locked to AT&T and Apple continues to spend valuable resources ensuring the lock stays is place.
What this means is that if Google does a halfway decent job with Android1, there is a market that is ready to switch over. Give me a solid OS, an app store that is truly open and multiple carriers and I would switch. Now, the device has to be sleek, but I’ll even live with a slightly bigger form factor if I don’t have to constantly worry about bricking my phone.
Treo started the trend, but dropped the ball. It will be interesting to see who fulfills the promise in the long term.
Image courtesy this Wired article. Wired and Leander Kahney own all rights.
- No, Windows Mobile will not cut it. I’ve tried it and it is potentially the worst mobile OS in history! [↩]
Sarah Palin - the mandatory post
Everyone is talking about her. Everything that’s needed to be said has been said. So, I will just point you to the the best article I’ve read on the woman.
It is by one of my favorite reviewers, Roger Ebert. I didn’t know Ebert wrote on politics. One could ask - why is he qualified to do so? Why are any of us qualified? Have you seen all the bloggers pontificating on the topic?! 
It is brilliant. So brilliant that I am reproducing it in its entirety below - the bold emphasis is mine.
—
The American Idol candidate1
By Roger Ebert
I think I might be able to explain some of Sara Palin’s appeal. She’s the “American Idol” candidate. Consider. What defines an “American Idol” finalist? They’re good-looking, work well on television, have a sunny personality, are fierce competitors, and so talented, why, they’re darned near the real thing. There’s a reason “American Idol” gets such high ratings. People identify with the contestants. They think, Hey, that could almost be me up there on that show!
My feeling is, I don’t want to be up there. I want a vice president who is better than me, wiser, well-traveled, has met world leaders, who three months ago had an opinion on Iraq. Someone who doesn’t repeat bald-faced lies about earmarks and the Bridge to Nowhere. Someone who doesn’t appoint Alaskan politicians to “study” global warming, because, hello! It has been studied. The returns are convincing enough that John McCain and Barack Obama are darned near in agreement.
I would also want someone who didn’t make a teeny little sneer when referring to “people who go to the Ivy League.” When I was a teen I dreamed of going to Harvard, but my dad, an electrician, told me, “Boy, we don’t have the money. Thank your lucky stars you were born in Urbana and can go to the University of Illinois right here in town.”
So I did, very happily. Although Palin gets laughs when she mentions the “elite” Ivy League, she sure did attend the heck out of college. Five schools in six years. What was that about?
And how can you be her age and never have gone to Europe? My dad had died, my mom was working as a book-keeper and I had a job at the local newspaper when, at 19, I scraped together $240 for a charter flight to Europe. I had Arthur Frommer’s $5 a Day under my arm, started in London, even rented a Vespa and drove in the traffic of Rome. A few years later, I was able to send my mom, along with the $15 a Day book.
You don’t need to be a pointy-headed elitist to travel abroad. You need curiosity and a hunger to see the world. What kind of a person (who has the money) arrives at the age of 44 and has only been out of the country once, on an official tour to Iraq? Sarah Palin’s travel record is that of a hopeless provincial.
But some people like that. She’s never traveled to Europe, Asia, Africa, South America or Down Under? That makes her like them. She didn’t go to Harvard? Good for her! There a lot of hockey moms who haven’t seen London, but most of them would probably love to, if they had the dough. And they’d be proud if their kids won a scholarship to Harvard.
Palin is a shallow, chirpy person with those vaguely alarming eyeglasses. Now her fans all want a pair. Remember back when women wore glasses that departed their ears in plastic swoops and swirls? My theory is, anyone who wears glasses that look weird is telling me something I don’t want to know.
I trust the American people will see through Palin’s facade, and save the Republic in November. The most damning indictment against her is that she considered herself a good choice to be a heartbeat away. That shows bad judgment.
—
Please, please don’t talk about how other candidates who have run have had less experience. There is, in fact, no person who has run for office who has had less experience. Even Quayle had more!
- All copyright owned by Roger Ebert and the Chicago Sun Times [↩]
Form and function
A couple of weeks ago, I was at the MoMA design store in midtown Manhattan. I love that store since they have such innovative product designs across a spectrum of products.
I happened on this contact lens case and immediately fell in love. As someone who will likely have to wear contact lenses forever, the case is something I interact with every day. And contact lens cases are extraordinarily dull.
This case was so cute - bright, cheerful and shaped like eyes. Seeing it would brighten up my day for sure, so I bought it. Seven bucks. Fine. Most contact lens cases come free with solution or you get them from your doctor - seven dollars is therefore somewhat expensive for a case (even if it is not an expensive purchase in general - 1.5 Starbucks coffee!)
I went home and started using it. So cute… I did notice that since the base is colored, it is hard to see the lens floating in it, but I could live with that.
Then, last week, I needed to get my eyes examined. Knowing the doc would want to see me with my lenses on, I grabbed the case, planning to throw it in my bag. As soon as I picked it up and walked out of the bathroom, the fluid was sloshing over my palm. Huh. Weird. I grabbed a tissue and ran out of the door. Must have been an accident, right? No. Definitely not. By the time I got to the doc, the tissue was soaked and the lenses were in microscopic levels of liquid.
What is the purpose of a lens case? To keep the contacts in the solution. One presumes that the case should be movable while still fulfilling its goal for existence. This was a stunning failure. Thank god I found this out in a non-critical situation. What if I had traveled with these cases on a trip? It would have been a disaster.
I’m more than surprised that MoMA has these cases. Cute? Definitely. Filling the basic function? Absolutely not. And something that doesn’t work doesn’t deserve to be in the store.
Good design is where the form is exquisite while also meeting all the function requirements of the product. Incredible form with terrible function does not work for me1.
The same principle holds true in online design. Interaction design is the most critical aspect a website. If your site is super-pretty but a user can’t figure out how to get through the flow without falling out, there’s no point to it.
It always makes sense to start the question “What does the product need to accomplish”? In this case, it is to keep the contact lenses safe in the solution. In the case of an ecommerce site, it is to enable a frictionless transaction. Whatever the goal is, figure it out and make sure that there are no distractions along the way. Even if the site is ugly, if it enables the customer to fulfill her goal, it is infinitely better than having an pretty site that is hard to use.
The ideal solution, of course, is to have a product that can do both. Those are the products that deserve to be in MoMA’s design store.
- For example, super-high heels are a completely failure in this regard and I refuse to wear them and suffer just because it makes me look better [↩]
Spring cleaning the digital life
I’m spring fall cleaning my digital life. It is truly incredible how much digital junk one can collect and how many digital chores exist. And just like the offline world where every new acquisition of an item leads to extra work (cleaning the item, taking care of it, insuring it if appropriate etc.), every user account, every digital image and every blog needs work.
The volume of data is just ridiculous. Let’s start with email - I started sending email in 1993 (CompuServe baby!) and while I don’t have those emails, I have email dating back to 1995! Maybe it is because I am a bit of a pack rat when it comes to email, but sorting through, categorizing, importing, archiving and ensuring the email is in the right format (making all the Windows emails Mac compatible) has been quite a task.
Then there’s the music. A few years ago, R and I combined our music. We have over a 100 gigs of it… figuring out a solution where we can both share the music but keep it in sync has been a huge challenge. It still doesn’t work all the time, but at now, we set up a Mac Mini as a shared server and plug the music drive in to share it. Works most of the time…
Photos have exploded this year. And again, it’s something we want both people to have access to. So, you need to tag them, sort them and ensure the memory cards are downloaded. Oh, the tags have go cross platform (windows and mac). And if you shoot in RAW, you need to convert them to JPGs to store them on your computer and the “negatives” can remain on a hard drive. Damn, the work flow is complex!
Online passwords have to be maintained. I have no idea the number of sites where I have passwords, much less which email I used with it and what on earth the password even is.
Oh, and le blogs… is it so hard to pop open a tab and update it? Not really, but given all the other digital cleaning I’m doing, I’ve felt overwhelmed and reluctant to post…
And given all this digital organizing, the real world organizing has taken a back seat. So for a few weeks, I’ll have to focus on that and while I do, my digital stuff will get messy again. So I will focus on the digital for a bit again and while I do that… the cycle of life… argh!
Picture from the Apple store
Michael Phelps - #7 in pictures
For a whole bunch of reasons, I couldn’t be near a TV when Michael Phelps was swimming the 100M Butterfly for his seventh gold of the Olympics. But I really wanted him to win and, eager to know what happened, I called someone who gave me the play-by-play as it happened.
Once I got near a TV/computer, I watched the fantastic race and continued to stay amazed that the guy won.
It all comes down to the fact that Cavic took a long final stroke and “coasted” to the wall while Phelps took an extra stroke to hit the wall first. But if you want to be totally convinced, these pictures (from Sports Illustrated, where there are more images) will quench your thirst.
Phelps is on the left, bare chested; Cavic is on the right in the suit
As an aside, I find that being an American citizen for the first time during an Olympics has a marked bearing on my rooting for American atheletes.
Another “Born Free” - Christian, the lion
I loved the movie Born Free when I was a kid and so this video is very “aww…” inducing.
More info here.
iPhone… still…
When the iPhone first came out, I desperately wanted one, but refused to switch my carrier to AT&T (which has incredibly bad service in Manhattan). Plus, I needed a phone I could unlock so I could use a local SIM while I traveled out of the country.
And by the time the first gen iPhone was unlocked, the 2nd gen one was looming large. So I waited.
Now the second gen iPhone, the 3G one is out. But… it is not yet unlocked. It will most certainly be jailbroken1, but unlocked 2? Not sure.
So I am spending some time this weekend following the incredible hackers from the iPhone Dev Team. Here’s hoping they can unlock the 3G baseband. Then I can *finally* have the phone without having to live with terrible service.
- Jailbreaking an iPhone is where you can run any application on it, not just Apple approved apps [↩]
- Unlocking an iPhone makes it usable on any GSM carrier - T-Mobile in the US and any GSM carrier worldwide [↩]
Cavite and Aamir
There’s been a lot of talk about Cavite and Aamir. So I decided to watch them both. First, Cavite. The next day, Aamir. At the end of it, I wanted to dissect both and figure out why I reacted the way I did to each. So here it is.
*Warning: This whole article is one big spoiler. Consider yourself alerted.*
Both stories are about a regular guy who heads back home (in the case of Cavite, to the Philippines, in Aamir, to Mumbai, India). When they land, they are not greeted by their families but instead with the news that the families have been kidnapped. To secure their release, they must follow the instructions of the baddie terrorist.
Both films give us enough of a background on the protagonists.
Cavite - The film spends some time showing us the depressingly dull life Adam lives as a security guard. His father dies in a bus explosion in Manila and as he heads home, he learns that his girlfriend is going to abort his child, driving him further into depression. He half-heartedly tries to overdose in an airport bathroom. That’s his mental state as he lands in the Philippines for his father’s funeral. Why spend so much time on the background? Well - wait till we finish this exercise.
Aamir - The scene with the immigration agent is very good - it tell us who Aamir his, his occupation (doctor in the UK) and also tees up the conflict to come - Aamir is returning home, but even there he’s treated as somewhat of a suspect due to his religion.
Where the films are starkly different is how they deal with the antagonist.
Cavite - We never see the antagonist. He’s only a voice throughout the whole film. I really liked this. Terrorists are nameless, faceless people and Cavite kept to that theme. His voice could at times be soothing - almost nice to poor Adam - and at other times, cruel and unforgiving. You don’t get a sense for who he is. Only that he is powerful, is watching everything all the time, and will have no compunction in making Adam pay if he disobeys. We hear Adam’s mother and sister, but again, we don’t see them either.
Aamir - We see the terrorist - a solid man, requisitely bald and with a mustache. We get glimpses of his kid and his spouse, in what seems to be large, oldish house with high ceilings. The message that even outwardly ordinary folks can be terrorists come across nicely. However, we never see Aamir’s family or hear them even though they are “in the living room”.
While both antagonists get their victims to do their bidding, the approach is quite different. Both send their victims off into the unsavory parts of the city to impress upon them the plight of their Muslim brethren, but the cruelty levels differ considerably.
Cavite - From the beginning, the terrorist makes it clear that he’s in charge. He knows everything about Adam. In an early scene, he tells Adam to pick up a pack of cigarettes that he’s placed there and inside Adam finds his sister’s thumb. As he hurls it away in fear and disgust, the terrorist makes it quite clear that there are consequences for disobedience. Surefire way to instill fear, panic and implicit obedience. Of course Adam, now shaken, follows his every word. But even here, Adam pushes his limits. He tests the terrorists to see what he can get away with and sometimes (like in the case of looking at the bomb - see below), he goes too far. This is what anyone would do - see how much they can get away with.
Aamir - This terrorist also knows everything about his victim, but there is no real punishment when Aamir pauses instead of following implicitly. When Aamir looks at the police station, a guy appears and says “don’t even think about it”, but there’s zero consequence. No little sibling even gets spanked! Besides the initial video of the family in a living room, Aamir doesn’t ask for any more proof that they are alive. The only other time we see the kidnapped family is when Aamir imagines them being tortured. The only hold over Aamir is his family and we never hear them? And more importantly, never see them hurt even in a small way? That was a bit weak for my taste.
Oh, and why on earth does it take Aamir *at least* three rings of the cell phone before he ever picks it up?! If a terrorist has your family, wouldn’t you pick up the phone as soon as the first ring starts? Wouldn’t you stop in the middle of the street, drop everything to get the phone immediately? That never happens here - he’s always la-la-la, let me finish what I’m doing and get to the phone after it has rung three times. Argh! That little nit drove me crazy as I watched it. Primarily because this is a thriller - build the tension throughout the movie instead of just at the end… I wanted to see more tension, to see Aamir more afraid and panicked.
Aamir, as a character, also seems somewhat spineless to me. He is an obedient puppy dog. In fact, there is a scene where the terrorist taps a toy monkey on the head and it claps. This is supposed to symbolize his control over Aamir. Aamir is just too much of a milk toast for my liking - he’s pretty spineless through the whole movie. The only exception to this is when he thinks he’s lost the suitcase and goes in after the baddies with a big pipe and beats the crap out of them. That level of desperation was perfect. (As an aside, the music in the scene was also excellent.)
In terms of the “why me?” question, again, the films differ in how they deal with it.
Cavite - The terrorist tells Adam that his father ripped them off and then fled the country. To pay for that, his father was forced to detonate a bomb on a bus (yes, that’s the father from the opening scene.) He wasn’t an innocent victim, he was the bomber! Now, this is the next step. Adam will complete paying the debt.
Aamir - Why Aamir is the chosen one is a bit vague, but sufficient. The terrorist alludes to “look at how much your fellow muslims around the world contribute” and to the London bombing and Aamir running away from that. But it is not clearly spelled out why it is Aamir and not some other poor sap who got off the flight. This didn’t bother me too much because in reality terror victims can be chosen very randomly and there is enough allusion to cover it.
The mid-sections of both films feel a touch bloated.
Cavite - There’s a scene where badman specifically has someone killed in front of Adam to further instill fear - this scene felt forced. Was the only point to scare him? Why? He’s already very scared. Is it to show that killing is also as easy as cutting off a finger? I think Adam already got that. Then there’s the whole “swap” the bag issue. In Cavite, Adam’s bag is stolen by a little street urchin and Adam disobeys instructions and chases him. The urchin still gets away and Adam is brought back under control. Then, he’s asked to go a home where two little boys are held hostage, take their picture to their father, the bank manager, and get cash in exchange. This cash is then taken to a cockfighting arena and swapped for… his bag! Ok, fine, he needed to get the cash his father stole, but why steal his bag elaborately? Just tell him - hand over your bag to the kid. He’s not in any position to argue, is he?
Aamir - the whole “the suitcase has money, oh no it is a bomb” thing is a bit wasteful. I agree with Dabba that this wasted a ton of time and the movie did not progress much the whole time he’s chasing after the suitcase. And all the chasing around - what for? Just to do the switch? Damn - there had to be an easier way! Have a junior badman follow him to the bathroom and offer to hold the suitcase and do the swap there. If he’s not going to check it again after not having it in his possession for half an hour, why would he check it again after a pee-break? Then again, why tell him it is even money? Why not just lock the suitcase and put a bomb in it to start with? Does the terrorist need to kidnap a whole family just to have Aamir drop off money? The whole suitcase swap was a good chunk of film time…
The reveal of the bomb is also handled very differently in both films
Cavite - Once Adam gets his bag back, he immediately wants to know what’s in it because it feels different. Terrorist threatens him not to open it. Adam can’t help it. He has to open it. He has to know what he’s carrying. He opens the bag and freaks out that it is a bomb. Right then his cell phone dies. His panic is evident as mild-mannered Adam snatches a cell phone away from a lady bystander and then calls the terrorist back. The terrorist has Adam walk over to a street where a gaggle of kids are hunched over… Adam’s mother’s tongue! The terrorist cut off his mother’s tongue as punishment for the disobedience. It is very freaky - Adam breaks down and begs. It is powerful - the complete and total ownership of Adam even though what he has to do is so terrible.
Aamir - See above for the suitcase runaround. Aamir discovers it is a bomb in the final scene. He’s on the bus with his suitcase. Terrorist calls him and tells him to leave the suitcase there and get off. Only at that point does he realize it is a bomb. The only issue is that there is little to no time in the movie for Aamir to be conflicted. The ending is rushed.
With regard to the ending itself, I have no real quibble with how either film ended even though they are polar opposites of each other.
Cavite - Adam places the bomb in a church. Then the enormity of what he’s doing hits him. He refuses to leave. Again the terrorist points out that he has no choice but to obey him and commands him to leave. He does. He’s then given instructions on how to find his family . He’s then back to his life in the US - we see him talking to his sister on the phone; his girlfriend tells him she had an abortion because she couldn’t stand to have a muslim baby. He’s back in the reality of his life - the same shit as before, but now he has to deal with being a mass murder. Whamo!
Aamir - Aamir is really left only two choices by the terrorist. Let the people die or die himself. In the former, he would have done as commanded and would get his family back. But once he decides not to kill the innocent passengers, he doesn’t really have much of a choice - if he doesn’t detonate the bomb on the bus and he lives, he’s likely going to see his family be killed, so the only option he has is to kill himself. Now the issue here is that Aamir never tries to defy the terrorist before. He never tests the waters on how far he can go. This is the first time he ever disobeys an instruction. I just wish he’d done some of that before - established he had a spine somewhere during the movie instead of just at the end.
That’s the story. Now let’s move on to style. Here the two movies could not be more different-
Cavite is clearly guerilla filmmaking. A large chunk of the film where the camera follows Adam is all handheld (not steady-cam). There is a lot of dialog where Adam is in the frame, but his words are in the form of a voiceover. Often one sentence is a voiceover where we see him (but his lips don’t move) and then he speaks the next sentence on camera. But somehow this works - it works partly because this is done consistently and so you get used to it and it works party because the dialog is so basic, so shredded down to the core that you know he has to ask that anyway.
The antagonist is only a voice. Again, this may have been done due to cost/production issues since it is so much easier to get all the dialog at once in a sound room, but it added to the movie - it made the antagonist the nameless, faceless puppetmaster terrorist. In fact, the voice was “uncredited” in the credits. It worked wonderfully.
There are scenes where the lighting is poor. There are scenes where the sound is crappy. Some of them are a bit jarring. But keep in mind that this film was made for pretty much no budget (under $10k!) The writers Ian Gamazon and Neill Dela Llana, take on every role in the cast and crew - Gamzon is the lead actor, they direct, produce, and crew. Most of the other actors are family. This film should be added in with Robert Rodriguez’s El Mariachi on how to make a solid movie with no money!
Aamir has excellent production values. This is a “real” movie. There are no sound issues. No lighting issues. There are some very nice touches - for example, as Aamir walks back through the market after picking up the red suitcase, we see a lot of red - a shot of the suitcase and the feet in the marketplace has red swirling sarees, red meat being cut, red handbag, red shirt, and several red buses all lined up in traffic. In the market, everyone there seems to look at him - they either know what’s going on and are silent spectators, or it is in his imagination. Nicely done.
The background scores in Aamir were also excellent across the board. I still remember a lot of it. The same can’t be said for Cavite…
And finally, we come to the big question - is Aamir a ripoff of Cavite? I don’t think so. Just look at all the stuff above - besides the premise, the two films handle almost everything else very differently. I believe Anurag when he says that Raj Kumar did not watch Cavite before he made Aamir. I also truly believe that two people can have a similar idea. You only have to look at the technology world to see that it is true - how many music recommendation sites are there? Tons. They all popped up at the same time because the idea itself is easy to have. How many blog comment systems are there? Several. All funded by competing venture capitalists. Again, one did not copy the other. People had similar ideas to fulfill a need they saw and at the end of the day, there are only so many ways that you can execute the idea.
It’s my belief that RK made the best story he could based on the idea he had. Apparently the producers also bought the remake rights to Cavite (just to be on the safe side) and in a classy move, RK thanks Gamzon and Dela Llana in the opening titles. I liked the movie. And in the Indian context where stark “message” movies without songs and dancing are hard to make and harder to market, it is a great step in the right direction.
This is a debut feature - I am a huge fan of debut features. I cheer for them because it is a sign of yet another person who’s overcome the odds to make his or her first film. So, congratulations, Raj Kumar - you’ve made something you should be very proud of!!
But… I liked Cavite more. Was it because I was amazed at what they accomplished despite the budget? Possibly. Was it because the style matched the genre and the story was pretty tight? Yes. Was it because I liked the ending - where the everyday victim does the everyday thing - no heroics, no histrionics? Yes. I just like gritty, real movies. And that’s what Cavite was.
At the end of the day though, they are both solid films - similar in the premise, but different in many ways. As I said up top, I just wanted to dissect both and figure out why I reacted the way I did to each. That’s why my title for this post is not Cavite vs. Aamir, but rather Cavite “and” Aamir.
Women at b-school
The March 2008 edition of the HBS Bulletin had a little piece about the first women MBA students.
“A ‘Daring Exper-iment’: Harvard and Busi-ness Education for Women, 1937–1970,” tells the story of how coeducation at HBS evolved from an eleven-month certificate program in “personnel administration” at Radcliffe College (1937–1945), to the Management Training Program (1946–1955), to the Harvard-Radcliffe Program in Business Administration (1956–1963) — the last step before complete integration took place with the admission of eight women into the MBA Class of 1965.
But what’s even more interesting is a letter to the editor that showed up in the current issue (June 2008) -
Your March article “A History of Women at HBS” omitted an important category — women in the early sixties who were not admitted to the firstyear at HBS. Instead, their only option was to attend a separate and unequal first-year class at the Harvard-Radcliffe Program in Business Administration, a nondegree program. The women were then allowed to apply for the second year at HBS, and fewer than ten were accepted. In the second-year program, they were given no housing or section designation, and a professor could deny entrance to his course.
When job interviews started on campus, women’s names were scratched from the interview list. Recruiters refused to interview them because it was a “waste of time.” I know, because this happened to me. I was part of this forgotten class.
Joan Oxman Rothberg
(HRPBA 1962, MBA ’63)
Summit, NJ
Wow - scratched off the interview list! Incredible how far we’ve come. And that’s an excellent thing.
Jetsons-style grocery shopping
Each time you’re about to throw away an empty container — for ketchup, cereal, pickles, milk, macaroni, paper towels, dog food or whatever — you just pass its bar code under the scanner. With amazing speed and accuracy, the Ikan beeps, consults its online database of one million products, and displays the full name and description.
In a clear, friendly font, the screen might say: “Nabisco Reduced Fat Ritz Crackers 14.5 Oz.,” for example. Now you can toss the box, content that its replacement has been added to your shopping list.
After a few days of this, you can review the list online at Ikan.net — and if everything looks good, click once to have everything delivered to your house at a time you specify.
Maybe it’s not exactly a Food-a-Rac-a-Cycle. But at least it’s the Netflix of groceries.
State of the Art - Grocery Shopping Made Easy - NYTimes.com
The next revision of this will be a smaller, lighter scanner. When that happens AND when (if?) they integrate with Fresh Direct or Whole Foods, I am SO there.
Design