cooking

Though Steve Jobs' presence at Apple is almost universally regarded as essential to the company's long run of amazing success, we've seen that--in small doses, at least--it can do pretty well without him.

Back-to-back blowout quarters in early 2009, a successful iPhone 3GS launch, and the finishing touches on a new iPhone OS, Mac OS, and new lineup of iPods all took place while Jobs stepped away from the company for six months beginning in January 2009 to get a liver transplant.

The man credited for making Jobs' absence minimally felt was Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook.

In … Read more

As Apple CEO Steve Jobs takes another medical leave of absence, he again leaves the company he founded in the care of his chief operating officer, Tim Cook. So who is Cook?

A reserved and private man, Cook has been thrust into the spotlight for the third time in eight years, taking over temporarily for what many would say is the irreplaceable Jobs.

A former Compaq executive, Cook joined Apple in 1998 as a senior vice president of worldwide operations. He was promoted to chief operating officer in 2004. Before Compaq, Cook also spent 12 years at IBM, where he … Read more

There is something special about pancakes. Somehow hearty yet impossibly fluffy at the same time, pancakes are a perfect component of practically any breakfast. Certainly sausages drowned in maple syrup wouldn't be quite the same without them. Even when served alone, pancakes offer a filling deliciousness that cannot be equaled by any other breakfast food. Unfortunately for pancake fans, they just don't seem to find their way onto plates enough.

Whether pancake scarcity is due to the amount of time needed, difficulty level, or both, there is no reason to get worked up into a pancake panic. The … Read more

Your grandma had a mechanical egg timer that dinged a bell. Your granddad had a stopwatch from his track-and-field days. You can still buy either new, but it's probably quicker and easier and certainly cheaper to download Cook Timer, a free desktop timer for Windows. That's great for the kitchen, you say, where you use your laptop for recipes. But what about out and about? What takes the place of granddad's stopwatch? Cook Timer, that's what. At 239.5 KB, it's smaller than some ringtones, and it has no dependencies so it's completely portable … Read more

A bowl is a bowl is a bowl. You put stuff into it, and then you eat out of it. Or perhaps you prep food in it and then transfer the food into another bowl. And glass bowls certainly aren't unknown to ovens; they make remarkable vessels for cooking food in. Usually however, one bowl isn't meant for all three tasks at once.

One bowl that can go from prep to oven to table is the Lekue Steam Roaster Bowl. The remarkably convenient vessel owes its versatility to a simple tab and slot arrangement along with silicone construction. … Read more

Turns out, you get punished for being a cute girl on Facebook ... at least that's our speculation about the bug that was disabling some women's profiles. Also, Google Voice debuts in the iTunes app store, Hulu Plus drops to $7.99, and we watch the Green Lantern trailer live and ... we're not impressed. Plus, Cooks Source Magazine elects to go quietly and passive-aggressively into this dark publishing night. --Molly

Following a huge public outcry that lighted up the Internet last week, food magazine Cooks Source has apologized for its actions in publishing a writer's online story without her permission.

In a statement that appeared this week on its Web site, the magazine acknowledged that the online article by writer Monica Gaudio was published in Cooks Source without her approval. The magazine apologized for the error, claiming it was the "oversight of a small, overworked staff." Per Gaudio's instructions, Cooks Source said that it made a donation to the Columbia School of Journalism as well as … Read more

It didn't take very long for 70 Holdings--and a similar site tied to a Los Angeles-based search-engine optimization company--to start spamming Google News again.

Last week, after CNET pointed out that a company called 70 Holdings Inc. was spamming Google News under the moniker of Red Label News, Google pulled that content from its site. However, over the weekend 70 Holdings popped back up using one of the 44 domains it owns to once again flood Google News with the same type of nearly empty stories tied to search-friendly keywords and advertising.

Brooke Crothers, our chip correspondent, spotted a … Read more

The big Apple iPhone news this week involved a new app approved in the iTunes App Store called Skyfire Web Browser (link will open iTunes). This new Web browser's claim to fame is that it can display Flash content by using an interesting workaround. The browser sends Flash content to its own server, converts it to HTML5, then streams the content back to your iPhone. Jessica Dolcourt wrote about Skyfire's shaky launch here.

Apparently, within 5 hours, Skyfire's servers were overloaded (imagine that!) as people swarmed to a new way to view Flash on the iPhone. To be honest, I haven't run into many problems with not having Flash, but I definitely hope that Apple and Adobe or someone can come to an agreement so any smartphone user can get ALL the Web content available.

As of right now, Skyfire is still available at the iTunes App Store, but I have to wonder how it could not know there would be an onslaught of traffic and prepare accordingly. It also makes me wonder if it's really worth the trouble.

What do you think? Are you content waiting for developers to convert everything to HTML5 (if that's even possible)? Should Apple just throw caution to the wind and make it so Flash works (and open the platform to those alleged dangers)? Let me know in the comments!

This week, get cooking with chefs from the Food Network and play a fun arcade baseball game.… Read more