Your Washer is Calling and the Dryer is on IM

netbuzz writes "Laundry Time, an eight-week pilot program from the Internet Home Alliance, begins next week with three Atlanta families and the technology and services of Microsoft, HP, Panasonic, Proctor & Gamble and Whirlpool. The idea is to allow family members to receive alerts and control certain laundry functions from their PCs, cell phones and TV sets, presumably so they can spend more time with their PCs, cell phones and TV sets." I am all for tech for the sake of tech, but I'm pretty sure this is one of the signs of the Apocalypse Nostradamus prognosticated.

Comments

Re:Washine Machine

[PHPfanboy]

Hmm clearly I have too much time on my hands today.

For example, an oven should have knobs, mounted behind the stove elements, which require a push and a turn to get it turned on.

How about you put the knobs on the front so you don't have to lean over the hot elements/ pans to control it?

The refrigerator that came with my house has one of those in-door ice dispensors--damn thing is broken half the time due to a frozen motor, and when it works it spits out little bits of plastic, too. A simpler fridge would be half the price and work BETTER.

So you made a bad purchase. Sell it on eBay and buy a new one (or ask your parents to).

Any added networking technology (or any other whiz-bang gizmos) for what are basically a hot box, a cold box and a heated drum is just insanity.

I work hard (normally) and when I come home the last thing I want to do is have to do the washing. Unlike ovens, most washing machines don't have timers. If I do a wash in the morning and leave it in all day, it will stink when I come home (which would be OK if i was a sys admin, but I'm not). So I want to have my wash cycle finish when I get home. Instead of having to set up timeswitches and playing around with plugs (which are behind the heavy machine in any case) I think that being able to do this over teh interweb would be A Good Thing (TM)