AP: Samsung Developing Cyber-Microwave

[Kelly Ford <kford@teleport.com>]

And so technology marches forward...Does accessibility?

Samsung Developing Cyber-Microwave

Summary:
   CHICAGO (AP) -- Spending too much time in the kitchen?


Source:
AP Online

Date:
01/17/2000 01:34

AP Online
Samsung Developing Cyber-Microwave

Story Filed: Monday, January 17, 2000 1:34 AM EST

CHICAGO (AP) -- Spending too much time in the kitchen?

Manufacturers at the International Housewares Show think they have a 
solution -- linking microwave ovens to the Internet for an easier cooking 
experience.

Sharp Electronics Corp. has developed a convection microwave oven that can 
download recipes from the company's Web site. The microwave then gives 
step-by-step
instructions on preparing the meal, and automatically sets the time, 
adjusts the power and does the roasting, baking, broiling or grilling.

Samsung is developing a microwave that reads directions on pre-packaged 
food when the package's bar code is swiped across a special sensor.

The oven, being developed with Rutgers University researchers, will then 
contact the manufacturers' Internet site, read the directions and cook the meal
-- even taking care of any necessary turning -- while you do something else.

Putting cyberspace in the kitchen will simplify people's lives by reducing 
the amount of time they must spend preparing meals, said Sharp product 
development
manager Joy Weis Daniel, demonstrating the new oven at the trade show, 
which opened Sunday in Chicago,

``It does all the thinking,'' she said.

Still, why swipe a bar code, for example, when you can just read the 
package directions?

Rutgers University researcher Kit Yam, who's helping develop the 
technology, gives soggy fish sticks as an example. Directions currently 
can't be tailored
to every microwave. If they're not right for the oven you're using, you end 
up with food that has poor consistency and bad taste, he said.

But Kota Chang, who was checking out new products for a Pasadena, Calif., 
appliance manufacturer, thinks there is another reason.

``I just think people are getting more and more lazy,'' he said, adding 
that Americans are ready to take the next step in microwave technology.

The Sharp microwave requires a separate PC that can be in any room. The 
recipe is downloaded into a data box, which is then connected to the microwave.
Customers could only download recipes from the Sharp Web site.

Neither microwave is yet available to U.S. consumers. Sharp began selling 
its product in Japan in October and hopes to introduce it in the U.S. in 
the next
year or so, and Samsung officials say they hope to have their oven in 
stores next year.

Such new-style cooking isn't inexpensive. Sharp's new oven sells for about 
$1,000 in Japan, said Heather Sweet, an associate marketing manager.

Samsung's bar code-reading oven will likely cost less than $500 when it 
hits the U.S. market, said Dennis Joyner, the company's national marketing 
manager.

By then, the unit may even be capable of keeping an inventory of groceries 
and notifying users when it's time to restock, he said. Eventually, it could
be connected to a touch-screen computer that allows access to the entire 
Internet -- including everything from nutrition about the meal being cooked to
weather and news reports -- said Yam.