The other day I got an email from my husband saying that I had left a load of laundry in the dryer, with a dryer sheet, and had neglected to turn it on. By the time he found it was something south of "fresh" and he was re-running it. Oops!
This made me realize that perhaps there was a technology that I needed, that I had previously considered "technology for its own sake." Specifically, the internet-enabled washing machine and dryer.
Apparently Whirlpool has teamed with Panasonic and Microsoft to create a washing machine that can send text messages or emails. Perhaps if I had gotten a reminder email, I might have salvaged this load. How does one get to be a beta tester for these kinds of technologies?
Now, if I can only send an email to have clothes gathered, sorted, and a load ran and dried. I guess I'll just have to keep hoping for a maid with a Blackberry.
This made me realize that perhaps there was a technology that I needed, that I had previously considered "technology for its own sake." Specifically, the internet-enabled washing machine and dryer.
Apparently Whirlpool has teamed with Panasonic and Microsoft to create a washing machine that can send text messages or emails. Perhaps if I had gotten a reminder email, I might have salvaged this load. How does one get to be a beta tester for these kinds of technologies?
Now, if I can only send an email to have clothes gathered, sorted, and a load ran and dried. I guess I'll just have to keep hoping for a maid with a Blackberry.
Posts
I also read about this technology and was amazed that your washer and dryer can alert you when it needs something.
Last night I attended the .NET developers monthly meeting and listened to a presentation from "Amazon" web services evangelists. They shared a new web trend called "artificial artificial intelligence". This new technology is actually people behind computers who make it look like a computer is actually doing the thinking/processing/work. You absolutely have to read up on "Amazon Mechanical Turk". Prepared to be even more amazed. Amazon is on to something here.
Julie,
That is wild! For those of you who aren't familiar with Amazon Mechnical Turk, you can click on the link.
The gist of it is that you can earn money by doing tasks that computers aren't good at, but that are easy for people (ie, "is there a pizza parlour in this photo?"). From the looks of it the tasks range in value from a penny to $75(which is a reward of some kind). Interesting. I wonder if anyone is actually making a good hourly rate doing this?