Hasta La Gadget!

Washing clothes shouldn’t be rocket science, but you’d be forgiven for thinking that when you look at the controls of modern washing machines. So when cloud services company Berg set out to create a prototype for an Internet-connected washing machine, they didn’t want to smarten it up just so it can tweet which socks you prefer. Berg knew that smart doesn’t mean needlessly complex.

Berg’s Cloudwash prototype is built on four premises. The first one is that, for all the intricate settings on conventional washing machines, most users only ever use a handful of them. That’s why Cloudwash only has a few, easy to understand physical controls.

The first set of options lets you choose from your three most used wash settings. You’ll then use its companion app if you want or need to tweak these settings. Which brings us to Berg’s second premise: the early examples of smart appliances are not really smart.

Berg noticed that the current crop of Internet-connected appliances mainly have two ways of distributing controls or options. Some smart appliances have all of their controls thrown to a mobile app, rendering the appliance nearly useless if you don’t have a mobile device on hand. On the other end are appliances that come with a touchscreen or mobile device tacked on, with few if any remote controls.

Berg opted for a middle ground. The Cloudwash app has all of the controls and options so you can control everything remotely if you wish, but the most used controls are also on the machine itself.

Berg’s third premise is that Internet-connected appliances should be able to adapt to your lifestyle. That should be part of why they’re called “smart.” Thus the second set of controls on Cloudwash lets you delay the washing machine’s final rinse.

This can also be adjusted through the mobile app, so you don’t have to hurry home to take out your clothes before they get wrinkled. It’s about making the machine adjust to you and not the other way around.

The third set of options includes a button to toggle notifications, but the other two buttons are more interesting. They’re manifestations of Berg’s fourth premise: subsidized washing machines might become a thing, just like what Nestle did to coffee machines with Nespresso.

See, you can set the two buttons to either send a reminder on your phone that your conditioner or detergent is running low. Or you can use them to make one-click purchases. Berg thinks that online retailers like Amazon or laundry product manufacturers may be willing to give away free machines or at least subsidize them to reel in customers.

Check out Berg’s case study on the Cloudwash for more information. I think its mobile app is a bit over designed and cluttered – there’s a freaking washing machine calendar, and it still uses vague washing machine terminology. I also don’t want a future where my appliances are cheap but will only work with a certain brand of detergent or brand of popcorn (because what else will it ultimately lead to?). But I do love the attempts to make machines more user-friendly and flexible.

[via Gigaom]

A couple of weeks ago we saw a car that changes color when it’s wet, thanks to a coating of thermochromic paint. Icelandic designer Thorunn Arnadottir used the same kind of paint to make a radiator that, together with its twisting tubes, makes it appear organic. She calls it Blush, and it’s easy to see why.

Blush clearly mimics the appearance of a capillary, the smallest type of blood vessels. They facilitate the exchange of nutrients as well as waste materials and are often depicted in illustrations as having blue and red halves. Thorunn said, “Blush is a very important organ of the house. Regulates the temperature and keeps it warm and alive.”

I’d love to see more appliances that change color depending on their state. Perhaps a fridge that turns gray when there’s spoiled food inside. Or a bathroom door that turns brown to tell you that someone just dropped bombs inside.

[via Street Anatomy via Laughing Squid]

With Summer all but gone, there’s not much time left to grill outdoors. Thankfully, just in time for Fall and Winter to set in, T-Fal has introduced this little kitchen godsend – the OptiGrill – not to be confused with the OptiGrab in Steve Martin’s The Jerk. Though unlike Navin R. Johnson’s silly invention, the OptiGrill is a really great idea.

This handsome stainless steel kitchen appliance distinguishes itself from other tabletop electric grills by its groundbreaking technology – which tells you when your food is cooked just right. This sensor can indicate the temperature of meats you’re grilling, as well as when the grill is at optimum temperature to start cooking your food.

Setting up the OptiGrill is super easy. Just take it out of the box, remove the packing materials, and “bless” its surface with a little oil (I used some PAM spray) before cooking to give the non-stick surface an added boost, and to impart some extra flavor into your grilled foods. Once plugged in, simply press the Power button, select the type of food you’re cooking, and “OK”. If you’re dealing with meat that needs defrosting, press the snowflake button first.

You can choose from six different types of food programs to cook: burgers, poultry, sandwiches, sausage/pork, red meat and fish. You can even start off with foods that need defrosting, or set a manual mode where you can cook items as long as you want.

The grill is even smart enough to measure the thickness of foods to take that into account when cooking. Keep in mind that T-Fal doesn’t recommend cooking meat that’s more than 1.5 inches-thick, nor meat with bones which can cause uneven heating.

As it heats up, a colorful LED light show begins  – starting with a blinking magenta to indicate pre-heating, then a solid magenta accompanied by a beep when it’s ready to cook – a process that takes about five minutes. Just place your meat or panini on the grill, close it and watch the light show. The light starts off green to indicate that cooking has started, and gradually goes through a range of yellow, orange and red shades to indicate level of doneness.

In my case, I started with a inch-thick, 10-ounce ribeye steak on the grill. In a matter of about five minutes, the light reached the shade of orange that indicated medium rare. And if you can’t tell one color from another, it beeps when it achieves Rare, Medium and Well Done levels.

My steak turned out just right, along with those perfect sear lines you want when grilling foods. Given the fact that I just went to a fancy restaurant with a professional chef last week and had to send my steak back because it wasn’t cooked properly, I’m impressed.

As an added bonus, I found that the amount of smoke that the OptiGrill produced from cooking was significantly less than that I get when cooking steaks on the countertop in a pan. Never mind that the grilled meats are healthier than those soaking in their grease in a pan. I also put the defrost mode through its paces, and it turn a hockey puck of ground bison into a perfectly cooked burger in about 12 minutes from plug-in to chow-time.

When you’re done cooking with the OptiGrill, all you need to do is turn it off, unplug it, and wait an hour (or more). Once it’s cool to the touch, you snap off the non-stick grill plates and slide out the drip tray and wash them. One note – the drip tray isn’t dishwasher safe, so you need to hand wash it.

I’m very impressed with the T-Fal OptiGrill. It’s a must-have appliance for kitchens if you like grilled foods and either don’t have space for an outdoor grill, or don’t want to deal with the hassle of starting up and cleaning your grill. Also, I can speak from experience that it’s no fun to fire up my outdoor grill in the middle of winter in Chicago.

The T-Fal OptiGrill ships this October, and will be available from Bed Bath and Beyond stores for $179.99(USD). It includes everything you see here, including a 72-page book with 32 recipes, offering everything from buttermilk-rosemary chicken thighs to BBQ ribs and herb-roasted potatoes.

There is nothing quite like a piping hot meal to get your appetite going, especially during those cold winter days when a bowl of hot chicken soup is good for your body – and your soul, of course. Well, how about a gizmo that can be plugged in and double up as a cooker? This is where the HotLogic Mini comes in, which looks rather unassuming from the outside as it resembles your typical tote bag which is normally used to carry food to work or around to your destination. Underneath the hood, however, it will come lined with aluminum foil and features a heater plate, where these would work together in order to cook the food within the bag.

All you need to do is place the food into any container, regardless of whether they are glass, metal or plastic, zip up the bag and plug it in, and you are good to go. All food will be cooked without letting it experience any loss in moisture, and the device is so dummy-proof, it needs no programming at all, and is safe to use regardless of the setting. Seems to be the ideal tool to bring to your office whenever you want to prepare a hot meal and do not happen to have any access to a traditional microwave oven.

HotLogic Mini Helps Cook Your Food On The Go original content from Ubergizmo.

European automobile maker Fiat has teamed up with appliance company Smeg to create some awesome retro refrigerators out of old cars. They’re basically finding classic Fiat 500s, cutting off the front ends, gutting the insides, and turning them into the coolest fridges ever.

It’s sad that all these cars are being chopped up, but the resulting refrigerators look pretty darn cute, so it is hard to be too mad at them. The instrument panel is still inside, though it’s not exactly where you’d expect to find it. You can use it to adjust the temperature.

The “Smeg 500s” are coming soon and will be available in white, red and green. We don’t have any word on pricing, but I’m sure they won’t be cheap. Who wants one?

[via Hypebeast via Gizmodo via Dvice]