courtesy Playing With Pigs

It's about to be playtime for these piggies!

​In certain circles, it's come to be accepted that a happy pig will not get bored and attack its fellow pigs or feel undue amounts of anxiety. And a happy pig is not one that wallows in shit all day -- pigs are actually very clean animals -- but one that gets to play.

For the past decade, under European law, it's been compulsory for pig farmers to provide their charges with "entertainment." On most farms, this means a few toys tossed into the pigsty. But a group of philosophers, animal welfare specialists and designers in the Netherlands banded together on a project called Playing With Pigs in order to improve on porcine playtime. The best way, they decided, was to get humans involved.

The result: an interactive iPad app called Pig Chase.

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Stephen Fairbanks

Three Kings Public House is one of three Delmar Loop restaurants using the Tabbedout app for smartphones.

​Tabbedout is a free app for smartphones that allows patrons to open a tab at a bar or restaurant, view the tab in real time and close the tab with a tip -- even after leaving the establishment -- without handing over a credit card.

For customers the advantages are obvious: You don't need to have a credit card on you, much less hand it over, and when you're done you don't have to wait for a busy bartender or server to close your tab. In areas where restaurants and bars cluster in bunches -- the Loop, the Central West End, Maplewood, South Grand, Washington Avenue -- Tabbedout can take barhopping to a new level.

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Courtesy of Deliver STL

​Patrick Conner gets hungry sometimes. It happens to the best of us. About a year ago, he became both hungry and inspired, a less common combination that resulted in a website, deliverstl.com, and a fledgling business that it turns out is not protected by patents. The full-time attorney who specializes in tax and estate planning wanted delivery that night, and he wanted it to be easy. The only problem: There weren't a lot of options.

Later, he would learn that's untrue. Today, through the website he and his partners created to track down and sort food-delivery options by ZIP code, Conner tells Gut Check that the city currently has 580 options for lazy late nights. That's 580 restaurants he could have called that night, had he known then what it took his team about eight months to figure out. In the end, he called Jimmy John's. Gut Check talked to Conner about the motivation behind his website, the city's best bet for delivery food and the take-out guru's favorite delivery option (still Jimmy John's).

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​Of course you know about our annual Best Of issue -- the RFT's guide to finding the best of everything in St. Louis.

But what you may not know is that there's an app for that. With the brand-new Best Of app from Village Voice Media, you can read up on (and get location info for) all those hidden gems around town, whether you're partying in Soulard or shopping at Plaza Frontenac. The free app is networked to all of VVM's publications, so if you're vacationing in New York, L.A. or San Francisco, you can easily use it to explore the city you're in.

Currently, the app can only be used on the iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. But don't worry: The Android version will be available at the end of April.

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www.despair.com

​In anticipation of Valentine's Day, Twitter has lit up with the hashtags #rejectedcandyhearts and #candyheartrejects, with which users brainstormed unromantic candy heart messages. Perhaps inspired by the Bittersweets product sold at www.despair.com, the short-and-snarky phrases twisted traditional sentiments imprinted on Sweethearts, the chalky candies stamped out by the bazillion by NECCO since 1847.

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A free Cook's Illustrated app?

Free?

America's Test Kitchen

Christopher Kimball: bow-tied culinary mogul

​Cook's Illustrated, the flagship magazine of Christopher Kimball's food-media hydra, isn't known for giving it away. Kimball refuses to sell advertising in any of his magazines and cooking shows, which means everything's subscription- or newsstand-based. Which is great; in a media world where many push products and recipes based on paid advertising dollars, removing advertisers from the equation provides a welcome leveling of the field.

Last year, in a New York Times op-ed piece, Kimball blamed the demise of Gourmet magazine on bloggers giving it away:

"Is American magazine publishing on the verge of being devoured by the democratic economics of the Internet? Has the media industry fully become an everyman's playing field, without the need for credentials or paid membership? Or, to ask the questions that every media executive is really whispering, 'Will I have a job next year?'"

Good point. If you want Cook's Illustrated recipes, pay up by buying the magazines and books, by pledging to PBS stations that broadcast America's Test Kitchen" and/or by shelling out $34.95 for annual access to CI's online archives (pay for a subscription to the magazine and online access is discounted to $29.95).

So how about that free Cook's Illustrated app?

Let's just say you get what you pay for.

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Screencap: live.gourmet.com

​Publisher Condé Nast announced today that Gourmet will be relaunched this fall as Gourmet Live, a website and tablet-computer app. This isn't surprising. Though the iconic magazine was shuttered late last year, its brand recognition is too high to lie entirely dormant.

What, exactly, is Gourmet Live? Well, a website is already up and running, with some basic information about the product. And by basic information, we mean Web 2.0 buzzwords.

According to an official announcement posted on the website, Gourmet Live "brings together branded high-quality content, social and location-based technology, as well as monetization structures new to Condé Nast, like virtual currency, that are typical in digital economies like gaming."

Got that? In one beautifully crafted sentence, Condé Nast manages to reference social media (Facebook, Twitter), location-based technology (Foursquare) and virtual currency (Farmville).

Oh, there's also "curated content," which probably means access (how much isn't clear) to the Gourmet magazine archives.

Want to see what it looks like in practice (and can withstand more buzzwords)? A video is available after the jump.

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[Editor's note: Schlafly Beer debuted its smart-phone app last month, and we asked two Gut Check bloggers, Robin Wheeler and Andrew Veety, to take it for a spin. Below, their respective reviews.]

Robin Wheeler's take:

​Everyone loves a good shiny thing. Press a button and receive yummy tidbits of information and we're rat-happy. Who doesn't want a free iPhone app?

Combine a free app with local food and beer? Even better!

All it takes to make an app is a relatively inexpensive piece of software and a little tech knowhow. There's no reason chains like Chipotle and Starbucks should own the market on apps. Maybe Schlafly's entrance into the app world will inspire other St. Louis restaurants and food companies to follow suit. We've gotta start somewhere.

Like at the top of the application's main page, and what's not so hot about it.

The newsletter link goes to the Schlafly website, which isn't optimized to read on an iPhone. A dedicated iPhone version of the newsletter would work so much better.

And what's the point of the e-mail, Twitter, and Facebook links, which go to the user's e-mail, Twitter and Facebook accounts? Users already have access to those features built into their iPhone. If these links took you to Schlafly's Facebook page, where you might post on their wall, send a Tweet or directly e-mail the company, they'd be a lot more useful.

Now the good stuff...

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