The Goods, September 2011

A fridge attached the internet remains one of the stupidest concepts out there. You need counciling if you need to stream pandora while standing in front of the fridge especially on a tiny screen.

Gee, bob, what if someone wants to listen to music while they cook or do the dishes, or check the weather forecast while they're grabbing their breakfast?

That refrigerator is actually a great idea, and well-executed.

I agree with Onihikage. I love the idea of looking up a recipe and having it display on the fridge, maybe watch a video from a cooking website showing how to make the recipe, or just being able to stream a movie while I'm preparing the meal. Could run a program to track inventory in the fridge . Would be totally awesome to combine that with RFID tags on everything, know exactly what that gross thing in the back of the fridge was and how old, be able to generate a grocery list and send it to a networked printer -- so much room for innovation.

I just think that having a internet linked fridge is a bad idea for one simple yet terrifying reason... Skynet... We cannot have Skynet controlling the fridges...

$2600 for a wi-fi equipped fridge, or $1300 for a nice fridge and another $600 for a tablet computer you can do all this stuff on and put wherever you want, even in your kitchen? What if your refrigerator screen goes out? Whirlpool wanted $600 to replace a door I broke a plastic tab off of. Wi-Fi on your fridge is a bad value and putting all your eggs in one basket.

Don't even get me started on the "curveboard". It's just a keyboard folks, and they make the same mistake most keyboards do, taking up valuable space to the right with arrow keys and a numeric keypad, when your mouse should be located there, close at hand, to avoid having to reach so far to use it. I'll never use another keyboard wider than a laptop's.

The Star Gazer looks like a very interesting product and I will likely be buying one soon. I also agree with both JTxo and Onihikage on the fridge. It is the perfect fridge for someone who spends a good amount of time in the kitchen and enjoys cooking.

I think that waterproof jeans are an awesome Idea. Why didn't we think of that years ago?? All our clothes should be waterproof.

Waterproof jeans. Hmm, I used to accomplish that with a cheap bottle of Scotchgard before going skiing...