Nima: The Year in Review

Smiles, sweat and tears sum up 2015 at 6SensorLabs. It’s been an incredible journey to conceptualize and start to manufacture Nima for the masses. No one said it would be easy, but few also said it would be this much fun. Our biggest milestone in 2015 was the launch of our Nima pre-sale - one giant step closer to getting our portable sensor into your hands.

We remain ever grateful for your emails, comments and in-person conversations. We share your keen observations with our entire team - and trust me, it helps us build a better product for you: everything from expanding our FAQs, to helping us develop our next products and creating tools like our etiquette guides and webinar events. There’s no way we could achieve greatness without your input.

Take a look below for our year in review, and get a sneak peek at what’s coming in 2016!

January - March

• Shared our first rounds of food testing
• Tested non-working prototypes to help us finalize the product design you see today
• Attended our first gluten-free and free-from trade shows in San Diego and Austin
• Wrote the first of our team blog posts about our food identities -- our mission is personal for all of us!
• Attended CES, SXSW and MIT Sloan BioInnovations
• Starred in our first office photo shoot

April - June

• Launched NimaSensor.com
• Conducted research at Chez Nima (aka the 6SensorLabs offices) on what people really want to test with Nima
• Hosted seven outstanding interns, beginning in June, one of whom went on a gluten-free french fry hunt
• Selected our manufacturing partners after a careful vetting process
• Saw the first designs for the Nima app
• Displayed Nima at gluten-free and free-from trade shows in Atlanta, Columbus, Minneapolis, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. and with researchers and clinicians at Digestive Disease Week
• Held our first team offsite with an improv class -- and co-founder Scott Sundvor acted like an antibody

July - September

• Held our first webinar about the chemistry behind Nima
• Asked people if they would rather take a pill or test their food and found out more habits of people who avoid milk and peanuts
• Began transfer to manufacture - this is the part where we figure out how well what we’ve designed works when you begin creating millions of units
• Showed off Nima in New York, San Francisco, and New Jersey
• Unveiled an etiquette guide for dining out with Nima
• Conducted in-person testing with units in San Francisco - leading us to make refinements in the product design

October - December

• Nima went on pre-sale!
• CEO & Co-founder Shireen debuted Nima on Fox & Friends with Elizabeth Hasselbeck
• Nima named one of TIME Magazine’s Best Inventions of 2015
• Received an SBIR grant from the NIH for our work on gluten detection
• Won two Stevie Awards for Women in Business
• Selected a packaging vendor and final packaging designs
• Hosted a tech fellow woman, Elizabeth Akinyi Ochola
• Began beta tests of Nima - helping us to make changes to design before final manufacture
• Updated the Nima website
• Extended pre-sale due to high demand

2016: Be on the lookout for...

• Third-party validation of Nima
• More Nima sightings as our team travels the U.S. (first stop: CES in Las Vegas)
• Nima pre-orders shipping out and general availability

Giving Thanks: Happy Thanksgiving from 6SensorLabs

At 6SensorLabs, we are ever grateful for your support in this journey creating greater food transparency for all. We are thankful for each an every one of you! See what else some of our team is grateful for this Thanksgiving:

"I am thankful for the generosity of strangers! This year, my dad was the recipient of a healthy kidney, transplanted from a complete stranger in another state! He was part of a kidney donation 'chain' - someone who knows my dad donated a kidney to save someone else's life, and a total of four people received a healthy kidney and a new lease on life. In all the craziness of recent events, there are still good people in this world! If you want to get involved, click here." - Kerri Bierman, people op lead

"Thankful for all the people we've met who have shared their personal stories of what they need to avoid in their diet and their own journey to that discovery. It's a real privilege to hear these stories, and it infuses everything we do and is a great motivator." - Carla Borsoi, marketing lead

"I'm thankful for my new 6SL family and the warm welcome I've received. I'm also thankful for my family and friends that make every day fun and enjoyable." - Francisco Dias Lourenco, VP engineering

"It's been an amazing year, and I'd have to say that I'm thankful for having the opportunity to move closer to my family, for my friends, for my health, and that for every door that has closed this year, it feels as though more than one has opened in return." - Joe Horrell, engineering program manager

"SF weather, a comfortable bed, and salads!" - Steve Portela, lead product development engineer

"Above all else, I am thankful for my family. Their unwavering support has gotten me through good times and bad, and I miss them every day, with half our country in between us. As soon as someone invents teleportation, I'll be its most frequent user." - Heather Sliwinski, PR lead

"I'm thankful for good health, my supportive family and friends, an incredible team, our future customers and the opportunity to work on something that will make mealtime so much more enjoyable for millions of people." - Shireen Yates, CEO and co-founder

6SensorLabs Wins Gold Stevie® Award in 2015 Stevie Awards for Women in Business

We are honored to announce that 6SensorLabs has been named the winner of a Gold Stevie® Award in the Startup of the Year - Consumer Products category in the 12th annual Stevie Awards for Women in Business. Co-founder and CEO Shireen Yates also won a Silver Stevie® Award in the Female Entrepreneur of the Year - Consumer Products category, 11+ employees category.

The Stevie Awards for Women in Business are the world’s top honors for female entrepreneurs, executives, employees and the organizations they run. All individuals and organizations worldwide are eligible to submit nominations – public and private, for-profit and non-profit, large and small. The 2015 awards received entries from 31 nations and territories.

Nicknamed the Stevies for the Greek word for “crowned,” the awards were presented to winners Friday night during a dinner event attended by more than 400 people at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in New York City.

More than 1,300 nominations from organizations of all sizes and in virtually every industry were submitted this year for consideration in more than 90 categories, including Entrepreneur of the Year, Executive of the Year, Company of the Year, Startup of the Year, Women Helping Women, and Women Run Workplace of the Year, among others. 6SensorLabs won in the Startup of the Year category for consumer products. Shireen Yates also won a Silver Stevie in the Female Entrepreneur of the Year category for consumer products, 11 - 2,500 employees.

In the past year, Shireen and the team have demonstrated the market need for Nima, proven the technology and scaled it to manufacturability - leading to the patented technology in development today. Leveraging a year of market research and surveys of thousands of people, Shireen devised the ideal product for "free-from" consumers and worked with the engineering team to create a product requirement document that prioritized speed, accuracy, portability and reliability. The judges said 6SensorLabs was "simply outstanding" and that "combining a unique blend of talents to protect consumers with such a device is simply amazing."

6SensorLabs Co-founder and CEO Shireen Yates accepts the Gold Stevie Award for Startup of the Year - Consumer Products

Stevie Award winners were selected by more than 160 executives worldwide who participated in the judging process this year.

Details about the Stevie Awards for Women in Business and the list of Stevie Award winners are available at www.StevieAwards.com/Women.

Meet Francisco - 6SensorLabs VP of Engineering!

Francisco Dias Lourenco, VP engineering, 6SensorLabs

As we ramp up the production of Nima, we are so excited to introduce our new VP of engineering, Francisco Dias Lourenco! Francisco comes to us from Freeslate, a high-throughput research tool developer and manufacturer for the pharmaceutical industry, where he was responsible for product development in hardware, software and consumables.

At 6SensorLabs, he'll be leading our engineering team as we tranfer Nima over to manufacturing and get it into your hands next year! Please join us in welcoming Francisco!

What brought you to 6SensorLabs?
I was initially attracted to the product concept - the idea of helping people with food sensitivities be able to lead healthy lives. I followed the company for a couple of years, and when the opportunity presented itself, I could not resist, as I found Scott and Shireen's passion really invigorating.

What are you hoping to achieve at 6SL?
I want to help develop a great product and help build a great company, and hopefully have fun along the way!

What is your food identity?
More than anything I like to cook for family and friends, as good food makes people happy. I will cook anything and everything, even multiple dishes if accomodating for allergies, preferences or just picky children! And I am happy both following a recipe to the letter and experimenting with available ingredients, satisfying both my techie/scientist side and my creative side. I like to eat almost anything, as long as it doesn't contain coconut!

My Food Identity: Chicken Soup for the Soul

Kerri Bierman, people operations, 6SensorLabs

For as long as I can remember, my mom has been the Jewish Martha Stewart, and my passion for cooking and eating delicious, fresh food comes from her. Every meal was special, every opportunity to entertain was a chance to pull out the binder of recipes collected over decades. We always had the most delicious school lunches - the envy of all of our friends at the lunch table. Our sandwiches were gourmet quality: when friends were eating PB&J and bologna sandwiches, we were eating roasted chicken with sun-dried tomato pesto and artichokes! I’ve definitely taken after her and take pride in preparing a delicious, healthy meal for guests. I learned to cook and entertain from her, and I love the challenge of experimenting with a new recipe and spending a Sunday afternoon digging through my cookbook collection. I consider myself a foodie and love to try every new restaurant that opens.

A large part of my food identity comes from my family identity. I grew up keeping Kosher “lite.” No pork, no mixing of milk and meat. We eat shellfish, which is traditionally not allowed, but my grandma’s love of shellfish was passed down to us. My parents were born and raised in South Africa, children of Eastern European Jews. I am a first-generation American. We grew up eating traditional South African foods like biltong (South African beef jerky) and boerewors and pap (sausage and polenta), and Jewish foods like babka (an Eastern European coffee cake). Sunday brunch meant a spread of bagels and lox, whitefish spread and noodle kugel - foods that may be foreign to a lot of people. For our family, holidays and celebrations revolved around the dining table. Every Friday night, special care and thought was put into what would be served for Shabbat (Sabbath) dinner. We’d come home from school on a Friday afternoon to the smell of freshly baked challah bread and often a fresh pot of chicken soup on the stove. I have brought these traditions into my own home and love experimenting with baking challah and entertaining.

Over the years, I’ve become more aware of how food affects my body and which foods I should eat (or avoid) to feel better. I’m lucky that I only have one food allergy - eggplant - which is easy to avoid. My husband is allergic to shellfish, so we keep both pork and shellfish out of our home to make sure that we can both stay as happy and healthy as possible when cooking at home.

I love that our team at 6SensorLabs shares a passion for food and works so hard to ensure that everyone can dine out safely!

My Food Identity: Whatever Feels Natural

Jingqing Zhang, lead scientist

I grew up in a family where my dad would cook dinner every evening. Each day, my dad would stop at a local market to pick up fresh vegetables and meat on his way home from work, which was a typical practice for Chinese families, at least back then. This tradition of daily shopping has instilled me with a passion for fresh, pure and healthy foods, and through this tradition, I gained a deep appreciation for the natural, and sometimes subtle, flavor of foods, without the need for excess salt, sugar or other seasonings. My mother could actually tell the difference between a free-range chicken and farm-raised chicken, but I never gained this seemingly supernatural ability.

Home dining was such a tradition that, if you were having dinner with friends, you would invite them to your house for a home-cooked meal rather than going out to a restaurant. Cooking and eating at home showed the best hospitality, and there is a strong sense of comfort in a home-cooked meal. While I do prefer to eat at home, I also enjoy dining out, especially with friends, which makes the occasion enjoyable and memorable and gives me an opportunity to try new types of foods or cooking styles.

Overall, I try to be conscious of what I eat, believing that having a balanced diet is the key to staying healthy and energetic. These days, there are many fad diets that go in and out of style – such as low-carb diets – and I don’t really follow them. To me, all of the key dietary constituents are good and useful, as long as they’re consumed in the right proportions. I generally eat lots of vegetables and fruits, but I also don’t constrain my meat, carbohydrate or fish intake, and my occasional indulgences include french fries, a glass of wine or a cup of sweetened bubble tea, whatever feels natural. However, I do try to stay away from processed foods, simply because I don’t really know what is in them.

I was initially drawn to 6SensorLabs out of a personal need, as my husband was diagnosed with celiac disease a few years ago. I pretty much only eat gluten free both at home or at work, as it's generally healthier anyway. In order to avoid cross-contamination, there is no food at home that contains gluten. When we go out, my husband and I usually share meals, so I always order gluten-free meals. However, if there are side dishes that come with the meal that have gluten, such as regular bread, I would eat my portion as well as his. :)

We frequently have found it difficult to navigate the gluten-free diet both at home and when traveling or eating out socially. I met Shireen while we were both at MIT, and after speaking with her and many other people with celiac disease or gluten-intolerance in my circle of friends, I quickly realized that this problem was shared with many others. This common issue really motivated me to join 6SensorLabs to develop a test that can really help millions of others! Beyond the celiac and gluten intolerance community, I’m looking forward to the opportunity to help people by developing sensors for other dietary allergens.

--Jingqing Zhang, lead scientist, 6SensorLabs

Team Expansion - 6SensorLabs is Growing

The 6SensorLabs team has been growing across the board.

We've got new hires in operations, software, marketing and hardware. These experts are instrumental in delivering Nima to your hands.

Hardware

We searched high and low for an electrical engineer who had the experience of getting products to market. John Artiuch has jumped right into the thick of things.

John Artiuch

John joins the team at 6SensorLabs after spending eight years in new product development consulting. Working with small startups to large companies, such as GE Oil & Gas, he has helped take many new ideas from concept to the market. John holds a B.S. in electrical engineering, and his passion is in electronics and hardware design. When not playing with circuits, John likes spending time in the mountains, backpacking in the summer and snowboarding in the winter.

Food Identity: Allergy-free; Love sampling all sorts of ethnic cuisines; At home, I like to cook with fresh ingredients, matching recipes to wine.

Software

Once we hired Ryan and explained the scope of our vision for the software side of Nima, he suggested we double the software engineering team to two and hire a back-end engineer. Vat joined the team to help us figure out back-end infrastructure and data management and to provide us with the some of the funniest links each week on Slack.

Vat Raghavan

Vat joins 6SensorLabs after a successful career with 15 years experience at both large and small software companies, most recently as Managing Engineer at Tilt.com. When not at work Vat likes to plays tennis & experiment on his next culinary creation.

Food Identity: Allergy-free, but I have tons of friends and family with various allergies and food restrictions. Growing up vegetarian, I have a huge appreciation for healthy, meat-free diets.

We also knew that having Ryan, Vat and Carla design the actual app would only make people cry. After meeting with lots of actual candidates, we found Cindy Terdiman as our product designer. We got into a flow in our interview and that continues as she thinks about what we have to do on the software side to make it easy for you to use.

Cindy Terdiman

Cindy comes to 6sensor labs after spending 12 years in UX/visual design, most recently designing mobile tools for Bechtel. After a search for her next meaninful project, she is excited to empower people to know what is in their food. In addition to design, Cindy has a BA in Political Science from UCSB and an MBA from Emory University. When away from her computer, Cindy is most likely climbing somewhere in the Eastern Sierras.

Food Identity: Allergy-free but struggles with dining out. Relies on home-cooked meals to stay full and happy. Most appreciative of home made pie.

Marketing

As we ramp up our marketing activities, we needed more full-time on the marketing team. Heather joins us as our public relations lead, helping with communications, media relations, events and social media.

Heather Sliwinski

Heather comes to 6SensorLabs with more than seven years of public relations experience, specializing in enterprise and consumer technology. She has worked with some of the biggest innovators in the industry today as her clients, including salesforce.com, Samsung and VMware, leading their corporate and product communications programs. She loves to find the human element in technology, telling stories about how tech is impacting our everyday lives. She graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a B.A. in journalism and mass communications and a certificate in business. Outside of work, you'll find Heather running half marathons with Crohn's and Colitis Foundation of America, cooking paleo meals and exploring San Francisco's many neighborhoods.

Food Identity: No diagnosed food allergies, but live a life free of grains, lactose, sugar, corn and soy to manage symptoms of Crohn's disease. Cook at home whenever possible with fresh and organic foods. Still learning to master the art of grilling the perfect steak. Hate cilantro.

Office

We were having a hard time organizing ourselves before Kerri showed up on the scene, and the whole team heaved a collective sigh of relief. She makes certain the office runs smoothly.

Kerri Bierman

Kerri joins 6SensorLabs from the non-profit world, most recently as a program manager for a local non-profit, where she took groups of teens on innovative educational trips to Israel to shoot self-produced documentary films. In her free time, Kerri enjoys cooking and entertaining, photography, spending time with family and is always planning the next great travel adventure with her husband!

Food Identity: Allergic to eggplant and sensitive to eggs and dairy, but I'm a big fan of brunch so sometimes I choose to suffer! I love to cook fresh healthy meals and experiment in the kitchen. Lover of sushi, hater of bananas!

6SensorLabs' Weekly Wrap Up: Activities & Reads

The team has been busy again this week - the software team working on some cool designs, the marketing team working on some big ideas, the chemistry team on the road, and our product team cranking on all sorts of testing.

Meanwhile, we've had some time to take excursions to Target to visit their Internet of Things expo in San Francisco. We also have a James Bond marathon this weekend at our offices so that people who have cough never cough seen 007 in action will get all the references.

We also had a giggle over this older video - but what is gluten? No one seems to know in this video. We do, though!

We were inspired by our interns and their War Room "poster." We have a great war to wage, with the first battle being gluten.

Health

We've read a bunch on the microbiome, Scott has gone so far as to have his profiled. The LA Times covers how some doctors may be able to build designer bacteria for therapeutic use. This touches on some of the advances coming from CRISPR, how scientiests test these therapies, and what's happening with the combination of technologies but is still a ways off from human use.

A deeply personal story from William Kremer at the BBC talks about how he had to rid their home of gluten for his son, who is a Celiac. Mr. Kremer delves into the science around diagnosis and the efforts of Dr. Alessio Fasano to expand diagnosis rates. There's also a chart showing that almost a third of US adults are trying to cut back on gluten. Meanwhile, tennis star Novak Djokovic, ate the grass at Wimbledon because it was gluten-free! As for that other green substance, kale, Mother Jones may warn you off it for a while.

The peanut patch, which we've covered before, is now heading into phase III trials. For those with peanut allergies, this may be welcome news!

A wristband that captures chemicals you're exposed to every day is launching. It won't capture what you eat, unless you sweat it out through your pores. It looks like a rubber bracelet and you wear it for a week before sending it back for analysis. The company is running a Kickstarter to trial the product - it's a little under a $1000 to get a wristband and have everything checked.

Food

We can echo that menus are the top things allergen-living folks want to see before they dine out -- menu scanning is critical to knowing if someplace will be able to accommodate their needs. OpenTable acknowledges this and is working to get menus in their products. As you might imagine, this is a tough problem to solve with lots of small business owners who are too busy to go update a website every day with menu updates. For folks in food service, additional transparency is coming with tools like Food Genius. Danielle Gould from Food+Tech Connect covers the latest food tech trends in an article in Food Innovation Program.

What's happening as venture capital enters the world of food? Lots of money to fuel nascent transformations.

We've been brewing cider in our office, so were impressed by a high protein beer being brewed in Boston. Sadly, not gluten-free.

Business

The NYT profiles CVS's transition into a major health care provider. It shows that what you might think of as your local drugstore chain is way more than that.

We love a good infographic and this article is chock-full of ones about how various startups came to be.

Technology

The software team trades inumerable messages throughout the day, including relevant links. Recent reads include exploring dynamic layout in sketch, overviews of ranking items (lots of fun math in that one), and Safari's view controller and onboarding experiences.

A review of the Coin card, now that it's finally shipped. It sounds a little underwhelming.

Nike makes an easy to put on shoe for those who have some physical problems tying shoes. These were inspired by a teen with cerebral palsy. It just goes to show that you have to listen to your customers and that empowering people to live their lives under their own agency is critical Something we fully believe here at 6SL.

Random

• A song about the Whole Foods parking lot.
• Ever need some inspiration for colors? Check out the Wes Anderson color palettes. Quite twee.
• When you give a tree an email address beautiful things happen.
• Our excitement for the PlutoFlyBy led us to dig up this awesome interactive demo by Josh Worth of how far apart things really are in space.
• Does pizza grow on trees? It should.

6SensorLabs' Weekly Reads: June 26, 2015

It's been a hugely busy week here. First off, our lead scientist, Jingqing, was at the Rapid Detection in Food Safety conference in Bethesda. Our CEO Shireen spent two days at SolidCon in the startup showcase. We sent out a monthly update, which you can read in its entirety.

6SensorLabs at SolidCon

Health

Can Gut Bacteria Explain Your Mood? The team has been avidly following along with popular news stories about the microbiome and this one proves no exception to that. There's still so much we don't know!

Research by Newburn Bakehouse in the UK shows that men are more likely to cheat on gluten free diets, even when under the advice of doctor's to avoid it.

Technology

How It's Made: Beats by Dre. This column by Bolt's Avery Louie takes a look at these popular headphones and literally breaks it down. While our device isn't a wearable, this article about the future of wearables helps us to think about the ways people might be interacting and using a device -- and the benefits of it.

In a version of farm tech, a scientist has been working to create gluten-free wheat. According to this article Diter von Wettstein has created one that is 76% less gluten than traditional wheat.

As we work on our app, we've been spending time looking at a lot of colors - brandcolors.net comes in handy to see how other companies handle it. Plus, a really nice article about design accessibility for the color blind. Speaking of, it's a common lament how bad websites for restaurants are - we'll be sharing some of the things people with food allergies most want out of restaurant info in the weeks to come. Hint: it's not auto-playing music.

Generating electricity from evaporating water and baceterial spores? It has happened. For those who love engineering, understanding the forces a mosquito can handle when hit with raindrops is actually useful.

No matter what, it's hard to control for bad actors, so we're going to be following along with Smyte - helping manage spam, fraud, and harrassment.

Do computers have acid-tinged dreams? Nope. But their pattern recognition and machine learning may yield some trippy images. Last week we wrote about robots to help with diets, this week SoftBank's emotion-sensing robot, Pepper, is for sale (in Japan). Data, we await your arrival.

Random

• So that lamb modified with a jellyfish gene in France - someone ate it.
• Lexus' prototype hoverboard pairs nicely with this hoverbike.
• A lung on a chip.
• A vine of piglets running around while chickens look on.

Happy Father's Day to the 6SL Dads

We celebrate our various fans and friends who are Dads this Father’s Day and thought we’d share a few thoughts on our own.

My Father Taught Me

Give it my all, always be honest, help others in need Shireen

That every morning should start with a quality cup of freshly-brewed (black) coffee; how to install a kitchen sink, a showerhead, or a toilet; and how to make a mean gin-martini Scott

Work ethic and minor trade skills Steve

To cook and to make excellent gin & tonics Carla

The value of Sunday breakfast. Or family traditions, Sunday breakfast being one of them. Joe

To be independent and try to do things on my own - change oil in the car, change the tires, learn to mix cement, mow the lawn... (Wait a second... ) Chris

The value of working smart to work hard Vat

Funny Moments with Dad

I taught myself to use a hammer left-handed so it exact revenge on my right hand for its bad aim (after hitting his left thumb multiple times) Joe

When told my kids that he killed the "dumb dumb cockroach" and the kids made a song about it. We laughed for a long time. Carla

To my husband, when he asked my dad for his blessing to propose to me, my dad challenged him to a game of tennis and said he could if he won. Shireen

We work with food so we have to know: My Dad makes the best...

Honey! He likes to do some beekeeping on the side Shireen

Everything. He's a really good cook but one of his specialties is paella. Carla

Leaves it to mom. Steve

Sunday morning family breakfast! Potatoes, onions, kielbasa, cheddar, and some Pappa Sundvor magic - mmm mmm Scott

Menudo. (He's Chinese but he makes a mean menudo.) Chris

Buddhist Delight(he's Indian) Vat

Dad inspires me to

Same as mom. Be humble, work hard, and adapt to life circumstances. Steve

Ask why until you are satisfied and appreciate every day of your life Shireen

Help others, if you have the skill and knowledge, but also know when to say no. Chris

To keep learning how to use technology even as I age. He's over 80 and built his own website last year. Carla

Stay connected to nature and to dedicate myself to a hands-on craft. Find community wherever I am. Joe

Help yourself to help others Vat

We also understand that days like Father’s Day can be hard for those who have lost their own, who never really had one, who have a tenuous relationship with theirs, who were raised by people other than a father, who have been unable to conceive, or other complex dynamics. We are thinking about you too.

6SensorLabs' Weekly Reads: June 19, 2015

In the winning team photo this week, here's Alex at lunch.

Food & Health

Chris Kresser, a well-known natural health practitioner, writes about three reasons why gluten intolerance may be worse than Celiac. He addresses the backlash against gluten-free diets and goes on to show different tests he does on his patients to see if they are reacting to other parts of gluten. This pairs well with I Don't Choose to be Gluten Free, a first person account from a Celiac.

It's the end of National Men's Health Week. The CDC put together a list of simple things you can do for your health. Meanwhile, the FDA is banning trans fats.

Researchers at Case Western and University of Texas Southwestern Medical center are working on a drug that drives tissue regeneration.

A helpful guide for how the EU looks at levels of allergens in foods.

Then there's all the food delivery services out there - Fast Company looks at the $5B battle for the dinner table. Meanwhile, Catalia Health is helping people better manage their diets -- with robots! It turns out you know all about FitBit and other fitness trackers because they spend a ton on marketing.

Which is because everyone wants to eat candy! An artificial nose is being used to help find the best flavors for chocoalates and candy. We have people asking us about dyes and colorants in food and our ability to detect those - but given how many scents and flavors are manufactured, we wonder when people will ask about testing for those.

Technology

I think the entire office is still reading the article by Paul Ford, What is Code? We've had some hot internal debates on this article, but like all of his writing, it does get you involved.

Twitter unveiled Lightning -- and now to see what happens when they implement it.

Andreessen Horowitz put on their report on state of US tech funding. They argue against the idea that we're in a bubble at the moment it's worth going through the 53 slides in this deck.

This 20 year old is cleaning up the ocean -- all because he said he would. There's a lot of trash in the ocean, so this is a cool idea. Let's see how well his first trials go.

Random

• The most unique GrubHub orders by city. San Francisco is all about the steamed rice.
• David Brooks' commencement address at Darmouth
• Cowboy Sandals - enough said
• Defining the Yuccie
• And if you're into the pod approach to cocktails, Bartesian is for you

Weekly Reads: June 12, 2015

The weather in our office neighborhood has been nice enough for some alfresco meetings. With Dogs!

Events

Our CEO, Shireen, participated in a chat this week at PariSoma on the future of food. A wonderful re-cap of the event posits the future of food is upon us. Yes, yes it is!

Health

Digital health with Dr. Watson, aka IBM's AI. Given the amount of misdiagnosis and time it takes people to get diagnosed, tools that might improve the speed are compelling. IBM's approach is to have the AI "follow" successful doctors around and building the AI based on those experiences.

Another diagnostic tool is a smartphone attachment that can spot skin cancer. MoleScope is already FDA registered, and is currently available for pre-order. It's $99 for a home edition, a way to bring imaging to the home where images can be shared with medical professionals.

This artificial leg that allows someone to actually feel is incredible. The be clear it's only one leg at the moment, but imagine being able to feel a pebble on a street, when it's a prosthetic leg. Sensors can do awesome things!

In a giant, well of course, organic farming can be more profitable than conventional farming. This is mainly because the end product commands a higher price. Our team lives in a place where organic food is readily available, but we know this isn't the case everywhere. Here's to hoping it's more widespread.

Take it with a grain of salt, but what's the connection between birth month and overall health? We'll be checking everyone in the office later based on this!

Peanut intake (but not peanut buttter) is linked to lower mortality rates. Given the rise of peanut allergies, this is an interesting finding. Meanwhile, there's still a lot of frustration with labeling. (Take a peek at our old post on food labels.)

And who doesn't love a deep dive into the science of why pizza takes good? Meanwhile, Pizza Hut is making pizza with hot dogs in the crust.

More fun is this list of 26 Secrets of people with Celiac Disease. In our own ongoing research, we've heard all of these sentiments expressed in one way or another. The main themes: this is not a made up disease, people don't want to be accidentally glutened, and it feels amazing to have eliminated gluten. Then we saw this nice TED video explaining gluten. It makes some of these points but not from the same point of view.

We also talk a lot about bodily functions in this office, so it was no surprise when this article made the rounds: You've Probably Been Pooping Wrong!

Technology & Business

Let's talk about how Apple makes that gold it uses in that new watch.

Uber updated their permissions in an effort to be more transparent. (Just an FYI, Tumblr's TOS are really human.)

Cool Companies

We've always got our eyes on companies doing interesting things. Stratio is bringing infared vision to the mass market, helping people feel more informed about their food. We are fans of food transparency and look forward to seeing this company continue to roll out their products.

Managing daily sounds is a cool premise and a newly launched Kickstarter for Here earbuds promises a lot: ability to control noise levels in all sorts of venues from planes to concerts, offices, and cities. Talk about personalized concert experiences!

June is a very cool countertop high-tech oven. This oven recognizes what you're cooking, helping to optimize cook times and become a better cook.

Random

• Whiteboard Masterpieces that shouldn't be erased
• Nice visualization of data from RipCurl's GPS tracking device for surfers - results by gender and for top surf spots
• #DistractinglySexy
• Given the number of dogs we have in the office, we have to agree.