What the bleep? (Kitchen Tech Part 3)

Would you store your food in green goo?  How about something that charges your cell phone with no wires?  Is it the future?  Some of it is, some of it you can buy right now...  This post could be originally seen on Design Kula.

Electrolux Biorobot food storage device: Ok, at first glance this thing looks gross. Would you be OK with putting your food in green goo to keep it fresh? That concept might take some getting used to, but a few years ago we never thought we’d be using our phones as computers either. The idea behind this concept refrigerator is that you stick your food in the green goo, it forms pods around it, and by using the light in the room the goo stays cool and germ free. Also, since your food is separate from other items, there is no odor transfer. Interestingly, Sub Zero utilizes this same concept in their refrigerators with multiple cooling zones driven by multiple compressors. This keeps odors from moving from one area to another so your food stays fresher longer. If this goo concept were ever to come to market, there would be so many uses for it. Imagine instead of one giant food cooling area, you could have multiple “goo units” that store food at the point of use. Your wet bar could have a small area for fruit, and a main area for beverages. This could also be great in restaurant use as well.

Inductive Charging Mats: How many kitchens have you walked into that have cell phone, ipod, and game system chargers all over the countertops? We’ve got so many things that we need to recharge these days, and a lot of that goes on in the kitchen. If you’re clever, you can create a nice charging station to manage all those wires. But why manage the present when you could bring your kitchen into the future? How about wireless charging? Powermat, and Energizer make these great mats that can charge your devices by just dropping them on the mat. No wires needed. Older devices will need to have an adapter slipped onto the battery, but a lot of new cell phones are coming with inductive charging built in. Check out this video to see it in action, it’s F***ing awesome!

There is a lot of great kitchen technology out there, and this list doesn’t even scratch the surface. Consumers see more of this technology, they want it integrated into their designs. It makes sense, if they can have all this powerful technology at their desks, why should one’s kitchen be in the stone age?

Kitchen Technology Part 2

This is a follow up post to my last post on kitchen technology.  This post as originally featured on Design Kula.

The Brizo SmartTouch faucet: Did Brizo re-invent the faucet from the ground up? Nope. But they did add a “touch” of technology that really improves the way you use a faucet. You can touch this one to turn it on and off. Doesn’t sound that exciting huh? I’ll admit, it doesn’t shoot lasers, but it is hugely useful in the kitchen. Imagine this: You are cooking and your hands are all dirty. You need to wash off, but you don’t want to get your BBQ sauce covered fingers, or worse, your raw chicken coated fingers all over the faucet. With Brizo SmartTouch, you just tap your forearm, elbow, nose, or other fleshy bit on the faucet and you’ve got clean flowing water to rinse off in. I recently “forced” a client (my mother) to get one of these. She thought it was the most unnecessary thing when I explained it to her. After a day of using it she can’t stop raving about it! Allegedly a facerub from you cat can also activate the faucet, so curious water hating cats: you have been warned. Brizo seamlessly blends style and technology into all of it’s products, unlike Aquabrass who have attached a Playstation controller to the end of a faucet.

ZigBee Appliances: You may never have heard of ZigBee, but it’s a pretty interesting thing. ZigBee makes wireless transmitters, and the associated computer magic to get appliances to talk to one another. Why does it matter if your appliances can talk together? Not so they can plan world domination, but so they can work together to save you money. It all starts with your electric meter. If you have a ZigBee wireless electric meter it can send out lots of useful information, most importantly when electricity is the cheapest. Your appliances talk to the meter, and know when it’s the best time to do energy intensive tasks. For example, your dishwasher can automatically run at 3am, when electricity is cheapest. Your refrigerator can defrost then too. Of course, you can override these settings if you need your favorite jeans washed right away. Check out this video by Consumer Reports to see some of these appliances in action. This video features GE appliances, but SubZero also is in the ZigBee appliance game.

Stay tuned early in the week for the summary of all this kitchen technology!

Kitchen Technology, Part 1

This post originally appeared on Design Kula.  This is a fabulous blog and I suggest you check it out.

Technology: It’s everywhere these days. It’s evolving at a blistering pace. We all know how it goes, that shiny new aluminium tablet you bought two months ago is already out of date, replaced by something that is twice as fast, and half the price! That’s not just all marketing hype, there is a law, Moores Law. Moore’s law talks about the amount of transistors on a chip doubling.... Ok, I’ll forgo the technical jargon before you jump to your Facebook page. Basically the law says that computers will get twice as fast and half the price each year. This has been true for the last 50 or so years!

So how has this affected the kitchen in today’s market? Well, there is TONS of tech out there for the kitchen. Some of it good, some bad, and some just plain odd. I’ll guide you through just some of the things I have discovered in my travels. Before we start, I think I need to get some geek credentials out of the way:

My name is Eric Schimelpfenig, AKBD. I am a kitchen and bath designer, Sketchup modeler, trainer, public speaker, blogger, and a firm believer that the Internet is here to stay. At an early age I assembled my own computer in a cardboard box, and today I have no less then three screens on my desk at any given time. I could keep going, but I think you get the picture...

First up: The AlessiTAB. This tablet is a touch screen tablet that was developed for use exclusively in the kitchen. It runs on that all familiar Android operating system, and even features a TV tuner! I think it’s a great idea, but it’s going to be a dismal failure. Since it’s got all the tablet specs, it’s got the tablet price, without the tablet portability. The idea of having a computer or tablet in the kitchen is something a lot consumers want. With so many great apps out there for the kitchen why not get an iPad Chef Sleeve or just in put it a Zip Lock bag? (Yes, that actually works really well!)

Outdoor grilling, it’s one of the great outdoor pastimes. Imagine this: You are outside on your deck, you’re surrounded by friends, great smelling food, and wonderful weather. What could possibly make this day any better? Being able to leave all that and go hide inside. But how can you go inside to play another round of Angry Birds or check your Match.com inbox without the risk of burning your delicious meats? You can’t trust your friends, but you can trust iGrill. iGrill is a remote meat thermometer that communicates over Bluetooth to your favorite iOS device. Yup, you can look right at your iPhone or iPad and see the status of your meats without ever having to leave that computer chair. Frag on oh “master of the meats”.

Stay tuned to this spot towards the end of the week and I will unveil even more exciting (and actually useful) kitchen tech!

AIA 2010 Re Run: Mike builds kitchens from space!

This year unfortunately I won't be attending AIA, but my good friends Mike Tadros of Igloo Studios, Mark Johnson, and David Pillsbury will be!  The show starts today and I am sure that they are going to be doing all kinds of magical things with Sketchup, including but not limited to some Shaderlight renderings.  Check out what Mike did last year:  Also, follow the #AIA2011 hashtag on Twitter to keep up.  Each of the presenters names are linked above with their Twitter feed.  You can follow the AIA hashtag to the right with the Twitter Widget!  Here is a post I did about some of the "Movie Magic" that Mike did last year....

At the AIA show this year, Mike Tadros, president of the Sketchup training company, www.go-2-school.com did several presentations during the AIA show.  As with all of Mike's presentations, they are well thought out, and very informative.  Mike has a really fluid manner of teaching, and he's great at sensing what his class needs, and molding the presentation on the fly to accomodate everyone in the room.  Check out some of Mike's videos to get an idea of what I am talking about:

Of all Mike's presentations, there was one that really stuck out for me.  Mike started building a kitchen using the Kraftmaid models that are available in the 3D warehouse.  He went on to show how easy it is to create kitchens and living spaces with these models.  At one point, a lady asked if she could build her own kitchen with these tools.  Mike said "Sure!"  and then asked, "How about I build your kitchen for you?"  She agreed.  At this point, she, I, and I think everyone else was confused as to how Mike was going to accomplish this.  Remember, we're all on a trade show floor, and even though we were surrounded by architects, nobody had any idea what her kitchen looked like.

Without skipping a beat, Mike asked what her address was.  He pulled up Google Earth, and zoomed in on her location, and found the aerial photography of her house.

With just a few clicks, Mike had the aerial photography in Sketchup, where he began to trace the outside of the house.  He was quickly able to model up the walls.  The lady at the show was rather confused up until this point, because she had no idea how Mike was going to draw her house, without ever seeing it.  As soon as she saw the walls go up, she was able to easily describe where her kitchen was located.

After finishing the walls, Mike started to build a kitchen for her...

Right there on the screen, Mike put the cabinets where she wanted them.  There was no waiting, no render time, it all happened live, right there on the trade show floor.  Mike was using Merillat cabinets, which are available on the 3D warehouse in Sketchup

After Mike built her a kitchen, he even emailed her the Sketchup model.  She can now go home, download Sketchup Free, and view her dream kitchen herself, right in her own home.  When she decides its time to get it built, she's got a great 3D model to start with!  They say a picture is work a thousand words, but how many words is a 3D model worth?

Kitchen Design & Plumbing

The internet, like electricity, "Easy Mac", and the wheel, has been a huge game changer in every industry. Services like Facebook, Twitter, GMail,YouTube, blogs, and Aol Instant messenger have reshaped the way people share news, sports scores, gossip, and pointless videos. You might be thinking: "What does all that have to do with kitchen design?" You may think that all the "Tweets", "Pokes", "Blogs", RSS feeds, emails, emoticons, and friend requests and just fun and games.... You'd be wrong though, it represents one of the most fundamental shifts in information sharing since the Pony Express .

Some of us may think of the internet as a series of tubes . While Ted Steven's analogy may sound a little crazy, he was actually more right then he sounds in that explanation, err, rant.

Desktop applications and the internet are starting to merge. You may have heard the term "Cloud" computing in the news before. What this means is that computer applications, rather then being installed and run on a local computer are now installed on a computer across the internet. To use these services, you login to them with any internet connected computer, and work with that application and your files "in the cloud". What this means is that you can work with your applications and files anywhere there is internet. This is convenient because these days there is internet access just about everywhere . The most successful fully "cloud" based services are at this point, simple software packages. Things like Google Docs & Spreadsheets take aim at replacing their desktop counterparts, Word and Excel.

So what are the advantages of these services? Well for starters, when you use these services, software updates come automatically without any need for the end user to install anything. This means that you and anyone else that use this these services are all working on the exact same software version. This eliminates the incompatibilities that often crop between different versions of software. Also, sharing and collaboration of documents is a breeze. With online Docs and Spreadsheets, many people can literally view and edit the same document in real time. Gone are the days placing written documents in tubes, sending them by horseback, or emailing Word files back and forth, only to have someone to read them all and combine all the changes.

So how does this relate to kitchen design software? Most software available to the kitchen designer is very proprietary. Cabinet Vision, AutoCAD, 2020 Design, and Planit, to name a few, do not share with each other. A few of these software packages are catalog driven. What this means is that each manufacturer creates a catalog of their products, which are downloaded by the designer into their design software, which they then use to specify products. These files are viewable and editable on the computer that they were created on, but if sent to someone else, they need the same version of that software, and also the same version of that catalog to be viewed.

You're probably thinking, "Hey, that doesn't sound revolutionary, game changing, or fun!" You're right, its not. As I eluded to earlier, we are just at the beginning of this fundamental shift in computing. Don't despair though, there is one piece of software out there that has merged the cloud with desktop applications rather nicely.

This software is Google Sketchup . Sketchup is a 3D Design software package acquired by Google a few years ago. It runs on your local computer. However, its got a nice feature that comes with it called the "3D Warehouse " This is an online place that models created in Sketchup can be stored online and viewed and shared with anyone.

So what does this mean for a kitchen designer? Instead of creating a design in a proprietary software package for thousands of dollars, that you cannot share with anyone else, and requires a service contract with USB key, you can now create it with free software that anyone can have access too. That's right, Sketchup, in its basic form, is free. Although most kitchen designers will need the pro version to create plans, layout drawings, and have import/export abilities to use your other files with it.

Now, say you had a client, or a manufacturer that was across the country, you could create a design in Sketchup, upload it to the 3D Warehouse. Even if that person that you sent it to has never used Sketchup, they could download it for free, and easily view your model and discuss it with you. Need to make a change to the model? Easy, make the changes, upload them again, and the model is instantly updated online. This is a much better work flow then tossing emails back and forth. The added bonus is that Sketchup will give your client a unique, and immersive experience with their design.

So what about those catalogs? Well, the current business model we have for catalogs is very poor in my opinion. The catalogs are constantly changing, and being updated. As a kitchen designer, I don't have the time to watch every website to see when they all get updated. With Sketchup, you don't have to do that. Since the catalogs of models are stored online, as soon as that manufacturer updates them, there are instantly there. So in Sketchup, every time I open a catalog, I know its the most up to date version.

Check out these videos I created to explain in more detail how the 3D Warehouse works.

Using the 3D warehouse

Storing Models in the 3D warehouse

Now, as brilliant as Sketchup is to use as a design tool, you aren't going to be able to use it as your only design, marketing, and pricing tool just yet. There are a lot of catalogs on the 3D warehouse, but certainly not all of them just yet. Pricing is just starting to be implemented. Sketchup makes a brilliant addition to your arsenal of tools, and I can guarantee you it will become your favorite very quickly. Don't be left behind with old , overpriced , and outdated software. As the series of tubes gets even more connected to the cloud, it's software like this that are plumbing the way to the future. Computer's are being developed at an exponentially faster rate every day, so get in now and learn all you can. The future will here quicker then you think.