Category Archive 'Consumer Products'

14 Aug 2009

One Really Impressive Alarm Clock

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I was busy yesterday writing up an account of the Murder Hollow atrocity for Chronicle of the Horse, when in came an email from your friends and mine at Bang & Olufsen offering me my own personal preview at my nearest B&O showroom of the Danish company’s brand new BeoTime alarm clock.

A B&O alarm clock! thought I. I have got to see that. (So I Googled it.)

And yes, it really was cool looking.

If I actually used an alarm clock (I don’t, being one of those people who come equipped with an internal mental one), or had a bedroom full of B&O equipment, or was not just another currently impoverished inhabitant of Obamistan, I could actually see running right out and paying a mere $375 for an alarm clock this cool.

Edwin at Coolest Gadgets was also appropriately admiring.

(T)his is the first alarm clock I’ve seen that makes me actually want to wake up so that I can admire its beauty, although that novelty ought to wear out in a couple of days.

BeoTime will come with an integrated sleep timer that can turn all Bang & Olufsen equipment in the room to standby mode after a selected time interval of up to two hours, making it the perfect, complementary device to own especially for folks who tend to fall alseep at the couch due to an extremely boring movie or just a bad habit. Functions include an alarm and sleep timer, alongside the ability to perform basic operations for the bedroom television, loudspeakers, or light controls. It does pretty well for itself as a unique desk clock, making it ideal for one’s work or home office.

The BeoTime was also designed to be extremely convenient and a snap to figure out, boasting easy operation that requires just one’s thumb. You get a built-in tilt sensor within that shows information and button functions change orientation in accordance with how BeoTime is position, regardless of whether it is being held, left on the nightstand, or placed in its wall bracket. As with other Bang & Olufsen products, the Beotime won’t come cheap, retailing for $375 when it hits showrooms later this August.

B&O Beotime

12 Jul 2007

Aging Boomers Need More Comfortable Beds

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The New York Times has discovered that a lot of people are shopping for high end mattresses these days.

The Times’ article mentions the $24,000 Magniflex and $50,000 Hollandia International $60,000 Hästens mattresses.

We went through all this a couple of years ago, did our research and selected the favorite mattress of old-time residents of San Francisco: the comparatively inexpensive (only $4700 for King Size!) McRoskey. We’d give McRoskey mattresses a strong endorsement.

22 Oct 2006

Miracle Whip No More

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According to Michael J. Weiss’, a basic feature of American cultural geography is a clearly demarcated ”mayonnaise line” across the national map, which “separates the creamy Hellman’s mayonnaise buyers to the South from the tart Kraft Miracle Whip salad dressing lovers to the North.” I think it’s true. I’m from Pennsylvania, and I prefer Miracle Whip to Hellman’s. My wife is from Kansas City, and she takes the opposite position.

Trudy Schuett tells us the villains at Kraft have fiddled with the recipe for Miracle Whip, and the new version just isn’t the same.

When I was a kid growing up in the Detroit suburbs, there were two things you’d be most likely to put on a sandwich, or use to dress coleslaw or potato salad — mayonnaise (we pronounced it “manayse”) or Miracle Whip.

Most families were firm on which product they used. So much so, that I never used mayonnaise for anything until I got married and started experimenting with food. By the time my son was in his teens, and our house became the place to turn up when they were hungry for him and his friends, I kept both on hand. Even today there are strong preferences, and I use Miracle Whip for some things, and mayonnaise for others.

Lately, though, you may have noticed if you’re a Miracle Whip person, that your sandwiches don’t quite taste the same, and your coleslaw doesn’t hold up overnight.

That’s because the old standby you used and loved for decades is no longer the same product. They’ve changed the recipe! If you look on the label, you see the first ingredient is now water, not soybean oil as in the past. Since products (at least in the US) are labeled with ingredients in order of the amount, that means there is now more water than anything else.

Hat tip to Glenn Reynolds.


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