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Miso’s AI-powered app helps restaurants cook the perfect medium rare steak
Miso Robotics, the company that created the Flippy robot for fast-food burger chains, now wants to make sure your steak and chicken is cooked properly.
Meat your match with this Tinder-swiping steak
Dating apps are often characterized as 21st century "meat markets" and, thanks to this Dutch art installation, Tinder's getting uncomfortably close the real thing. The piece, appropriately called Tender, was built by four students at Leiden University in the Netherland. It's scheduled to debut at the Habitat art exhibition at Radion Amsterdam next weekend. But don't worry about getting hooked up with cold cuts, the app is actually a Tinder knockoff called 6Tin and that's an instant dealbreaker. [Image Credit: The Ministry of Gifs]
The Road to Mordor: Horton hears a patch
Few things get me more excited than the promise of a big steak dinner and a big, beefy patch. Both get the mouth watering, the senses tingling, and the anticipation racing. However, the former comes and goes within minutes, while the latter is here to stay. I love devouring a good set of patch notes, chewing every morsel of information as my mind tries to picture it in action. Mental note -- I should not be writing columns when I'm hungry. I trust you were as pleased as I was when you woke up to the Lord of the Rings Online November update patch notes this past week (Standard Disclaimer: These are for the test server and are subject to change, void in Nevada). We knew that Turbine had a few substantial projects in the works for November, but this is far beyond what I'd speculated. It's one of those "There's something for everyone -- well, almost everyone" updates that has a little of everything, a buffet of sumptuous delights. Sure, it's not going to please folks looking for new dungeons, the promised LI and housing revamps, or the continuation of the epic storyline. That said, Turbine's first post-F2P patch is considerably bigger than anticipated, and if this is any indication of the course the company is setting with releases, I'm happy to be on board. Let's break down this LotRO update after the jump, and see just who this patch is for and what it has to offer, shall we?
McCormick and Schmick's special BlizzCon menu
Truth be told, I didn't get to try a lot of the local cuisine in Anaheim this time around at BlizzCon -- we did have a nice dinner at the Anabella before the meetup, and we did try the buffet breakfast at the Indian restaurant in the Ramada Plaza, but other than that, most of my food came from the caterer in the press room. But at least one local restaurant got in the BlizzCon spirit -- seafood-and-steak hotspot McCormick and Schmick's apparently put a special Blizzard-related themed menu together for conventiongoers to pick from. And it's pretty funny -- they must have someone on staff who plays Diablo and WoW a lot.I especially like the "Noob Entrees," the "Death Knight Filet Mignon" (it can dual wield two flavors while tanking your taste buds?), and the Grizzly Hills Blueberry Shortcake. Which actually sounds really, really good -- it does kind of seem like Grizzly Hills would grow some great blueberries, doesn't it? Good show, M&S. All of the BlizzCon folks were pretty unmissable in Anaheim this past weekend, so it's cool to see a local busines play to the temporary clientele.
Developer resolution for 2009: Beat Warcraft
Our friends at GameDaily have a nice set of resolutions for game developers next year, and it's definitely worth a read if you're interested in seeing where they think the game industry might improve in 2009. But number three is the most interesting one for us: they suggest that game developers (and MMO devs in specific, we'd imagine) should make this the year that something else beats World of Warcraft.It seems much more unlikely than last year: last year, we were looking down the barrel of Age of Conan and Warhammer Online, and wondering if either one of those might cause a road bump in WoW's traffic. Age of Conan was called the steak to our game's McDonald's, but in the end, WoW players didn't do much more than give it a cursory glance. And while Warhammer seemed like a good contender to the throne, it hasn't come close to taking a bite out of Azeroth. This year, it doesn't even seem like there will be any MMO contenders. GameDaily cites Bioware's Star Wars MMO, but that's not coming out in 2009, and while The Agency and DC Universe Online might be getting close to finished, it's unlikely we'll see them on the shelves this year either.This might be a year of recuperation, for both Blizzard and their competitors. Lord of the Rings Online is doing well, so their big task is just to keep the content moving, and unlike last year, Blizzard has no real impetus this year to really push their playerbase to stick with the game. As with everything, we'll have to see what happens, but I'd expect a much more subdued year this go-around for the MMO market. When the MMOs in progress now come to fruition in 2010, then things will likely get more interesting.
AoC is to WoW as steak is to McDonalds, says AoC director
Gaute Godager, game director for Age of Conan at Funcom, has been on top of the world this past month. They successfully delivered the biggest MMO to hit that market since World of Warcraft, with over a million units shipped inside of a month. You could probably understand then if he comes off a bit smug when talking about the quality of his undeniably blockbuster title. Rounding up a recent interview with Eurogamer, Godager cheekily likens the difference between Age of Conan and World of Warcraft to the gastronomical disparity between steak and McDonalds.Now, we know that Godager was just having a bit of a friendly jab at Blizzard, having prefaced the comment as such. Although having seen the surprising backlash against the game for its prodigious bugs, thin quest content in some areas, and unfinished crafting system, we think there are perhaps more apt analogies out there. How about a steak that you ordered medium-well, but came out rare?
Funcom: WoW is McDonald's, AoC is steak
It's just in the nature of game developers to talk a little trash -- whenever you work on something for so long, you'll pretty much say whatever you can when someone asks you to compare your game to someone else's. So we'll forgive Funcom's Gaute Godager (game director of Age of Conan) for what he says about World of Warcraft in this Eurogamer interview.WoW comes up first at the beginning of the interview, and Godager gracefully accepts props for AoC having the biggest launch since World of Warcraft. Which is true -- AoC has shipped over a million copies since launch (though Warcraft has gone on to sell nine million more, and AoC hasn't quite gotten there yet). But at the end of the interview, Godager really brings out the big guns -- he says that playing WoW is fun and all, but "if you've been to McDonald's for four or five years, and had your burger and your coke, sometimes it's great to just have a great steak and a glass of good wine."Apparently Age of Conan is supposed to be that steak, and our little critically acclaimed and history-making game is supposed to be the culinary equivalent of McDonald's. Which isn't a bad comparison -- we can definitely see Age of Conan being called "steak." Especially since it was served so undercooked.