Food For Thought

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For those of you who love food, want to know about the latest restaurants, and want to follow the developments of chefs across America, download the app Chefs Feed, available on the iPhone and Android.

There are other apps like this, but my friend Derik told me this is the one he really respects. Derik is a chef and knows so much about the topics I just mentioned because of Chefs Feed. He said the blogs are amazing because they are very informative, short, and easy-to-read. 

Derik and his wife Debbie visited us this weekend in NYC from their homes in Provincetown and Washington DC. The minute they knew they were going to NYC, Derik preselected the elegant new Mexican restaurant, Cosme. We never heard of it even though it’s located on the street of my last office in the Flatiron District.

He told us all about the chef, Enrique Olvera, his signature dishes, which other restaurants he owns and how we can taste a little of this and a little of that. I can’t boil water and I found the evening fascinating. I downloaded the app and plan to follow trends as well.

 The following are some of the dishes from Cosme.  
     

  Here is what Chefs Feed looks like.


   

     

Pick Away 

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This video demonstrates just how easy it is to open a combination lock. Thanks to 3D printing, cracking a lock can be done in record breaking time. All you need is a stepper motor to spin the dial, a servo motor to tug the lock,  (to see if it’s open yet), and a 3D printed harness to hold everything in place. Viola! 

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Visiting The New Whitney

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Eliot and I joined members of the Perez Art Museum Miami on a group trip to the new Whitney museum. Here are the photos I took with the IPhone 6 Plus.

 

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

   
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Art On The Hudson

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The Perez Museum in Miami gave Eliot and I VIP tickets to the art exhibition, Art Miami New York, at Pier 94. It took us 40 minutes to get across town. The traffic has been impossible.

Sometimes the people are more interesting than the art. Banksy, the artist, must know me.

 

I love when I watch people study art and talk about it together.  

She’s not alive.  
The famous gallerist Nancy Hoffman of Chelsea.  

A new painting by Hung Lui. 

No idea what this statue is supposed to be.   

Other interesting paintings.
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Public TV Gets A Sound

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I don’t know if what I am about to tell you will make any difference in your life, but I wanted you to know this anyway. A new app called Tunity is going to allow you to hear the audio in muted TVs in airports, nail salons and restaurants/sports bars.

Tunity gets its audio signals from the cloud and matches them to users who want to scan a nearby TV screen with a smartphone. The parent company is AudioStreamTV.
   
This is not only good news for the public, but for TV networks as well. They may now be able to count additional people outside the home as part of their overall viewership. 

A New York Moment   

We will never see each other again but for 10 minutes on Mother’s Day last Sunday the gentleman in the picture with me was my BFF.  Eliot and I were walking West on Central Park South when we passed a family (this guy, his wife and a teenage son and daughter) just hanging out. For some reason I locked eyeballs with the dad. He looked so familiar. 

He saw me staring at him and asked Eliot and I if we were lost. We explained that we lived in NYC all our lives and knew exactly where we were going. We then asked them who they were. It turned out that they were visiting NYC for the day from some town we never heard of between Boston and Cape Cod. 

I kept thinking I knew this man from somewhere but I just couldn’t remember. The next thing I know, he hugs me and his wife offers to take a picture of us. I asked Eliot to hold my purse to avoid a trick robbery. I may have been smitten for a second, but the New Yorker in me trusts no one. 

Waiting For Apple Watch To Get Ripe 

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20150511 Walt with Apple Watch

Image: Quin Paek for Re/code—Walt Mossberg checking his Apple Watch 

Many friends and family members keep asking me if I am going to get the Apple Watch. If someone gave it to me as a gift, I would certainly not refuse it. But if I have to go out and purchase it on my own, I’m pretty sure the answer would be “not yet.”

There are some amazing features in the Watch that I love, like using it as the key for your hotel guest room, but it’s just not enough to make me want to spend several hundred dollars for the least expensive unit. I’m sure that a half a year down the road, third party app developers will create something that will make me swoon. 

In the meantime, read the ultimate review on the Apple Watch from one of the most astute tech writers in the business, Walt Mossberg, of Re/code. 
Click here for Walt’s comments. The video in the review is very helpful in explaining all the pros and cons.

My Father Lives

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My father William Schneider died 36 years ago. My grandfather Max died many years before that. Grandpa Max lived with my parents, brother, and I for over 10 years. When my father died, I had a minor melt down. I couldn’t bare to lose him. 

He was the sweetest guy on earth. He was very quiet and totally understated. He never drew attention to himself. I wonder what he would have said if he knew he was a major star on Facebook today?  His namesake, and my nephew William, (named after my father), posted pictures on Facebook of my brother and his sons, and grandsons, that resemble the photo my brother took with our father and grandfather 70 years ago.  

How awesome is that? Apparently, quite awesome. The photo gallery that my nephew posted has received a whopping 212 likes and 44 comments. Those numbers are usually reserved for major celebrities. The numbers may even be higher now when you read this. They kept going up every few minutes yesterday.

My father and my grandfather, Facebook stars. Never in my wildest imagination, did I ever think this was a possibility. So happy. 

Seventy years ago, my grandfather Max, my father William, and my brother Steve, posed for a picture together in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Today, on that very spot, is Steve, William and Max.

 My brother with his sons and grandsons,

Steve, Sam, and Ari
Steve, Sam, and Ezra.

    

   

   

Don’t Be Fooled By Sponsored Editorial

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Don’t let the digital world fool you. Not everything you read online is editorial (articles) even though it looks like it. More and more, websites are publishing paid posts from companies.  Look for words like “Presented By,” “Sponsored Content,” and “Paid For,” to know the difference.

This is a new advertising source for digital publications. Companies pay a flat fee to post an article on a topic of their choosing.  The company will then use its name and products as an example of what is being written about in the article.  To most people, these sponsored articles look exactly like the unbiased write-ups a site usually publishes.  Only by looking closer and seeing the designation of  “Presented By,” “Sponsored Content,” and “Paid For,” would you know the difference. It’s the way of the world now. Online publications need income and you should know what you are reading.

Check out the examples I provided below:  “Presented By Delta,” “Presented by NewBalance/DSW,” and “Sponsored Content.” If you read the stories you will even be confused further. Most of the stories include several company names or sources to disguise the advertiser. Read them carefully. See if you can find the featured guest.

Business Insider 
  Huffington Post 

Dealerscope  

 

Interesting Tweets 

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I just wanted to remind everyone that Twitter is a news feed, a one-stop site to get all of your news and to express your opinions. No more fishing for news. It’s all there.

The best thing about Twitter is that much of the news is created by people like you and me. They see something, they post it. Twitter gets the news first. Every newspaper, magazine, radio and TV station all distribute their news on Twitter as well.

Don’t forget the search box. You use to zero in on any topic, person, or company. It’s really amazing. 

POLITICO (@politico)
Natalie Portman will play Ruth Bader Ginsburg in a forthcoming drama politi.co/1ANrzwK


New York Post (@nypost)
Egypt’s deposed leader Hosni Mubarak was sentenced to 3 years in prison for corruption charges nyp.st/1F5AFdr pic.twitter.com/xHhHdjYe6Ta
The New York Times (@nytimes)
While customers get pretty nails, manicurists suffer miscarriages and asthma nyti.ms/1Imue8r pic.twitter.com/ecD9KpKPZL
Fast Company (@FastCompany)
How computers can anticipate users’ needs (without driving them crazy) f-st.co/gvGrFkl by @ptwils
Yahoo News (@YahooNews)
Castro’s daughter sponsors blessing of Cuban gay couples yhoo.it/1F62mCR
The Associated Press (@AP)
Ozzy Osbourne donates $10,000 to children’s percussion group after watching video of students perform “Crazy Train”: apne.ws/1IswMQI
USA TODAY (@USATODAY)
The chicken may not look ferocious, but it has a very tough cousin. usat.ly/1FWgjEe #GlobalBigDay pic.twitter.com/0Y4OYXUPAP


Synthetic Cadavers

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We are living in the world of wonderment. Let me introduce you to the first ever synthetic cadaver. It debuted on Shark Tank Friday night. It’s a surgical simulator that bleeds, breathes and even has pupils that dilate when they are exposed to light. It’s the closest thing to a human cadaver, which is always in limited supply. 

Shark Tank investor Robert Herjavec gave the inventor, Dr. Christopher Sakezles, $3 million to produce synthetic cadavers for the continuatuon of medical research. Dr. Sakezles’s company is SynDaver Labs in Tampa, FL. 

The SynDaver synthetic cadaver is made from a proprietary library of more than 100 synthetic human tissues. The other anatomical models on the market are made from plastic or rubber. 

A company press release said,”The model includes skin with fat and fascia planes, all bones, muscles, tendon and ligaments, fully articulating joints, a functioning respiratory system with trachea, lungs and diaphragm, complete digestive tract from esophagus to rectum, urinary tract with kidneys, gall bladder, pancreas, spleen and reproductive organs. A functioning circulatory system with heart, coronaries, aorta, vena cava and vasculature to the extremities is also included.”

Watch the video for some miraculous demonstations.