vending

There's more than one right answer to the "Where's the beef?" question. If you happen to be in Odenville, Ala., the beef is in a vending machine at the Lil Mart convenience store.

A meat vending machine may sound like something you would come up with during a bacon-induced fever dream, but it's a very real pilot product from a startup called Smart Butcher.

According to a report in The Birmingham News, the machine accepts $1 or $5 bills as well as credit or debit cards. Pork steaks, sirloin, ribeye, sausages, and other meats are on offer. … Read more

Remember "We've got the taste"? I recall back when you'd fish a few coins from your pocket, plunk them in a vending machine, and walk away with your can of fizz.

How quaint that seems now. PepsiCo is introducing interactive vending machines that can send gift drinks to your friends and record messages too.

"Be social" is the slogan of the Social Vending System, a blunt reminder that our friends are commodities.

As seen in the vid below, the networked vending machine has a touch screen displaying brands for sale. It also has a gift function with which you can give drinks to friends by entering their name and mobile phone number; standard texting rates apply and numbers are not stored unless permission is given. The machine can also record a short personalized video message.

Your friend can go to any linked vending machine, enter the code from the text message and receive the gift. Or pass it on to someone else. … Read more

Links from Thursday's episode of Loaded:

The makers of FarmVille are set to launch CityVille

Apple had to battle Amazon and Google for rights to The Beatles' music

AT&T has a MiFi wireless router now too, catching up to the other major carriers

You can now edit Google Docs on a mobile device

Google makes peace with book publisher Hachette Livre in France with an agreement to scan and sell digital books

A Japanese vending machine uses facial recognition to recommend a drink based on demographics

TOKYO--Japan has vending machines that can talk to you, sell you everything from bags of rice to porn magazines to bouquets of flowers, and recharge your phone. But a new breed of automated seller has smarts, too--these machines can detect your age and gender and offer drink suggestions accordingly.

The new machines under the Acure brand were recently installed in Tokyo's Shinagawa Station and they're about the size of two refrigerators.

Run by a company under the JR East railway group, the "next-generation drink machines" are imposing enough, but fortunately they don't talk to you. … Read more

Can you spare some change, like a few hundred? I'd like to buy some gold from a vending machine.

It sounds like a tacky casino attraction, but a gold vending machine that's been set up at a hotel in Abu Dhabi is the real thing.

The five-star Emirates Palace Hotel installed the bullion ATM in its lobby as the first permanent gold vending machine in the world, according to Ex Oriente Lux, the German firm that developed it.

The Gold To Go machine sells 24-carat gold bars weighing 1, 5, and 10 grams as well as gold coins … Read more

While it doesn't seem to be an immediate threat to your friendly, neighborhood hot dog stand, a hot dog vending machine could someday be coming to a corner near you. Or to an industrial complex. Or to the supermarket. Or to wherever vending machines happen to congregate. The Hot Choice fully-automated vending machine, created by KRH Thermal, promises to provide a freshly-cooked hot meal in 90 seconds. Clearly, vending is not just for cans of soda and bags of chips any longer.

The company behind the concept is Kosher Vending Industries, and they offer more than just kosher hot … Read more

It only took the Gadgettes one minute to break the cardinal rule: do not talk about "the device that shall not be named." We learn our lesson and boycott "it" for the rest of the episode. So here's everything but.

Congrats Kelly! http://forums.cnet.com/5208-12544_102-0.html?forumID=130&threadID=299650&messageID=2802693

Get your cat whipped into a frenzy for your enjoyment http://dvice.com/archives/2008/07/get_your_cat_wh.php

Tenori-On http://reviews.cnet.com/audio-input-devices/yamaha-tenori-on-music/4505-3144_7-33107337.html

Got a lead foot? … Read more

Imagine you're on a road trip and that inner stomach clock starts ticking. You peer along the horizon searching for quick, fast, and easy road food. With visions of previous stops of greasy burgers and suspect tacos, you roll into a gas station unable to make a decision. Perhaps another bag of chips or a cellophane-wrapped sandwich will quell the rising hunger. You make your way past the nacho cheese and the perpetually rolling hot dogs, and suddenly a bright, oddly shaped contraption catches your eye.

Not only does the Cucina 2000 look and sound like a robot, it … Read more

This "Child Check System" introduced by Japanese company Fujitaka uses facial recognition to determine if the person buying cigarettes is over the legal age limit, which is currently 20 in Japan. A camera embedded in the vending machine takes a picture, then compares it with its database of 100,000 faces.

The system even checks for lines and skin tones to estimate a person's age. It will be installed in about half a million vending machines in Japan from July this year.

Whether this actually works in stopping underaged consumers from smoking is still too early to … Read more