Mother Spoon - Electronic Sensor Spoon Shares Your Recipe

"Basically what happens is that you and your mom buy your own pair of Motherspoon and register onto a dedicated platform for file sharing. So when you mom cooks her recipe and uses the spoon to taste her food, the sensor laden spoon picks up the ingredients and deciphers the recipe. When put on its cradle, the spoon loads the recipe to the sharing platform so that you can access it, even if you live miles apart."

I was honestly surprised by how many times I've seen this pinned, with people wondering where to buy it. Because you can't, as it's just a concept design. In fact as aesthetically pleasing as the spoon is, I'd venture a guess that unless something happen technology wise, this will always just remain a concept. We just don't have sensor technology today that would even come close to doing what this spoon is reported to do, and even if we did the cost alone would make it out of the reach of most people. 

You can read more about the spoons over at Yanko Designs, which just for the record, is a site mostly of unmade concept designs. So if you come across a pin that came from Yanko, chances are it's not a real item. 

Space Age Power

"Node Electric Outlet eliminates the need for a power strip. Just plug it in anywhere on the square!" 

Oh how I fell in love the first time I saw this pin. Aesthetically something like this just screams "Space Age!" to me, like the future is finally here. The only thing missing is a slight blue glow where you add the plugs to help hint that I might be one step closer to a flying car. I imagine Rosie from The Jetson's would use something like this to recharge her batteries.

But logic kicked in, and I knew that this was one of those "too good to be true" pins. I often times come across pins that I know are conceptional designs being pinned as if they are real. I had a feeling this was one of those, so I went on a bit of a hunt to find out more information on this outlet. 

It's from a company in Japan called Metaphys. It's doesn't appear to be available for sale on their site. In fact it's titled as "Proposed Outlet". In my search I read somewhere that they are working hard on making this a very real thing, but unfortunately the wiring and electric codes, at least here in the U.S., are strict enough that something like this just wouldn't be up to code as it is currently. 

Not only would something like this make it easier for Jr to jam a butter knife.. and fork.. and probably half the silverware drawer into the outlet, there is no grounding on this. It also begs the question of just how MUCH you can plug into this - it looks like with standards plugs you could probably jam pack this outlet with up to 16 plugs, which I'm pretty sure is asking for a fuse to blown in the best of situations. Not only that, but you'd never want to use something like this in place of a power strip - power strips often times are designed to work as surge protectors, so in case of a power surge your electronics don't get fried. This wouldn't be able to do that, and if fact with out grounding you run a higher risk of damaging whatever is plugged into it. 

So for now, no. It's not really a real thing YET, and even if it was, unless it was designed better with grounding options and better safeguards I don't see it being available at least in the U.S. any time soon.