Airwash Waterless Washing Machine

It looks like soon we may be able to rid ourselves of the water-guzzling washing machines in our homes. The Airwash Waterless Washing Machine takes "dry-cleaning" to a new level. Instead of immersing a clothing item in water the Airwash cleans clothes using negative ions, compressed air and deodorants to clean clothes.





What is not clear is how honey dropped on my tie is going to be cleaned. I suppose there will still be times when I will have to spot clean a clothing item to get rid of organic materials.

However, in the "smart" (read that as "green" or environmentally friendly) home, any appliance that can be used to reduce the use of water in a household is to be welcomed. I can see an Airwash Machine installed in my bedroom, but other items will still need to be cleaned in the washing machine. Perhaps the Airwash Machine could cut the amount of "water washing" I do in half; that would still be a great saving.

This Airwash Machine is not available so we will have to wait a little longer before we see this in reality in our bedrooms.

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Tetris Puzzle

It's funny how serendipitous looking at gadgets can be. While reading a dead tree edition of Wired, I came across this cool little game:



Connect Four meets Tetris! Looks cool. Unfortunately, I can't find a place (in the US, anyway) that sells this game. I did find an online shop or two in the UK. But I did find something a bit better that is available: a dead tree edition of Wired.





Kind of reminds me of the Rubik's Cube except taking it apart and putting it back together is the trick, instead of a shortcut to solving the damned thing.

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Coffee Table to Run iTunes Connection

A company "Savant" are set to build a coffee table powered by Apple to run iTunes at home.



The idea is that from the coffee table on can use a 40" touchscreen that is fully integrated with iTunes.

The table is powered by a Mac hidden in the table. It will access a user's music, photos, movies and provide home automation functions. From the coffee table one can select to show movies, photos and other video on a home theater system, or can run music and pipe it through the home using a home audio system.



This is similar to what was announced by Microsoft except that the Apple innovation connects a table to iTunes.

Not sure I like the table, maybe it might be made available in a selection of furniture some of which may be more appealing than the table shown.

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With the HP iPAQ 614c and 914c

Probably the only French I know is "Voulez vous coucher avec moi ce soir?" But I had no problem understanding this:

Le premier le iPAQ 614c devrait avoir les caracteristiques suivantes :
- Windows Mobile 6 Professionnel
- 12 touches + Roue Navigation un peu à la mode iPOD
- Ecran 2.8 pouces d'une resolution de 240x320 (Ecran Tactile)
- Connectivite 3G & WIFI
- GPS Integre
- APN 3 Mega Pixels

Le second le iPAQ 914c devrait quand à lui avoir les caracteristiques suivantes :
- Windows Mobile 6 Professionnel
- Clavier alphanumerique (Look Blackberry)
- Ecran 2.46 pouces d'une resolution de 320x240 (Ecran Tactile)
- Connectivite 3G & WIFI
- GPS Integre


- APN 3 Mega Pixels
....because specs are universal! But if you still need help, here's what smartphonefrance.info was trying to say about the new HP iPAQ 914c and iPAQ 614c (when you reduce the text to its bare essentials):

The new HP iPAQ 614c runs on Windows Mobile 6 Professional (PDA Phone), features a unique touch-driven interface, a 2.8" portrait QVGA display, 3G and WiFi connectivity, integrated GPS, and a 3 megapixel camera.

The new HP iPAQ 914c also runs on WM6 Pro, and also benefits from the same connectivity, GPS, and camera feature set as the 614c. It has a landscape 2.46" touch-display and has a QWERTY thumbboard.

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No iPod hacking for you

TUAW - Quoted - "But even before his upload finished, we're told, his ISP showed up, with a takedown notice in hand. Apple had somehow found his site, had contacted his ISP, and let them know that it would be against copyright law for him to upload that code to the Internet."

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Secure, Portable Storage

Let's face it, flash drives are really convenient. However, if your flash drive falls into the wrong hands, so does your data. What's a paranoid geek to do?

Enter the Ironkey, sold by ThinkGeek. In addition to having up to 4gb of storage, it's encrypted on-the-fly with 128bit AES. When you stick the drive into a Windows computer, you have to enter the device password. If you fail the password entry 10 times, the crypto chip becomes permanently inoperative.



Like many a novelty, smile shutter's luster may tarnish quickly.

"More often than not, I'd recommend exiting the smile shutter scene mode altogether," Baig noted. "That's because whenever the smiley icon appears in the LCD, you won't be able to manually take a picture by pressing the shutter button. I missed out on a few promising family pictures by not changing the scene mode quickly enough."

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