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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.
Your soiled shorts, CowboyNeal Underoos and Ring-around-the-Collar are now on full view on the internet.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
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.
Closet empty..time to do laundry!! Nothing calls for action than this!!
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
This is so freakin' awesome! Talk about a product everyone has been waiting for with baited breath! I know I'll throw down some serious cash for *that* technology!
Hah! And people say Microsoft is losing its touch.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
hotpoint14: I take off your pants, slowly, and gently massage them in my soapy warmth.
maytagman: Oh I like that baby, after pretreating with detergent, I put in my robe and wizard hat.
hotpoint14: What the f*ck, I told you not to message me again.
maytagman: Oh **** damn I gotta write down your names or something
... in other news scientist are using RFID embedded socks with RFID enabled dryers to solve one of the greatest mysteries of our time. Where do all the missing socks go?
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed H
10. Not only are there billions of Chinese citizens who will be on the Net, now the washers and dryers want to IM each other.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I can think of one, and only one case where this would be more useful than a simple audio alarm: the shared laundry room.
If you've ever lived in a college dorm, or in an apartment complex that provides a communal laundry room (and extracts cash from you, either in the form of quarters or a reloadable card), SOP is to put your clothes in the washer, go back to your room/apartment/etc., then come back when they're done. Chances are you've encountered the fatal flaw: When your laundry is ready to go into the dryer, someone else's clothes have often been sitting there, dry, for 10 minutes, and it'll be another half hour before they remember to pop in and take them out.
The low-tech solution for the one with clothes in the dryer is this: Check your watch when you start the dryer, do a little math, and come back in 45 minutes. If you're really worried you'll forget, set an alarm. You've probably got a kitchen timer at worst, and if you're reading Slashdot, chances are your watch has 25 alarm settings anyway.
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...
Anyway, something like this could work as a remote "Your laundry's done, doofus, get it the hell out of the way" alert. You could use single-use pagers like restaurants do for reservations, but this way you don't have to worry about range, or (since people are using their own phones) someone walking off with the pager after they're done.
Pity that the one place it would be useful is also the least likely place for it to be implemented.
Are the first things I do in the morning. I'd LOVE it, if the kettle would send me an instant message, in addition to just quietly turning off.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
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...
Yes, a lot of people do use laundromats. I can see it now, some bored teen decides to hack his sister's laundry in the laundromat and set it to "Extra Dark Wash, Extra Hot, Hot Rinse, No Spin Dry" just because he can.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
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.
Wake me up when the machine can collect the dirty clothes, wash them, dry them, and fold/hang them. Until then, I'm staying at mom's.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Bluebottle: my granddad's got one of those things that makes him a cup of tea and wakes him up.
Eccles: What's it called?
Bluebottle: my Grandma!
C1al15 for cheap......
I just wanted you to know that you can recieve a home mortgage of up to $453,000 for as little as $898 a month...
I'm not fat, just big boned...
Because one thing's for sure, if there's some harm possibly done, it will be done! Now, as long as those remote-controlling only allows you to check for states (like, is the oven off or the laundry done), there's little harm to be done. It starts getting dangerous when you can remotely control their functions.
Imagine a remote controlled oven where your ex knows the keys to turn it on, possibly burning your apartment to the ground. Remote controlled locks that faciliates burglaries. A stereo connected to the internet playing "My heart will go on" at full volume for hours (because you're not home).
There are certain developments in technology I simply do not need...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Actually my laundry machine should have a 'parent of a teenager' mode, where it would just nag me long enough to make sure I really unload it. Already too many times I forgot the laundry for longer periods than is olfactory favorable (just to end up restarting the same laundry again, ugh).
molmod.com - computing tips from a molecular modeling
This sounds like something for hackers to get ahold of to me. "Darn it, i took down my firewall for 1 second and I wound up with 15 pairs of really, really small underwear"
Back in the late 80's or early 90's a friend of mine was seeking out home appliances which had some sort of network ability already. They were pretty hard to find, but the one which amazed me was a toaster. These were probably sometihng meant for an early theme of home network and information and control of appliances, but IIRC these had an EIA or sommat specification already worked out and manufacturers had bought into, believing the world would beat a path to their doors.
Apparently not many people went for that level of sophistication so, as I said, they were hard to find and didn't hang around for long.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
All that user intervention is silly. What you want is a combination washer/dryer. These were first offered in 1958, and they're still around. No need to move the clothes from the washer to the dryer. The latest models even dispose of the lint down the drain.
This is way ahead of having to communicate with the thing remotely.
Another idea that seems to have disappeared from washing machines is a soap tank. You just fill one tank with Liquid Tide, another tank with fabric softener, and it does the rest. That was tried in the 1960s.
Some of the more advanced machines, like the Maytag Neptune, sense the dirt content of the drain water and the water content of the dryer exhaust air to decide automatically how much washing and drying is needed. The Neptune can deal with an out-of-balance condition by itself, too.
Another useful facility would be to have the dryer do an extra few turns every few minutes after it is done, to prevent wrinkling.
You know what I'd like to see. A washing machine that, whence done washing, starts drying the clothes!!!
Here ya go. 10 sec on google...
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".