Slashdot Mirror
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.
A lot of people use laundromats. For those who have machines in their homes, they're already saving a lot of time to be able to start the thing, walk off, and return when it's done. There are audible alerts for washers and dryers already, and a majority of the time spent dealing with washing machines is spent loading and unloading. I'd rather see a program that can check my oven to ensure it's off or, if set to go at a certain time confirms its action remotely, when I'm away from home.
I'll be your candy shop of infinite deliciousity if you'll be my discotheque of endless rump-shaking.
Of course, these Laundry Time partners are serious companies not in the habit of flushing R&D dollars down the drain.
..Its called marketing. Put a hare-brained idea out there and get people writing articles mentioning your company name.
Starsucks
Despite the usual "this is for lazy people" comments I can actually see this as being very useful in many contexts. I live in an apartment right now and my room mate is always using the washer and dryer. I usually end up doing the loads of laundry she already has in so I can get in a load or two and have clothes for the next day. Coupled with the fact that our dryer is terrible (the time limit is 160 minutes for drying, this usually doesn't fully dry clothes) I could definitely see a benefit to controlling the washer/dryer from somewhere else. It would also be helpful in a household with many people, dorms, etc...
It is truly amazing how bad ideas keep being recycled. In the late 1980's there was the "Smart House" initiative that would allow you to remotly control your appliances from your PC or from your phone. The vendors behind it promised the ability to control your thermostat, your oven, stove dishwasher, lights even your gas grill (hopefully the grill lights when you turn it on). Several demonstration houses were made and a lot of applince and industrial companies spent a lot of money on it. The technology worked great... but...
Guess what.... It was a dud! The idea is still a dud. Unless you have a self loading washer or dryer, a stove that gets out the food and cooks it for you there isn't mutch advantage here. So what if you are notified when the appliance is finished, unless it puts away the clothes or serves the food, you still have to pay the appliance a visit to finish the job.
Perhaps a more reasonable approach would be to have a bluetooth control that might allow you to remotly put in detergent or softener, but I'm not sure this has any apeal either. I put this in the same category as the flying cars "Popular Mechanics" promises are coming every 10-15 years.
The low-tech solution for the one waiting to use the dryer is to open it up and move the other person's clothes out of the way. Ironically, the solution to lack of consideration by one person is... lack of consideration by the other. Which can escalate into a cycle of anger, and neighbor feuds, and next thing you know there'll be a neutral zone and Jimmy Carter will be coming in to make sure that your complex doesn't break into open warfare. *ahem* Sorry about that...
The even lower tech solution is for all concerned to chill out and accept that rabid pursuit of exclusivity does not work when resources are shared.
The one waiting should check his watch and come back in 5 minutes.
If, after 5 minutes, the dryer is still full, the person waiting should remove said clothes from dryer. The person who shows up to find their clothes removed from the dryer should know that they failed to keep on top of their laundary and perhaps even apologize to the person who had to move their clothing asside.
In 20 years of sharing laundary facilities with friends and strangers I have encountered exactly one person who got upset about this policy. I still consider him an anti-social dweeb.
How the HELL is this deserving of the 'bigbrother' tag? I've always been annoyed that most people associate the Big Brother concept almost exclusively with mass surveillence when the social concepts in 1984 (doublethink, doublespeak, thought police, two minutes' hate, etc.) were infinitely more controlling. Cameras in every home can't hold a candle to the soul-chilling reality of doublethink that surrounds us.
And NOW... now home automation suddenly becomes a sign of Big Brother? What the fuck? I couldn't care less whether the government knows that my jeans are done drying, let alone the people I share my LAN with. On top of this, I don't see any sort of sign that these machines will become commonplace, let alone mandatory and/or mandatorily monitored by the government... and for what, water restriction enforcements maybe? Yeah, I suppose it could be a possibility, but for fuck's sake let's worry about that trivial and unlikely scenario when/if it gets a little closer to becoming reality.
I don't care how dumb this idea is, it's not a sign of Big Brother. You want Big Brother, turn on the fucking 6 o'clock news. It may not be mass surveillence, but it's far more representative of the Big Brother mindset than some gimmicky net-ready home appliance.
To further what the parent post said about time saving and laundry machines, give me laundry machines which can change loads and fold clothes, that would be a true time-saving feature for today's laundry machines. Anything else is just "bells and whistles".