Latest example of electronic convergence merges digital camera, ‘net, and refrigerator. Electrolux is designing a system that automatically takes a picture of the contents every time you close your refrigerator door, and uploads it to a web server. If you’re at the store and don’t remember whether you’re out of, say, cheese, use your mobile phone or PDA to wirelessly browse to the latest photo and scan what you’ve got in the fridge at home. I think it is overkill, of course; my own digital approach to shopping is to make a shopping list on my Palm device before I leave the house, scanning the innards of the refrigerator in real time. You might say it is so passé to use a text-based method when I could have a GUI at my fingertips for the task, but hey, what can I say?
If it were to become widespread, what was beginning to worry me about this Electrolux system (although I feel a whole lot better having heard that John Poindexter was axed from DARPA) was the possibility that the authorities would obtain an archive of the old photos from my fridge — likely that Electrolux would leave them a back door into the web server — and be able to derive a running catalogue of my family’s food consumption patterns. They might even find some — gasp! — Middle Eastern food in there from time to time, not to mention Korean cuisine. From how quickly it disappeared, the feds could surmise the relish with which we ate it, from which they could naturally draw the most damaging conclusions about our political leanings. But one potential advantage of the system far outweighs even the most egregious potential privacy violations. It will settle once and for all the burning controversy about whether the light inside the fridge stays on when you close the door. There really is no other way. electricnews.net
And while we’re on the topic of useless gadgetry, here’s a company that sells mice with built-in fans to keep your hand from getting hot and sweaty during your websurfing. I could make a facetious comment about how, depending on the content of your surfing, your hand might get most hot and sweaty when it leaves your mouse for locations further south… but I won’t.
On the other hand (sorry), when the price comes down somewhat, I want one of these.
