towel

Commercial bathroom towel tech for the kitchen

There are plenty of those awkward moments in the kitchen when your hands are covered in raw chicken bits or eye-searing chile and you're trying not to touch anything. There's only so much you can do with your elbows.

This is why it makes sense to bring touchless technology into the kitchen. Restaurant and gas station bathrooms have been using touchless paper towel dispensers for years. Now there's a fancy version for the home.… Read more

The 404 803: Where we're picking up some Funyuns, man (podcast)

Wilson mysteriously disappears on this beautiful Wednesday, but Natali's pulling a twofer this week and filling in to help us with today's rundown. To her delight, a new augmented reality app is bringing future tech from the Harry Potter series alive, a PhillieBot will chuck the first patch at tonight's game, and a new iPhone case protects more than just the device inside.

The 404 Digest for Episode 803

Robot to throw first pitch at today's Phillies game How did that RFID chip end up in my suitcase? On a related note, Natali brings this delightful Jamaican tale to our attention. The JustinCase prototype fights for safe sex.

Thanks to Attariq for drawing this picture of The 404!

Episode 803 Subscribe in iTunes (audio) | Subscribe in iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video… Read more

Produce a paper towel with a wave of the hand

There are some nonfood kitchen essentials that we hardly ever give a second thought. Aluminum foil, sealable storage bags, paper towels; these are not glamorous items. However, they are pressed into service every day, called upon to do their duty with little or no fanfare. (Well, none.) But just because we see and use items such as these without a second thought doesn't mean that they cannot break free from the mold and endeavor to be something more.

At least in the case of paper towels, there is a brighter future. The Clean Cut Automatic Paper Towel Dispenser isn'… Read more

Towel-folding robot won't do the dishes

If you hate folding laundry, you might like what you see in a recent video from researchers at the University of California at Berkeley. They programmed a robot to fold towels.

The researchers used Willow Garage's PR2, a general-purpose humanoid robot with two seven-axis arms and a wheeled base. In an ICRA 2010 paper, they present a cloth-grasping algorithm for getting the robot to pick up and fold towels it hadn't previously analyzed.

Fitted with four stereo cameras, PR2 was able to successfully figure out, grasp, and fold 50 single towels, as well as a pile of five … Read more

Public paper towel convenience now private

The kitchen tool I have to replenish most often is paper towels. Thankfully, most brands now have the "select-a-size" half-sheet towels, so I can wipe up without being as wasteful, but it seems as if I still use more than I need. Although most of them are put to good use, many paper towels inevitably fall victim to accidental spoilage, like when I steady the roll with my left hand to tear off a sheet, leaving saucy fingerprints on the row of towels that are going to be used next. If the point of paper towels is to … Read more

Paper towels for the lazy germaphobe

We're impressed. Crave is proud of its unfettered history of laziness, but even we might be too embarrassed to have something like this.

The "iTouchless Towel-Matic Automatic Sensor Paper Towel Dispenser" promises to handle the laborious task of pulling a sheet from the roll, which we all know is a back-breaking experience. To be fair, as Uber-Review notes, it could make a nice gift for your favorite germaphobe.

Actually, given our own idiosyncrasies, maybe this idea isn't as bad as we thought. We just hope that it's more efficient than its seven-word name.