Two researchers from Japan’s Keio University (which yours truly attended just until recently by the way) have developed a kitchen appliance aimed at the total web geek in you, a YouTube-powered microwave. The so-called Castoven [JP] is based on a conventional, unbranded model of “good quality” but sports a 10.4-inch LCD screen in the door panel.
Needless to say the researchers didn’t forget to build a set of speakers into the microwave, too. It’s connected to a Mac, but I suppose this would work with Windows computers as well. The concept, first made public in a research paper published last year [JP, PDF], is to make people’s everyday lives a little more worthwhile through mashing up web contents with electric appliances.
The main idea is to display a YouTube video whose length depends on the time you need to heat up what’s inside the Castoven. Say, you want to prepare a lunch box that takes 3.30 minutes to be ready. The Castoven would then automatically pull a video from YouTube with that length and display it on the screen until the meal is finished.
Software-wise, the microwave is based on a special Adobe AIR app that gets the videos through YouTube’s API.
The Castoven isn’t available for sale yet, but I do see stuff like this coming into kitchens in the near future.
Here’s a demo video:
Via Asiajin
Standing in front of the microwave for extended periods of time watching YouTube? I predict a generation of infertility a coming.
As if people really need to be watching more videos in their lives
Convergence comes to the kitchen. Not bad but nothing I’d personally buy. Now if they could somehow get wireless video playback in the bathroom they’d have a product I’d be interested in buying.
While this (hopefully) won’t take off, I could see subsidized home appliances with in-built advertising… Imagine the horrors
i dont want my kids to reheat food more than the time required just to watch Taylor Swift sing
What’s next? A blender that lets you send Tweets?
I could see this being much more successful if you could play video recipes on the microwave LCD while cooking in the kitchen…
thats cool!!!! omg thats awesome i want that.