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A Power-Free Washing Machine

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Sometimes you just have to wash some clothes, but you don’t have the ability to do so.  Maybe your washing machine is broken.  Maybe the power is out.  Maybe you’re traveling and you’re not wanting to pay for the price of a trip to the laundromat for just a few things.  Either way, a company called Yirego has come up with a $129 solution to the problem.  The Drumi is a power-free washing machine powered by the foot, not the cord.

Of course, the machine isn’t going to replace your full-sized washing machine, but if you have access to soap and clean water and some time to dedicate to stepping on a foot pedal for awhile, then you’ll have six or seven pieces of clean laundry once you hand the stuff out to dry.  But the Drumi functions as both a washer and a spin-cycle to drain excess water out of the clothes.  If you’re a traveler, this seems like a really interesting investment that would fit pretty well in the back of a car or in a trunk for traveling purposes.

If you’re interested, the Yirego Drumi is available for preorder at yirego.com.

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LED Bulbs 2 For $5

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LED bulbs are the next big thing for the house.  Actually, they’ve been the next big thing for awhile now, but they’ve been too expensive for msot people that I know to take the plunge.  A bulb that lasts 10 years is great, but paying $10 or more for a lightbulb is a tough proposition, even though they save energy and produce light almost as good as incandescent bulbs.  Fortunately, Philips understands, and Philips is going to lower the entry barrier for the LED world.  Philips will offer their A16 LED bulbs for 2 for $5.

Now I’ve got a couple of LED bulbs, and I do like them, but at the same time, they’re costly.  I bought some LED holiday lights to use as incidental lighting on my stairs, which I like quite a bit, but the individual bulbs are still hard to swallow price-wise.  (Also literally, because they’re glass.)  At this price point, though, I’m thinking about making the switch, or at least buying up as many LEDs as I can afford at one time to replace my old bulbs as they burn out.  The light might not be as nice as the old days, but for that price, I think I’ll be okay.

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Microsoft's "Selfie" Phone

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It seems like you can’t escape selfies these days.  From television to your phone, the world is taking pictures of itself to share with its friends, and it seems like smartphone companies are getting smarter about giving the people what they want:  an easier way to take pictures of themselves.  That’s why so many phones come with forward-facing cameras, but Microsoft is doing the competition one better.  Microsoft’s new smartphone has a 5 megapixel camera just for taking selfies.  That’s more powerful than all the competition.

The phone will be 4.7 inches and is joined by another higher-end Windows Phone in launching soon, but Microsoft employees have been given a sneak preview of the phone.  It’s the first designed by Stephen Elop, former Nokia chief who joined up with Microsoft when the company bought out the former phone manufacturer to bolster the Windows Phone division.  The first step, apparently, is to design a phone for folks to take pictures of themselves (and maybe occasionally the world around them) without sacrificing power and usefulness.

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Fun Friday Videos: Kids React To Rotary Phones

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It’s Friday, it’s March, and you’re probably wishing you were at the park or watching basketball or doing anything other than sitting at your place of employment, manning a phone or typing on a computer.  I know that’s how I feel!  So, to lighten up  your afternoon and get reacquainted with some technology from the not-too-distant past, here’s a great “Kids React To” video from the Fine Brothers.  They do a bunch of these sorts of videos about everything from old technology to viral videos, and this is probably one of my favorite ones.  It’s  elementary school kids reacting to a rotary dial telephone.

It must be a sign of my age that when I was that age, I regularly used a rotary dial telephone at my grandmother’s house (and a push-button phone at my parents’ place) so even then I wasn’t lost on rotary dial.  Then again, I also didn’t grow up with a smartphone or even a cordless phone, so looking at a rotary phone must be like looking at a percolator to them.

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Sprint Adds Wi-Fi Calling Plan

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One of the hardest places to get cell phone signals (aside from every major city) is in your very own home.  You’ve got your cell phone, but in order to answer calls or get any kind of sound quality, you have to go sit by a window or go outside or even retreat to the comfort of your car in bad weather.  It’s kind of annoying, considering just how good the average home Wi-Fi signal is.  Fortunately, Sprint is going to be correcting that eternal problem.  Spring is going to be adding Wi-Fi calling and texting service to certain Android phones.

The phones in question are the the Samsung Galaxy Mega and the Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini  Sprint will be rolling out updates to the phones in the coming weeks with the goal of relieving congestion on networks and improving service within the home.  AT&T and T-Mobile offer similar plans and similar ideas, with T-Mobile having the in-home Wi-Fi calling and AT&T using public Wi-Fi hot spots to reduce congestion on its service.  Those have been pretty successful, so I imagine Sprint’s plan will work out pretty well for the company, barring technical problems.

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