Menu

Passion

Best Episode of Top Chef All-Stars

,

This might have been the best Top Chef All-Stars episode from the entire season. Episode 12, Give Me Your Huddled Masses, had the remaining five chefs creating Quick Fire dishes from a snack bar on-board a tour boat. Then for the main challenge, each chef prepared a dish representative of his family’s heritage. And every chef absolutely killed it. Carla, Antonia, Tiffany, Mike, and Richard cooked from their souls and gave the judges an impossible task of eliminating one more contender.

In the end, the judges simply couldn’t decide who to send packing. So instead of a Final Four, Top Chef has five finalists dueling for the All-Stars title.

Not only was the cooking great, but the reunion of chefs and their families was touching. But the best part of the show had to be the punking of Richard Blais. He got punk’d twice – once for his alright dish and secondly at Judges Table. Take a look…

Get the Flash Player to see this video.


Read what Gail Simmons had to say about Richard’s reaction then keep up with Richard Blais on Twitter.

Using Storify to Tell the Unconferenz 2011 Story

, , ,

While attending the recent Unconferenz 2011, I saw many tweets and pics related to the #UNZ11 event. I was thinking these words from the participants themselves would make a great synopsis of the event. Luckily Storify allows you to build such a story. Check out the results after some Storify commentary.

Storify is still in beta and there are some rough edges. Your “state” isn’t saved so when you save a draft or switch from Twitter to Facebook inputs for example, you have to start at the “beginning.” I don’t mean the beginning of your story but the beginning of your research. The #UNZ11 hashtag has several pages of results but each time I left the Twitter input screen, I would have to redo my #UNZ11 search and scroll down pages of results to find my place. And dragging items from the left column to the right column can be tricky at times. You really have to place your locations in each column properly for drag and drop to work ideally (try it and you’ll see what I mean). For the Flickr input, I thought I could add in a Flickr photo set, and it seemed to work the first time. Trying it a second time didn’t work so instead, I used the link input to add additional Flickr sets to the story.

Still though, if you’re thinking of building a story from social media inputs, give Storify a try.

And now, on to the Unconferenz 2011 Storify.

More

Unconferenz Is About Passion

, , , ,

Plain and simple, what can I say but the Unconferenz gatherings are about passion. It’s passion that brought together individuals with different backgrounds and interests to discuss their different backgrounds and interests at Unconferenz 2011. This past weekend at Windward Community College, you could have joined other passionate people to talk about topics like:

  • productivity tips
  • design
  • innovation
  • travel
  • Hackerspace (coming soon)
  • food
  • personal informatics
  • outsourcing your cooking and cleaning
  • virtual assistants
  • gadgets

My Takeaways

Innovation in any business is needed but is very difficult to grasp and hence foster. Need to check out Innovation Hawaii.

Mac OS X Spaces and virtual desktops. Several vouched for virtual desktops (Spaces in Mac OS X) to boost productivity. The main key is to assign apps to specific spaces to segment your work and mind set.

PogoPlug. Yeah, I got one but there’s so much this tiny server can do. Thanks to @ryankanno for the show and tell of his hacked PogoPlug.

The Android Nook. You can mod the Barnes and Noble Nook Color into a low cost Android-based tablet.

Yubico and YubiKey. Ryan Kanno provided a strong case when describing the YubiKey security key and Yubico password management system. For around $40, this security system is worth the hassles of dealing with bogus online charges and purchases. My YubiKey is on order.

Parrot AR Drone. Possibly the coolest toy ever. This “helicopter” is remote controlled by the accelerometer in the iPad and iPhone.

And just a few pics of the passion at Unconferenz 2011.

Thanks again to Burt Lum for a great event!

Nike and Apple Sharing Playbooks?

, , , , , , , ,

Have you noticed similarities between Nike and Apple products and concepts over the years? Sure there’s the obvious Nike+ collaboration that started back in 2006, but here are a few more commonalities

The lightness of Air

Way back in the day, Nike Air technology was revolutionary. Now the MacBook Air continues the tradition.

I wonder if Apple got its idea for dedicated Apple Stores from Niketowns?

The MacBook Pro and its unibody design? How about the Nike Zoom Hyperfuse with its unibody construction.

And speaking of Hyperfuse, don’t forget the Intel processors inside of Macs support hyper-threading. Oh, and there’s that MacFuse software project.

Nike uses Shox columns for support while Apple like anti-shock hard drives for its laptop line. Nike embraces wires ala Flywire, but Apple wants to forgo wires and go wireless.

The latest rumor is that the construction of the iPad 2 will contain carbon fiber. Do you recall what Nike shoe introduced carbon fiber? None other than the iconic Air Jordan XI.

Bringing carbon fiber to the mainstream

A giveaway that Apple and Nike are definitely sharing playbooks would be Apple following suit with lunar themed products.

And you know Apple’s Steve Jobs says “Boom” only because Nike owns “Zoom.”

An Evening of Sustainable Cuisine

, ,

The Halekulani hotel presents a Weekend of Sustainability and invites you to an Evening of Sustainable Cuisine.  Highlighting local food products, this event showcases:

  • Roy Yamaguchi (Roys Restaurants)
  • Ed Kenney (Town and Downtown)
  • Vikram Garg (Halekulani)
  • Julie Reiner (Master Mixologist from NY)

Cost is $125 per person. See the below flier for more information.  Click for a larger view.

«‹ 127 128 129 130›»