Techie Treats

California's Bay Area is known for its tech industry. It's the region that brings us names like Google, Apple and Facebook. Now, NPR's Morning Edition reports that a new San Francisco chocolate maker called TCHO is putting the geek into sweets.

So why is this chocolate so techie? It's not just because a bunch of nerds are stirring the beans. The company has integrated technology into every step of the process. Starting with the beans, the company has labs in the countries where they are sourced, and from San Francisco, is able to remotely track which conditions are optimal for growing. From the Bay Area headquarters they use an iPhone app to follow how the chocolate is being processed. When the first version of the chocolate was released, the company's founders, a former NASA engineer and one of the creators of Wired Magazine, dubbed it — what else — Beta.

So for all the thinking that goes into it, does this chocolate taste better than San Francisco's iconic Ghirardelli brand? Maybe. But even if it doesn't, we can always just wait for the inevitable version 2.0.

Photo courtesy of DanielJean, via Flickr