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Comment by ChuckMcM | Hacker News Reader

You realize of course that 'in the kitchen with recipes' is like the Cold Fusion of computers right? Ever since Altair first talked about "your very own microcomputer" there has been a "and you can have all your recipes at your fingertips in the kitchen" meme to go along with it. And it has never happened. Seriously, its like the anti-app or something.

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It has already happened. My wife uses an ipad rather than a cook-book in the kitchen all the time.

Besides, no well prepared meal is complete without a pic of the completed work uploaded to facebook :-) .

Is she cooking from one app/format that could be projected easily? When using a resource like that, I usually cook from a mixture of books, blogs, recipe sites and so on. It would be too difficult to get that info put onto a clearly readable display IMO. Sometimes they're lists, sometimes they're fragments of info in image captions, or in a story.

I suspect sound is probably a much better approach. A good speaker + microphone and you can intuitively do things like set 30 minute timers as you put something in the oven. Or just get a quick rehash of the next steps. "Finished kneading bread, now what?"

Also, a single recipe is fairly easy to follow, handling a few a the same time is where a computer could actually be useful.

I have posted here before about an app that helps you schedule a set of recipes so that things are ready in sequence. It would show you what can be prepared in advance, what needs to be done just before plating, etc. A recipe Gantt chart.

I could also make use of a touchscreen splashback showing either general entertainment or recipes where I could strike off ingredients or steps as they were completed. Saves having the iPad or a book taking up bench space.

Could have touchscreen in one area and then display with heat-resistant glass behind the cooktop. Maybe in 10 years time.

Even earlier:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeywell_316#Kitchen_Computer

Is it really that far-flung of an idea? A modern tablet will get you 90% of the way there. Google Glass would get you the rest.

No not a far-flung idea, and I would agree the iPad (or perhaps simply tablets) are perhaps the most successful here[1]. The observation though is that it is almost always thrown out there as the thing that it going to be really killer and it never is that thing. The Honeywell advertisement is a great example.

[1] My wife would use her iPad more for this if she could write notes on it. I'm looking at a Note pro for that application, and of course being able to pull up info from the filer rather than the 'cloud'.

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