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Sharp's Chop-Syc prototype asks you to chop veggies on a touchscreen
Generally, your choice of cutting board comes down to two basic options: wood or plastic. While there are plenty of subcategories (Flexible? Bamboo?), you're generally not presented with a list of specs when it comes time to pick a board for chopping up meat or veggies. If a Sharp intern has her way, however, resolution and processor power will become important choices. Chop-Syc is the brainchild of Siobhán Andrews, the winner of a competition to become a paid intern with the company in the UK. Essentially, it's a tablet with a custom software and a scratch-proof surface designed to be used in the kitchen. In addition to functioning as a surface for slicing and dicing, the tablet includes a recipe manager, a scale and a visualizer to help you measure out (healthy) serving sizes of food, such as pasta. The tablet itself is embedded in a wooden block to help control spills, and the wireless charging means you shouldn't have to worry about electrocuting yourself with a (very) poorly placed swipe of the blade. For now, Chop-Syc is only a prototype, but Sharp says it may eventually bring the device to market. If we were executives at the company, though, we might just wait to see how Sony's dedicated kitchen tab fares before entering this extraordinarily niche market.
iPad cutting board chopped down by Apple
Apple has pulled the plug on a cutting board designed to look like the iPad, according to the board's creator on his blog. Dean Kaplan had a lot of success with his iPhone and iPad stencils, and thought it would be clever to make a cutting board shaped like Apple's magical and revolutionary device. Unfortunately, Apple's lawyers came down on him a few months back, claiming that the wooden board's "likeness" to a certain electronic tablet was a problem. He thinks the whole thing's a little silly (and he's right -- no one's going to confuse a cutting board for an actual iPad), but he's not willing to test the waters with Apple's law sharks swimming around. Apple has a history of shutting down products like this -- they also shut down the charming little eiPott, an iPod-shaped egg dish from Germany. There's probably more room for products like this than the creators allow Apple to claim, but then again, there's certainly a market for fake Apple devices. After the trouble they've had so far, Apple is probably being overly careful about just where its designs and "likenesses" are used. [Hat tip to @JessicaGottlieb for spotting this]
