gourmet
Latest
Alphabet’s Wing will offer drone deliveries in Helsinki next month
Alphabet announced that Wing deliveries are about to start in Finland's capital of Helsinki and detailed more about where they the drones would operate and what folks could order. The pilot program will start in the Vuosaari district, an ideal spot for drone deliveries because it's bordered by water on three sides and has a dense population.
Gourmet Live now available for iPhone
Gourmet Magazine closed shop a few years ago and has lived on through its Gourmet Live app for the iPad. A little less than a year after its iPad app debuted, the company rolled out an iPhone version. Both the iPhone and iPad app lets you browse recipes and read articles from their large collection of food-related content. The system uses a single login so all your saved and purchased content is available on both iOS devices. The iPhone app also has push notifications and integrated support for Twitter and Facebook. The Gourmet Live app is available now for free from the App Store.
New Yorker, Gourmet iPad apps debut
Two highly-anticipated iPad app releases have finally hit the App Store, and they're both magazines: The New Yorker and Gourmet Live. The New Yorker (free for the app, US$4.99 per issue) joins Gourmet Live as the latest magazine apps from publisher Condé Nast. The navigation is simple: tap anywhere on the screen to bring up the controls. You can quickly move between sections and articles with the scrubber or table of contents. For more leisurely reading, swipe between pages. One unique feature is how the magazine's famous cartoons are handled. Tap anyone to bring up a scrollable cartoon gallery. Plus, you can enter the regular caption contest right from within the app. It looks great, and we're eager to try it out. Meanwhile, ill-fated Gourmet Magazine has been reborn as the iPad app Gourmet Live (the current issue is free; there's no word of future pricing). As John Gruber points out, Gourmet is now in the unique position of existing as an iPad app only. Its content is organized by topic and theme, and it features recipes, slideshows, video and a lot more. For now, there's no subscription option for either, but rumors suggest that could change soon. WIRED has come down in price since its introduction, but it remains to be seen if customers will embrace the per-issue pricing model. Other Condé Nast properties have transitioned to the iPad well, like WIRED, Epicurious and GQ. Finally, Jason Schwartzman and Roman Coppola have produced a hilarious short film introducing The New Yorker's app. Check it out on the next page (Flash, sorry).
Gourmet magazine to return as iPad app
There's been a lot of talk about the iPad saving print, but in this case it might actually happen. Gourmet magazine closed up shop late last year, but the publisher is getting ready to bring the mag back -- as an iPad app called Gourmet Live. The app will be free (with a few options for in-app payments), and will not only include articles and recipes from the magazine, but some online check-in functionality, and a few other fun tidbits. It's not something that could support a print magazine, sounds like, but for fans of the brand, it'll be a nice return. Then again, maybe an app like this can support a magazine. Conde Nast, who owns both Gourmet and Wired (which is already making waves on the iPad), says that surprisingly, app sales have not only "surpassed our newsstand sales" but "has not cannibalized them either." That's intriguing -- all of the talk about the iPad saving print has focused on moving newsstand customers over to digital media, but a story like that hints that maybe digital media can still work as promotion for traditional newsstand publications. We'll have to see how this all plays out -- Gourmet Live is due out in the fall.
5 Christmas gifts for the foodie
You know the foodie in your life. He or she is that person who will drag you miles away from your home to try out a new restaurant that they've heard about, or will spend hours cooking up an "experiment" in the kitchen, only to decide at the last minute to go out to eat. Finding the perfect gift for the Apple-owning gourmet in your life doesn't need to be an exercise in futility. Follow along as I bring you five ideas that are sure to keep your foodie friend on his or her journey to palatable perfection. 1) The first -- and one that I use on a regular basis -- is actually a free present that you can provide. OpenTable [Free, iTunes Link] is a service that is used by many foodie-friendly restaurants to capture reservations. You'll need to sign your gift recipient up for a free account, but once you're done, she'll be able to make reservations at that new French bistro that just opened up with just a few taps. 2) What's a good meal without a good glass (or bottle) of wine? Since your gourmet buddy might also be a budding oenophile, he might enjoy knowing which wines would work well with a certain meal, and how other wine lovers rated a particular wine. My favorite app in this area is The Wine Ratings Guide by Nirvino [US$3.99, iTunes Link]. The app calls upon the huge database of wines at the Nirvino website, and asks for your ratings and tasting notes, as well as photos of the label on the bottle. It's useful for finding highly-rated wines when you're at the local store picking up a few bottles for your enjoyment.
When gaming meets and eats gourmet
This week's Photoshop Phriday over at Something Awful once again relates to the wonderful world of video games, tasking fervent photochoppers to take their slicing and splicing skills into the kitchen. The cataclysmic combination of gaming and gourmet yields some absolutely ingenious (even delicious) results and should easily satiate your appetite for a good laugh. From Metal Gear Salads and organized crime omelettes to the frightening discovery of an obtuse vending machine in one of the ages of Myst, the selection is well worth sampling. [Image by Overbite. Thanks Lupos.]
