Category: Tech news

Photo: Spencer Higgins

The big numbers and three-button interface let you check training data without breaking stride. Stuck on the treadmill? The included foot pod (not pictured) works indoors and is almost as accurate as the GPS. It all means you can focus on running. Yet the simplicity belies a high IQ. Use the USB connector to upload pace, distance, and route data. Online training programs and heat maps tell you when and where to run; in-watch alerts remind you to.

WIRED Syncs with Polar heart-rate straps for pulse-based calorie counting. Foot pod auto-calibrates via GPS. Just 16 mm thick and 66 grams.

TIRED Too simple for competitive athletes. No heart-rate zones. Must upload for elevation data.

Photo: Spencer Higgins

Order a frozen margarita at an upscale resort in Cabo and the bartender will add tequila, lime juice, and triple sec to a fluffy mound of ice from his industrial blender—no errant ice chunks to clog your straw. Most affordable home blenders can’t match that consistency. But fill the Oster’s hopper with ice and in five minutes you’ll have enough Alpine-quality snow for a pitcher of top-shelf margs.

Wired Also good for snow cones. Sturdy pitcher feels party-proof.
Tired Sounds like a World War II bomber. Snow cones aren’t quite carnival-grade. Can’t do smoothies; frozen fruit gunks it up.

Photo: Spencer Higgins

Get your head out of the cloud! Sure Internet connections are prevalent. And, yeah, remote storage is only getting cheaper. But even Moore himself would likely concede that some data is too precious not to be backed up and carried with your IRL.

In that case, you’ll want to be prepared for anything. This USB drive is, quite frankly, more resilient than a Terminator. We swam with ours in the ocean, left it in the fridge for a couple hours, and even dropped it from a moving vehicle. The Corsair—and our data—survived it all.

The casing is made from anodized, CNC-milled, aircraft-grade aluminum. So the Survivor weighs just 1.4 ounces but is immune to rough handling (up to 1,500 g’s) and temperatures from -13F to 167F. And the screw cap’s watertight EPDM seal is certified for submerges down to 650 feet. Need more? You can back up an entire 16GB iPad on this little guy

WIRED: Slip-resistant ridges on the casing. Narrow profile doesn’t block adjacent USB ports when you plug it in. Read-Writes at 34MBps/28MBps. 10-year warranty. USB extension cable and dog-tag chain included. Also available in 32GB and 64GB models.

TIRED: Dropping it is fine. But with the circular design, you’ll want to avoid dropping it on hills. Dog-tag chain or no, it’s too big to be comfortably worn like a pendant.

We don’t live in a vacuum. Neither do our gadgets. From steamy bathrooms to grubby, sweaty hands, little bits of moisture tend to creep into our electronics.

Enter the Bheestie, an airtight plastic pouch that sucks— in a good way. It holds two smaller, porous bags that contain several peppercorn-sized pellets. In theory, these bags act like molecular sieves, absorbing moisture that’s managed to get inside your device. After 24 hours, goes the company claim, the beads will extract almost twice as much water as a cup of uncooked rice (a common DIY method for saving soggy gadgets).

The idea is twofold: Use the bag to de-moisturize your gadgets on a semi-regular basis for routine maintenance, and keep it on hand for H2Opacalypses.

Now, the company’s FAQ doesn’t promise miracles. But it does say reviving a phone dropped in the toilet isn’t out of the question. We started by stuffing a damp sponge into the bag and were impressed by how much water came running out only an hour later. So we decided to go BIG.

So we sacrificed a first-gen Droid (oops!) by letting the phone cannonball from waist high into the bowl. We fished it out, shoved it into a virgin bag, and waited. Within an hour, the bag was giving off noticeable heat— a byproduct of the absorption. Color us optimistic. But after 72 hours (the recommended duration), we cracked the Bheestie and found a dead Droid.

So if you’ve spilled a drink on your phone and can get it into a Bheestie fast enough, you might be ok. But if your device has spent any time completely submerged in water (or worse), you’re out of luck. But you already knew that.

WIRED Resuable: beads supposedly last up to year, depending on usage, and change color to indicate when a bag is past its prime.

TIRED 7.5″ x 5.5″ = pretty small. (Good luck fitting a tablet in there!) Even if rice isn’t quite as effective, it’s much cheaper, and more widely available.

Photo: Spencer Higgins

With a 136-degree field of view, this hybrid scuba mask/videocam sees everything you do and then some. That makes aiming a lot simpler. Throw it on and you’re ready to capture hands-free 720p video and 5-megapixel photos that rival pro work from just a few years back. Even while we were diving in wretched conditions to research oil-spill damage in the Gulf of Mexico—where a death grip on an anchor line was the only thing keeping us from being swept out to sea—the mask stayed sealed. Control was a cinch, too, including switching between video and still modes.

WIRED No-look buttons are easy to use, even in tricky dive situations. Great fit.

TIRED No way to manipulate or delete files without connecting to a computer—a problem if (hypothetically) an idiot reviewer on a rocking boat leaves the video on and fills the microSD card.

Photo: Spencer Higgins

It sounds counterintuitive, but the better a bike helmet vents, the heavier it will be. The holes and channels that move cooling air over your head require extra bulk to protect what’s inside it. Giro’s new Aeon uses a structural plastic shell that allowed designers to go all Biggest Loser on the inside without sacrificing comfort. We’ve put in several hundred miles in ours without wanting more airflow, yet the whole thing weighs just 7.9 ounces in a large.

WIRED Three-way customizable fit and barely there weight. Removable liner for washing.

TIRED Small adjustment knob is tough to dial with sweaty fingers. Priced for obsessives.

Photo: Spencer Higgins

Holy hibachi! This just became the foundation for most of our summer plans. The compact yet expansive gas-powered grill has enough room for six full-size steaks, which combined with its sizzling 650-degree top end let us feed eight guests a meal of burgers and lamb chops without wasting half the party cooking it all. The 13-pound rig packs neatly into itself, latching shut with its own legs, and the messenger-bag-style strap leaves your hands free for the beer. Though ostensibly a portable, the Fuego boasts features normally found on deck-hogging vanity ‘cues, chief among them a cast-iron grill that rides over a dishwasher-friendly catchment tray.

WIRED Convenient push-button electric ignition. Multi-sized canister adapters means you can hook up a small propane tank for extra mobility. Easy to clean.

TIRED The leg-release buttons get stuck a lot.

Most LED headlamps have an on/off switch and maybe a couple of intensity settings. The XP2 has an entire desktop utility that allows you to tweak the trade-off between beam intensity and burn time from the lamp’s high- and low-output LEDs. Crank it up for maximum safety during a nighttime run, or drop it to preserve the battery for a long hike from base camp. The internal USB-rechargeable lithium-ion cell is backed up by a compartment for three AAAs.

WIRED Flip-up lens for focusing the beam.

TIRED Extra battery compartment adds bulk. A $20 headlamp would be plenty for most casual users.

Photo: Spencer Higgins

The HDR-CX700V is Sony’s top-of-the-line consumer camcorder, and it’s fair to say that this sucker is loaded. Along with being able shoot 1920 x 1080 HD video at 60p, the HDR-CX700 has a whopping 96GB of internal flash memory and a Memory Stick Duo/SD Memory card slot if you want to add storage. Other noteworthy features include a 10x optical Sony G-series lens with a maximum wide angle of 26.3mm and a built-in GPS receiver for geo-tagging your HD footage.

As for low-light bona fides, the CX700V stacks up favorably, with a large, 1/2.88-inch CMOS sensor and a backside-illuminated sensor that places the circuitry on the rear of the chip to prevent it from blocking incoming light.

What does all this jargon mean for the real-world videographer? As we did with the Canon VIXIA G10, we started our test by shooting a kid blowing out his birthday-cake candles, which were the only light source in the scene.

Of all the cameras we looked at for this roundup, the Sony produced the least amount of noise during the candle test. The footage looked smooth and sharp even when played back on a 46-inch HDTV. We weren’t happy with how dark everything looked, though. The candlelight seemed warm and natural; it just didn’t go very far in the Sony.

The CX700 performed solidly enough outdoors but was a step behind the Canon Vixia G10 we reviewed with regard to dynamic range. The footage had slightly less detail in areas of high contrast and couldn’t quite match the Canon’s bright, warm color reproduction.

This camera did excel when it came capturing the action of our nighttime basketball game, however. The 10x optical zoom had smooth, cinematic control, and sound from the 5.1 channel surround mic was clear and life-like. The Wind Reduction feature also helped out tremendously.

The 3-inch LCD touch panel is half an inch smaller than the previous model (why, Sony, why?), but we really appreciated new capabilities like the options to switch between 60p and a more cinematic-looking 24p HD recording. We also liked the Cinema tone presets and manual control options for focus, exposure, white balance, iris, and shutter speed.

Our verdict on this feature-rich HD camcorder: Lots to like with a few disappointments. However, thanks to its generally sparkling image quality and a boatload of options, it’s easily one of the best consumer options on the market.

WIRED Also snaps 12MP photos?; 96GB of internal storage will let you record up to 40 hours of HD footage. Advanced focus and exposure adjustments including zebra and peaking will make you feel like a pro; touch tracking focus lets you lock in on your subject.

TIRED The USB cord tucked into the handgrip looks and feels dorky; Night Shot mode lets you record in darkness but everything is G.I. Joe green; Sony’s video editing software is not Mac-compatible.

It is a truism in Silicon Valley that star employees are worth ten to one hundred times as much as ordinary employees. This calculus is especially true for software engineers, but also applies to product managers, sales executives, and other key employees. If you are a star performer, the sky’s the limit in terms of what technology companies will be willing to attract or keep you.

We’ve seen this again and again. Facebook bought Friendfeed for $50 million just to get its highly talented engineers (co-founder Brett Taylor is now Facebook’s CTO). Last year, Google made a $3.5 million counteroffer to a staff engineer to keep him from going to Facebook. And this year, it paid two top product managers as much as $150 million to keep them from going to Twitter.

Hire stars, and not only will they work harder than everyone else, but they will also lift the performance of the entire company. I’ve witnessed this happen at both technology and media companies. The stars come in and raise the bar, and everyone else picks up their game as a result (either out of pride or fear, or some combination of the two).

But not everyone can be a star. And sometimes stars fade when they are taken out of the environment in which they became stars in the first place. A Harvard Business School study once looked at star Wall Street analysts and concluded that they did not tend to do as well when they moved jobs. Further research suggested that some of the factors for moving stars successfully include how similar the new company is to the old one in terms of culture and resources, and the ability for the star to bring along his or her team.

None of these studies look at the dynamics of technology startups. They are focussed more on Wall Street or large corporations, where stars are defined differently. Yet a recent blog post by Fast Company co-founder Bill Taylor tries to apply the argument to Silicon Valley and says that great people are overrated. Taylor brings up the Boston Bruins and the Dallas Mavericks as counterexamples that great teams can do better than rivals with star individual players.

When I retweeted this article a few weeks ago, Square COO Keith Rabois almost immediately responded, “he is wrong.” Oh yeah, I asked, what about the Bruins? To which Rabois replied:

Follow @rabois@rabois
Keith Rabois

@erickschonfeld Sports are subject to salary caps and other socialist constraints (like drafts). Imagine if you could recruit everyone.

June 22, 2011 9:22 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite

Imagine if you could recruit everyone and offer them virtually limitless upside in stock—that is how hot startups recruit. People like Rabois are selling the dream every time they hire someone. It helps if they’ve delivered on that dream before or can demonstrate so much traction that it makes it hard for the best hires to turn them down. Because who doesn’t want limitless upside?

What it comes down to, then, is whether the company doing the recruiting is a star in its own right. Star players want to work for star companies. And there is no limit to how many stars a startup can hire, especially if it is paying mostly in stock.

But that doesn’t mean that stars don’t need to be team players. The best stars lead the people around them. They motivate, inspire, and lead by example. They also help their teammates whenever they can because they know they cannot do everything alone.

Hiring stars versus hiring a great team is a false choice. You should always try to hire the best people you can find: people who are stars or have the potential to become stars. Especially in tech startups, stars attract other stars because the smartest people want to work with other smart people. Hiring mediocre players is the surest way to create a mediocre company.

The best stars are those who can work with other people, and lift the entire organization. A company filled with stars can end up with the stars feeding off each other and forming a great, cohesive team. They hide each other’s weaknesses by picking up the slack between them just like a great basketball team is always passing the ball to whoever is in the strongest postion at any given time.

Too many stars in one company can also create rivalries that take the company down. But those people then cease to be stars. Companies are a team sport. You can’t be a star if your team sucks.

Photo credit: Flickr/cliff1066

In what has to be somewhat embarrassing for Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is the most followed user on Google+, according to the Google+ Statistics counter.

The Facebook CEO has 21,213 followers, compared to the Google CEO at 14,798, Google social czar Vic Gundotra at 13,783, Google co-founder Sergey Brin at 11,629, blogger Robert Scoble at 11,389, Google spam avenger Matt Cutts at 9,153, TWIT founder Leo Laporte at 7,566, Google’s Bradley Horowitz at 7,187, TechCrunch’s MG Siegler at 6,579 and blogger Gina Trapani at 5,649.

Google+ Statistics creator Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten explains the CEO’s unlikely popularity thus, “He has the most friends in the world, they made a movie about him, and he is more handsome than the Larry and Sergey.” I think the answer goes more like this; The more media coverage someone receives related to Google+, the more followers they get, hence MG Siegler at #9.

I’m at #104. Discuss.

Sometime on the morning of July 3rd, Google Realtime Search mysteriously went offline and, assuming it was just another example of things breaking on a holiday weekend, most tech publications ignored it.

Well as it turns out the reason behind its disappearance was not so mysterious, on July 2nd Google’s access to Twitter’s special firehose expired and it pulled the feature in order to rethink its strategy. Bing, which had a similar deal with Twitter still has access to the firehose.

What gives? While no one really has any details as to why the deal fell through, Google says that it disabled the project to incorporate Google+ results and Twitter says that it will continue to work with Google on other projects.

“Our vision is to have google.com/realtime include Google+ information along with other realtime data from a variety of sources,” a Google spokesperson told Search Engine Land.

It’s not like Twitter will be pulled entirely from the service, Google can still crawl and organize publicly available tweets (each tweet is its own webpage). Google+, which bizarrely still does not have search, might eventually become a dominant enough service that users will want Realtime search that is free of Twitter noise. Google might have also treated the deal as a learning experience, like when Eric Schmidt sat on Apple’s board and then launched Android.

But can Google’s Realtime search succeed without Twitter? I know that I for one will be using it a lot less unless Google’s public tweet crawl is comprehensive enough to supplant a service like Topsy, or Twitter’s own meager search.

So is Twitter declaring independence from Google or is Google declaring independence from Twitter? I really don’t know — it might simply be a question of the right price. But if I had to guess who had the upper hand in negotiations it would be the latter, with Google now suffering from a huge case of “You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.”

[Insert random speculation about Google buying Twitter here.]

Image: ilovememphis

Bubble or not, 2011 may go down as the year of the tech IPO. Not since the last bubble have we seen so many technology companies clamoring to go public. And halfway through the year, we still have many more companies who will be listing on either the NASDAQ or the NYSE in the next six months. Here’s a roundup of the tech companies that have gone public, where they are trading now, and who we can expect to see ringing the bell next.

LINKEDIN (NYSE:LNKD)

Professional social network LinkedIn probably had the biggest IPO in terms of hype this year because it was one of the first big social media companies to go public. After pricing its IPO at $45 per share on the New York Stock Exchange, LinkedIn began trading at $83.00 per share on May 19, giving the company a $7.8 billion market cap. In the first day of trading, shares popped up to as high as $122.70, soaring past a $10 billion valuation.

But these high stock prices didn’t sustain and LinkedIn’s value per share dropped significantly over the next month, dropping as low as $63.71 per share. However, the company’s stock rebounded last week, with shares rising as high as $95.50 on Friday, eventually closing at $94.54. That’s a 110 percent increase from its initial pricing.

PANDORA (NYSE:P)

Similar to LinkedIn, music streaming service Pandora also drew considerable attention to its IPO, which debuted on the New York Stock Exchange under the desirable, single character symbol ‘P.’ The company priced its IPO at $16 per share (valuing the company at $2.6 billion), but opened at $20 per share on June 15 (up 25 percent), valuing the company at $3.2 billion.

In the two weeks following the IPO, Pandora’s stock took a bit of a dive, reaching as low as $12.16 per share. But like LinkedIn, Pandora’s shares saw an uptick over the past week, closing at $20.04 on Friday, which is up 25 percent from the company’s initial pricing in June.

YANDEX (NASDAQ:YNDX)

Russian search engine Yandex, which began trading on the NASDAQ on May 24, priced its IPO at $25 per share, but opened at $35, giving Yandex a market cap of roughly $11.2 billion. That’s a bigger market cap than both LinkedIn and Pandora.

Yandex has experienced highs and lows in the past month with the value of its stock, but the fluctuations have not been nearly as extreme as some of its contemporaries in the tech IPO market. Yandex’s stock dipped to a low of $29.73 in mid-June but rebounded quickly and closed on Friday at $35.69, which is a 40 percent increase from its initial pricing.

FUSION-IO (NYSE:FIO)

Fusion-io, the developer of flash- memory technology for companies, debuted on the New York Stock Exchange on June 9. The company priced its IPO at $19 per share, valuing Fusion-io at $1.5 billion, but opened at $25 per share, giving the company a nearly $2 billion market cap.

Fusion-io’s stock has performed fairly well over the past month, reaching a high of $36.32 last week. The company’s shares closed at $31.19 on Friday, up 64 percent from its initial pricing.

HOMEAWAY (NASDAQ:AWAY)

Vacation home rental service HomeAway debuted its IPO last week, pricing at $27 per share. HomeAway, which listed on the NASDAQ, saw its shares pop over 30 percent in initial trading last Wednesday, giving the rental service as valuation of $3 billion.

HomeAway’s shares have maintained its value, relatively speaking, in its first week of trading, reaching a low of $34.92 and a high of $42.30. On Friday, HomeAway’s shares closed at $38.42, a 42 percent increase from the stock’s pricing.

RENREN (NYSE:RENN)

Chinese social network Renren actually went public before LinkedIn, pricing its IPO in early May at $14 per share, with a total offering size of $743.4 million. The company was pitching itself as a “Facebook” like site for the Chinese market, which resulted in an increase in the share price range from the initial $9-$11 to $12-$14. That increase resulted in a boost in the deal size to $743.4 million from the original price of $584 million.

RenRen opened at $18 per share, but the stock has since plummeted to as low as $6.23 per share. On Friday, RenRen closed at $9.25 per share, which is a 34 percent drop in value from the initial pricing.

BANKRATE (NYSE:RATE)

Bankrate provides free rate information to consumers on more than 300 financial products, including mortgages, credit cards, new and used automobile loans, and more. The company priced its IPO at $15 per share, valuing the company at $1.5 billion. The company’s shares, which began trading in mid-June, have remained fairly steady at this price, reaching a high of $17.89. Bankrate closed at $17.13 per share on Friday, up 13 percent.

Who’s Next Up To IPO

Zillow: Real estate listings giant Zillow filed its S-1 in April, so we could be seeing the company hit the public markets in the next two months. Zillow wants to raise $51.75 million in the offering, and while revenue has grown for the company year over year, Zillow has taked a loss for the past three years. Zillow will trade on the NASDAQ under the symbol “Z.”

Kayak: Travel search engine Kayak filed its S-1 last November, aiming to raise $50 million. No word on when the search engine is planning to IPO, but Kayak did reveal revenue growth in the past year, however net income is down. The company will trade on the NASDAQ under the symbol “KYAK.”

Groupon: Daily deals giant Groupon just filed its S-1 in June, aiming to raise $750 million in the public offering. Though the company has an impressive revenue run rate of $2.6 billion for 2011, but has drawn criticism for a lack of profits and the fact that the founders have taken a significant amount of money off the table. The company is looking at an IPO in the Fall.

Zynga: Zynga just filed for its $1 billion IPO this past Friday, revealing impressive financials. Revenues grew 392 percent in 2010, up from $121.5 million in 2009. In the first quarter of 2011 alone, the company’s revenues reached $235 million (or a $940 million revenue run-rate), which is up 134 percent from the first quarter of 2010. Both Zynga and Groupon may be rushing to IPO ahead of Facebook, which is expected to file in the coming year.

Not Yet Filed, But Champing At The Bit:

Facebook: We know an IPO is in the works for Facebook, it’s just a matter of when. The company has been meeting with bankers to discuss IPO size and time frame for an offering. And the company just added Netflix founder and CEO (and an IPO veteran) Reed Hastings to its board. It’s been thought that the social network will go public by April 2012, but it could happen before this date.

Glam Media: We’ve heard Glam Media, one of the largest publishing and advertising networks on the Web, is planning to file for an IPO as early as this Fall. The company has hit $100 million in annual revenue, reaches 90 million people a month in the U.S., and is in the process of hiring bankers to lead its offering.

Yelp: Online reviews and daily deals giant Yelp has its sights set on an IPO, but the timeline is unclear. Yelp is now at 50 million unique visitors per month, mostly in the U.S., and has raised $56 million in funding.

Disclosure: My husband is an employee of Groupon.

Editors Note: Guest contributor Semil Shah is an entrepreneur interested in digital media, consumer Internet, and social networks. He is based in Palo Alto and you can follow him on Twitter @semilshah.

“Where should we grab some food?” Perhaps no other question has motivated more consumer technology entrepreneurs. Well, I say that only half-jokingly.

After the age of the Yellow Pages, we’ve all used multiple services that guide us to a restaurant seat. We’ve hunted for restaurants on Google, researched options on Zagat, and offered reviews on Yelp. The trend for how we search for restaurants has shifted from directories (phone books) to guides (ratings) to people influencing our decisions. Today, there’s stiff competition amongst mobile services to drive us to the next restaurant, whether it’s a Living Social daily deal, a Foursquare check-in reward, an UrbanSpoon recommendation, or simply word-of-mouth, serendipitous suggestions that filter through conversations on various social networks or, heaven forbid, in real life.

These services help drive us to eateries and hopefully create incentives between restaurants and customers to foster repeat business and loyalty. But the restaurant business is hyper-competitive. Many don’t make it. Turnover is the norm. And for those that are able to survive, either because of killer food or location, the majority of them offer adequate food, service, and ambiance, yet are able to turn a buck because we keep going back. Instead of competing on quality, most compete on offers and optimize to fill open seats. For the most part, it at least appears the majority of restaurants worry less about word-of-mouth goodwill and are more focused on accumulating badges and stickers to paste underneath their menus as patrons window-shop.

Having spent a decent portion of my life working in restaurants, I know markups and margins on tickets are healthy, even excluding those businesses with liquor licenses. People are perfectly willing to fork over two to three times the cost of goods sold, even if those goods are not so tasty. The time saved, the ease of ordering, and the feeling of eating out somehow translates to a juicy premium. All the while, oftentimes the food is suspect, both in terms of quality and nutritional value. Yet we continue to go back, line up, gorge ourselves, and repeat. And as the economy continues to recover (slowly), individuals and especially families are under enormous pressure to stock up at big box retailers and focus on food quantity at the expense of quality.

While restaurants and these services continue to compete for our dining dollars, a host of new consumer web startups have mushroomed to fill in some gaps and create interesting new ways for us to chow down. New companies like Gobble and Grubly create local peer-to-peer marketplaces for homecooked meals that are either delivered or available for pickup. Instead of heating up frozen pizza or ordering mediocre takeout, these services help home cooks build up a reputation (and a little extra income). Kitchit’s aim is slightly different, to free those who actually make the food (the cooks) and bring them into our homes so that we can have friends over for dinner and turn our apartments and houses into restaurants.

While these services focus on meals in the house, others focus on getting us out of the house and to grub with new folks. Grubwithus has a clever model for driving groups of friends or strangers to a new restaurant, offering the proprietor a number of seats under one pre-fixe bill while giving diners the chance to meet people at new or favorite dining establishments. Housefed is a service for people to eat homecooked meals with others at the cook’s home, whether in the city you live or while on the road. (Tip: Hunt for the Housefed blog, it counters much of the Silicon Valley groupthink.) We’ve all experienced the monotony of eating with the same people over and over again, or getting caught in tourist-trap restaurants while traveling, longing for that elusive home-cooked meal with local fare. Grubwithus and Housefed help break that monotony, and that’s a very good thing.

All of this is happening because of the convergence of a number of trends. Our economy is struggling to regain its footing. We’ve become more educated about the dangers of poor nutrition, the hazards of frozen food, and dietary effects of portion sizes. Diabetes is a legitimate health threat. We have to commute more, from suburb to suburb, as job tenures become shorter. We marry later in life. Then, we divorce. Both parents work, or there’s just one parent. Kids don’t take as much of an interest in cooking their own food, let alone having any curiosity as to where it comes from. And with technology to make us more productive and/or to distract us, we oftentimes get caught in situations where we turn one of humankind’s most social habits into an anti-social event, a means to an end.

As Robert Putnam, the author of Bowling Alone, might say, we’re also “Eating Alone,” at least some of the time, and we’re content with it. Despite the popularity of the Food Network, one of its most attractive personalities, Jamie Oliver, wasn’t able to take healthy eating and education mainstream—his show, Food Revolution, had six episodes in 2010 and was yanked off the air after two spots in 2011 because of low ratings, replaced replaced by Dancing with the Stars.

We are separated from what we eat. We lose that connection as to where the food came from in the first place, where it was planted, harvested, and how it ended up prepared on our plate. That’s what excites me about this particular batch of startups. They may or may not create a Google-like technology giant, but that’s not the point. They’re riding social networks and creating peer-to-peer economies, allowing us to connect with others around food and offering an interesting (and sometimes cheaper and healthier) alternative to frozen dinners and overpriced restaurants. Technology will probably never be able to answer the question “Where should we eat?” That’s OK. What’s important is that how we answer the question could be different in the future, and that’s a good thing. After all, we’re not just what we eat—we’re also where we eat and whom we eat with.

Photo credit: Flickr/Momo