Category: Japan

Rice Cookers: Zojiriushi Still The King

Rice Cooker

I like my rice cooker. I’m sure not many people can say the same thing or even know that such devices exist. Rice cookers are truly wonderful things, you put rice in and add water and a little while after you turn it on you have perfect rice. No more messy boiling water and burned pans. Heck, other people must think its a good idea, it made Sony famous!

Commonly used in Japan, this type of fuzzy-logic rice cooker can be set ahead of time. I’ve purchased several for friends and family and have settled on the Zojirushi brand. I’ve used a Zojiriushi for several years, and it has held up well and completely changed my cooking habits.

Top Rated Rice Cookers: Zojiriushi

Cool IR Auto Adjusting Door

slat door

There is a new door design out now, as you come up to the threshold the sensors in the multiple sliding slats see you and will slide just enough to let you through. This way the loss of cold/hot air inside the room is minimized. The video linked to from Boing Boing shows it in action with the normal minor glitches that happen in product demos. Works with non-human shaped objects like boxes too. This would make a nice pet door.
The sensors used in each door slider look to be the same Sharp IR detectors that many robot builders use. You can also find them in those sometimes annoying motion sensitive sinks and toilets.

Automatic door… Japan style

Color ePaper From Fujitsu

ePaper

I want a magazine sized sheet of this that will display PDF files, simple text files, and the Zino file format so I can read the electronic versions of magazines. Plus a compact flash slot and USB interface for easy loading of files. Could this be the beginning of on demand newspapers? Just get the ePaper and load it from newspaper sellers or off the Internet.

world’s first film substrate-based bendable color electronic paper with an image memory function. The new electronic paper features vivid color images that are unaffected even when the screen is bent, and features an image memory function that enables continuous display of the same image without the need for electricity. The thin and flexible electronic paper uses very low power to change screen images, thereby making it ideal for displaying information or advertisements in public areas as a type of new electronic media that can be handled as easily as paper.

Fujitsu Color ePaper Press Release

media, paper, Fujitsu, ePaper