Like what seems like half the population, I bought a bread machine years ago after graduating from college. It seemed like a great idea. Everyone likes fresh bread, and it’s so convenient! But inevitably, the bread machine always ends up in storage unused. The slice or two seems so rewarding, but it’s not quite great, and eventually we’re faced with a half-finshed loaf sitting on the counter. A few days old, it lacks that fresh-bread appeal. The allure fades.

A few years ago, realizing that technology always marches forward, I concluded that bread machines must have come a long way. With a young child in my house regularly consuming bread, perhaps it was time to give it another chance. After scanning Amazon reviews, it seemed the Zojirushi BB-HAC10 would fit the bill. As before, the first few loaves came out reasonably well baked, but lackluster. The pattern began to repeat itself and the bread maker returned to the basement.

In recent years, I’ve searched for a way to make decent sandwich bread that my kindergartener would eat (and that my wife and I would also enjoy). After many attempts, I finally was able to produce a pillowy white bread that was easy to eat and went great with sandwiches. It tasted great, but took a lot of time to prepare, and careful planning to ensure I had enough time for the various rising steps.

What if, I wondered, my prior failures with the Zojirushi were not due to the machine, but just the lack of a good recipe. The results speak for themselves: we haven’t bought a loaf of bread in months and the Z is in near constant use. The 1 pound loaves finish quickly, but that ensures that the bread is always relatively fresh.

Super Soft White Bread

In a bowl, mix:

• 280 g bread flour
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1.5 tablespoons dry milk powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon butter, cut into small pieces

In a separate bowl or mixing cup, combine

• 2/3 cup water
• 1 egg, beaten

Take out the bread pan from the machine. Add in the liquid mixture, then the flour mixture. In a small well in the flour, add:

• 1 teaspoon instant yeast

Return the pan to the machine, set the crust control to “light” and start the machine. I’ve also set the machine to delay so it will be ready in the morning. There are warnings about doing this with egg-based recipes, but I’m still alive (hey, the bread’s cooked!).

Here’s the key:

As soon as the bread is done, remove it from the pan immediately and brush with about 1/2 tablespoon of melted butter, then wrap with a kitchen towel until the bread cools. Don’t try to cut into the bread while warm…it’s difficult and still tastes excellent when cool.

Pancakes are one of my favorite comfort foods, but they can be surprisingly challenging to get right. After years of tweaking and searching for light, fluffy, tender pancakes, I’ve settled on the following recipe. This makes about 4-5 large pancakes.

Preheat a griddle to 300 degrees (if you don’t have a range with a built-in griddle, an electric griddle works well).

Add to a medium bowl:

• 140 g unbleached all purpose flour (a low protein brand, like Gold Medal, works well)
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp cinnamon (optional)
• 4 tbsp (1/4 cup) powdered buttermilk)

Whisk the dry ingredients well and set aside

In a large measuring cup (~ 2 cup) add:

• 250 ml warm water
• 1 egg yolk
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 tablespoons butter, melted and cooled slightly

Mix all the wet ingredients well (e.g. with a fork).

Pour the wet ingredients into the bowl with the dry ingredients and whisk until just combined. There should be no large clumps of powder, but some small clumps are okay. Do not over-mix. Let the batter rest for about 10 minutes before cooking.

Cook the pancakes on the griddle, about 2-3 minutes per side. Flip the pancakes the first time when you bubbles burst and leave a hole in the top. The second side is usually done when it looks the same color as the first.

Serve with real maple syrup.

I’ve been a fan of Siri since her introduction, but she has not been without her quirks. Until this fall, she would sometimes respond quickly, sometimes take her time, sometimes have remarkable accuracy, and sometimes fail completely. In the past few months, however, I’ve noticed a marked improvement in both accuracy and response times, to the point where I’ve not hesitated to employ her for routine jobs.

During a recent family trip, we were searching for decent cupcakes and settled on a bakery we had never been to before. As my wife struggled to guide me with directions, I decided to call upon an old friend. Despite the fact that we were in the car, and Siri would use the somewhat suboptimal Bluetooth microphone setup the car dealer had installed, I thought I’d give it a go.

“Navigate to Sugar Bakery.”

Siri was on it. This was a real test of maligned services – both Siri and Apple Maps at the same time! Surely we’d end up somewhere exotic. Perhaps the Ngorongoro crater? No, the pair did an impressive job, sending is right to the destination.

Upon exiting the bakery, we realized we had more than enough cupcakes to go around, and decided to share the wealth with my parents, who live relatively close by.

“Navigate to my parent’s house.”

Not a problem for Siri. So far, I was quite impressed. As we were driving, my son announced that he wanted to listen to some music, so I asked Siri to help us out.

“Play the album Strangeland.”

Within seconds, it was playing. Miraculous. Who needs flying cars when you have this kind of power.

It occurred to me that we hadn’t actually told my parents we would be coming. Since my parents were raised in a country once occupied by the British, certain customs carried over from the UK, including the habit of having afternoon tea. It was this occasion for which the cupcakes were destined.

Me: “Text my mother: we are coming for tea.”

Siri: “Here’s your message: ‘We are coming freaky.’”

That won’t do, let’s try this again.

Me: “Text my mother: we are coming for tea.”

Siri: “Here’s your message: ‘We are coming 4G.’”

This doesn’t even make sense. I’m beginning to get embarrassed.

Me: “Text my mother: we are coming for tea.”

Siri: “Here’s your message: ‘We are coming for me.’”

As of this writing, Apple stock is down 10% in after hours trading.

Fastest Wi-Fi ever is almost ready for real-world use | Ars Technica

Wilocity is one of the main proponents of the even faster WiGig (or “wireless gigabit”), which can theoretically hit speeds of up to 7Gbps, with the downside of using frequencies that are easily blocked by walls. Even thin cubicle walls may block signals, Wilocity acknowledged.

I have 5 Ghz 802.11n throughout my home, but I never reach anywhere close to the theoretical maximums because the signal is easily blocked by walls. I don’t see the appeal of faster Wifi if you basically have to be in a line of sight with the router. More than speed improvements, we need resilience to physical obstacles and interference.

Analyst claims both ‘thinner and lighter’ full-sized iPad and ‘similar’ iPad mini launching in March | 9to5Mac

Analyst Brian White of Topeka Capital claims that Apple is gearing up to launch revisions to both the iPad with 9.7-inch Retina display and the iPad mini this coming March.

An update to the Mini so soon after its release sounds a bit crazy. My sense is that, if there’s any truth to this, we’ll see a relatively minor tweak – slightly enhanced internals, but no major difference.

The larger iPad is due for a form factor update. One thing that’s striking about the iPad 3 (and its replacement) is how they are actually heavier and thicker than the iPad 2. It’s noticeable, even without using them side-by-side. A focus on weight reduction makes a lot of sense. One big appeal of the Mini is the weight advantage. It’s debatable how much of an advantage the smaller size is per se – neither one can easily fit in a pocket.

As everyone waits for the long-fabled Apple television set, a new, and more viable, rumor has emerged. Today, the blogs lit up with discussion of a potential Apple watch. Just as telephony makes up only a small part of the iPhone’s functionality, this project isn’t about a venture into time-telling devices, but rather an move into wearable computers.

What’s the problem that wearable computers solve? Watch wearing has almost certainly been decimated in the wake of accelerated smartphone adoption. Why wear a time-telling contraption on your wrist, when one in your pocket keeps perfect time and can do much more? The problem is that every time you need to check the time, or a text, or an alert, you must rifle through pockets (or purse, or wherever your smartphone lives) to glance at your phone. A wrist-based screen requires just a flick of the wrist.

Today’s watches don’t do enough – they just tell time. Yet a watch-sized screen is too limiting for the range of activities we now demand of our devices. However, low-power short range wireless technologies like the now-ubiquitous Bluetooth 4.0 offer the potential for the best of both worlds. The brains remain in the smartphone, which remains the main device for composing messages, viewing complex information, or other demanding tasks. For quick viewing of information such as short messages or, gasp, the time, the key bits could be wirelessly relayed to the low-power screen.

Watches are not the only option for wearable computing. Google’s Glass project puts the information right in front of the user’s face in the form of high-tech glasses. While this has some advantages, so many of us already have our faces buried in screens as it is. Glass requires you to wear another screen constantly on your face and has a greater potential of being disruptive. Where else could we place a wearable screen? There are few logical options other than the wrist. Unlike Google’s Glass, the watch can be checked as much, or as little, as the user wants.

The category is a no-brainer, but the execution is critical. It’s easy to make a bad watch. It’s exceedingly difficult to create a new category of device that no one realizes they need. But this is exactly the kind of transformation that Apple has been so good at in the past.

Tuesday is the next big Apple launch, and despite Apple’s usual proclivity for minimizing the number of products released at a single event, it looks like this will be a busy day.

The 7.85″ iPad is the most certain of these products. I agree with the general consensus that the no-brainer name for this device is the iPad Mini: it differentiates it from the full-sized iPad without resorting to numbers (e.g. ’8-inch iPad’). Gruber has a penchant for iPad Air, but it seems off to me: the iPad is already thin and light. It seems awkward to emphasize this further in the smaller iPad, even if it will be thinner and lighter. The specs seem pretty well known: a non-retina 1024 x 768 screen, allowing compatibility with existing iPad apps. This places the Mini at the same pixel density as the iPhone 3GS, but since iPads are generally held further from the face than iPhones, it will effectively look sharper. Because of the smaller overall screen size, the sharpness will be between that of the iPad 2 and The New iPad (aka iPad 3). Given the pressure to have an inexpensive product to compete with the growing number of small tablets (e.g. Kindle Fire and Nexus 7), a retina screen (which, at this screen size, would require a higher dot pitch than the current reitna iPad) is unlikely to be financially feasible this year.

A refresh to the current full-sized iPad with a Lightning connector also seems likely: Apple needs to make a transition to this new connector, and the sooner they can do this, the better. I also expect we’ll see the iPad 2 killed off as the Mini becomes the new entry-level device.

A new retina 13″ MacBook Pro is also expected. No big surprises: essentially the same machine as the 15″ MacBook Pro, only smaller. I expect a 2560 x 1600 resolution (1280×800 effective pixels), no DVD drive, and SSD-only storage. The 13″ MBP has been a strange machine in the line-up since the 13″ MacBook Air became a mainstream device. Why buy a bulkier, heavier machine with a lower screen resolution (1280×800 vs the MBA’s 1440 x 900)? In the past, one reason was that the MBP offered a DVD drive while the MBA did not. This is becoming less of an issue now and the retina MBP further blurs the lines between these two machines. The weights will be closer, and the storage options will be the same. Why not just introduce a retina MBA and kill off the 13″ Pro? My sense is that the Air form factor just can’t handle the requirements of a retina screen (the power, the screen thickness, and the necessary GPU).

The rumored Mac Mini update is decidedly unexciting. The real question is whether or not there’s a substantial iMac update in store. I think it’s still too optimistic to think a retina iMac would be possible at this stage. I expect that any updated iMacs will essentially be spec-bumped models. No new enclosure, no significant hardware changes other than USB3.

Many early fans of Twitter are up in arms over recent business-driven changes to Twitter’s rules: limiting the ability of other services to access follower lists and setting future limits on the number of accounts third party clients can have.

I’m not an advocate of these changes – I would love to have unlimited access to follower lists and third party clients. However, I understand the logic behind Twitter’s moves and, frankly, they are not all that surprising given that Twitter is trying to move toward a sustainable business model.

The first limit became obvious when Twitter blocked the ability of users to pull their Twitter follower lists into Instagram. Instead of finding your friends one by one when you joined Instagram, you could leverage its connection to Twitter to instantly follow anyone who you already followed on Twitter. When Twitter blocked this feature, it was excused because Facebook had bought Instagram, and there’s an obvious competition between the two services. When Twitter did the same to Tumblr, the reaction was more fierce. Tumblr isn’t viewed by many as a real Twitter competitor, and one could argue, as John Gruber has, that there is a symbiotic relationship between the two systems. Tumblr can post announcements of posts to Twitter, provided content to Twitter while also directing traffic to Tumblr.

But is that really what’s happening? I’d argue that, in many ways, Tumblr is a Twitter competitor. It’s a system that allows users to make short posts of text, pictures, or links and share them with “followers”. Yes, Tumblr posts can be longer, but they aren’t always, and both services are evolving. Let’s say Tumblr moved more in the direction of Twitter in the future. Maybe some users stop posting to Twitter and rely on Tumblr alone. Or their Twitter stream simply becomes a list of links to their Tumblr. Allowing user to easily copy the list of people they are following from Twitter to Tumblr would make it that much easier to let Tumblr take over Twitter’s business. Many users of both systems would argue that the differences between the systems are too great, that Tumblr’s vision is different from Twitter’s. Maybe so, but what if a true Twitter competitor could do the same? Why should Twitter make it easier for a competitor to leverage the follower lists build on Twitter’s infrastructure? In the case of Tumblr, Twitter felt the risk:reward ratio was too great. In fact, I could see this feature being blocked completely for any service: there’s simply not enough value for Twitter.

Regarding third party clients, the situation is more complex. Twitter has announced that future clients will be limited to 100,000 users each, and that existing clients max out at twice their existing user base if they are already over the limit. I use Tweetbot on the Mac, iPad, and iPhone, and far prefer it to the web interface and Twitter’s own apps. I’ve paid for the iOS clients despite the fact that the “official” clients are free for one reason: they’re better. The diversity and added functionality that these third party clients have added to Twitter have made the experience far richer…for the users. But does it help Twitter?

I’d argue it did, in the early days of Twitter, because it reduced the friction to adding posts to Twitter, and made the community much livelier than it otherwise would have been. Times have changed now, though, and Twitter wants to make money. Their plan includes “promoted tweets” (ads) and more complex tweet structures called cards. There may be additional features in the works, and you can be sure that Twitter’s own clients will promote these heavily. But what about third party clients? How excited would an advertiser be if they knew that their ads could be avoided by using a popular third-party client? Maybe Twitter could take an Apple like approach, adding requirements that third-party clients support promoted tweets, cards, and whatever else they have in store. But how would this work in practice? Each time Twitter wanted to add a new feature, they would have to give developers time to respond to new guidelines instead of just pushing out an update to their own software. They would have to review the software to make sure it complies with the rules. If it didn’t, they’d have to pull the plug on a potentially popular piece of software. Twitter wants to control the experience of what Twitter is, and this necessitates blocking, or at least limiting the audience of, third party clients. These changes are a consequence of the business model that Twitter has chosen.

App.net has chosen a different model: charging customers directly. Will this model succeed? Probably not, but who knows. Maybe if it becomes cheap enough, and allows for a better experience, it will catch on. It’s up to Twitter now to ensure that the experience for the users remains compelling. Or at least, compelling enough.

Complaints about AT&T have been rampant since the iPhone launched, but I have been relatively happy with the service over the years. Even after the iPhone launched on Verizion, I’ve stuck with AT&T. AT&T’s 3G has faster data and allows simultaneous data and voice, which kept me away from Verizon despite the widely touted coverage advantages.

With the upcoming iPhone 5, the calculation changes. The new phone is almost certain to support LTE, and Verizon’s LTE coverage is far superior to AT&T’s. LTE on Verizon also allows use of data and voice at the same time. Furthermore, there’s the little issue of actually being able to make calls.

No cell provider is perfect, and dropped calls can be expected with any. However, AT&T has worsened significantly over the past year, at least in the Boston area. I routinely first find out about missed calls via the sudden appearance of voicemails, and there have been several instances over the past months where I’ve been unable to place calls.

Today, AT&T dropped the bomb that FaceTime over cellular, a signature feature of the upcoming iOS 6, will only be available for purchasers of their “Mobile Share” plans. This is not an isolated incident. AT&T was also one of the last carriers to support the mobile hotspot on the phone, and this too was accompanied by an extra charge (though eventually included extra data as part of the package).

I’ve had enough. The ETF is intimidating, but offset by the new user discount obtained by signing up with Verizon.

I have been using Safari for years. Often I try Chrome for a while, but always end up going to back to Safari. Usually the drivers are the ability to sync with iOS and the far-better native PDF viewing, as well as other little touches. Safari 6 initially seemed like a big step forward to me. I’ve noticed improved performance and one of the big advantages of Chrome, the single location/search field, has been ported over.

However, there are some significant rough edges. Many have complained of crashes, which I haven’t seen. However, I have had the following.

• New pages will open, but not scroll
• New sites fail to load, with the blue loading indicator getting stuck part way through
• Content will get cut off, despite the fact that the page has the appropriate scroll height

These problems go away when I quit Safari and relaunch which, thanks to the restore-windows functionality introduced in Lion, is not as big a deal as it once was.

While Safari 6 is not unusable, it’s the most buggy version I have ever used. I’m hoping for a bug fix release soon.