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Mint, the Little Robot That Cleans Your Floors [PICS and VIDEO]

Mon, 03 Jan 2011 00:44:31 +0000

It’s finally happened: We’re so lazy that we can’t even bother to take a dust mop to our wood floors. Criticisms of our society aside, this little Mint Automatic Floor Cleaner will be more than happy to accomplish that task for us. Working like a miniature GPS, Mint communicates with its North Star Navigation Cube, a black box that forms a digital map of wherever the little robot roams, and keeps things efficient by directing Mint to areas it hasn’t cleaned yet. The two work as a team, where Mint seeks the corners of a room, and communicates with its shiny black mother ship. There are two modes, one that works like a dust mop, and another takes care of wet mopping with a more vigorous back-and-forth scrubbing action. You place a wet or dry cleaning cloth onto its snap-in magnetic cleaning pad, select dry or wet mode by pushing one of the buttons on top, and then that little sucker is off and running. I charged Mint for about five hours, and then turned it loose on our wood floors. At first, it polished wide swaths of the floor as if it were mowing the lawn. Then it got more adventurous, digging into the corners and edges of the room until it had gotten the whole area clean. This is not a vacuum — it’s designed to avoid carpets and other obstacles. For the most part, it did a good job of staying on the wood or tile, but as you can see in the video above, it got a little confused with some of our area rugs. It’s so cute, we felt sorry for it as it moved back and forth, its tiny green lights blinking to indicate that it was trying to figure out what to do next. With a little help from me, it was soon on its merry way. It’s not perfect. Its wet mopping routine was mediocre. It couldn’t press down hard enough to remove any dried-on stains, but it could at least accomplish a superficial wetting down of the floor. In wet mode, you need to baby-sit, re-wetting its cleaning cloth after 10 minutes because it dries out. So it would be even less effective if you left it to its own devices. On the other hand, its dry mopping was stellar. Take a look in the gallery below and see how much dirt this little sucker picked up! We thought we kept a fairly clean house, those are a LOT of dust bunnies Mint rooted out. It’s downright embarrassing. As one of our colleagues pointed out, it’s not that hard to dust-mop (or even wet-mop) the floor, but it’s tons of fun to set this beautifully designed $250 bot on its way, making its whisper-quiet whirring noise as it explores your floors, cleaning as it goes. Mint Automatic Cleaner Mint’s North Star Navigation Cube Mint Automatic Cleaner Mint Automatic Cleaner That’s a LOT of dust More About: Cleaning Bot , household , mint , Mint Automatic Floor Cleaner , reviews , Robot For more Tech coverage: Follow Mashable Tech on Twitter Become a Fan on Facebook Subscribe to the Tech channel Download our free apps for Android , iPhone and iPad

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Mint, the Little Robot That Cleans Your Floors [PICS and VIDEO]

Build a Custom Espresso Cart from IKEA Parts [Video]

Mon, 20 Dec 2010 08:00:00 +0000

If you’re looking for a way to control the gadget clutter sprawling around your espresso machine this simple DIY station made from IKEA parts—completely with built-in knock-box and under-machine storage—should do the trick. More »

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Build a Custom Espresso Cart from IKEA Parts [Video]

Every Homeowner Should Install A Pneumatic Sliding Door Like This [Video]

Tue, 07 Dec 2010 02:00:00 +0000

I’m not a Trekkie, but even I can appreciate the wonders of a Star Trek style pneumatic sliding door —especially the fact that it’s a biometric security system away from being the ultimate geeky home modification. More »

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Every Homeowner Should Install A Pneumatic Sliding Door Like This [Video]

New Web Service Is an Online File Cabinet for Your Household Bills [INVITES]

Thu, 21 Oct 2010 06:42:09 +0000

This post is part of Mashable’s Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark . If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here . Name: Doxo Quick Pitch: Doxo is a free web service that enables people to connect and go paper-free with household providers in one place. Genius Idea: Let’s be frank: Managing bills is a pain in the you-know-what. One headache is figuring out what to do with the stack of paper bills that continues to pile higher and higher each month. Sure, plenty of companies provide paperless billing options, but those e-statements and bills are stored in disparate places. New startup Doxo has released an online tool to make going completely paperless a more organized process. The invite-only service [we've got invites] is designed so that users can receive, manage and file all of their household bills and accounts online — no paper required. Doxo is designed for credit card bills, utility services, frequent flyer programs, cable plans and mobile contracts. For now, the service is almost entirely manual in nature. So, as a user, you can theoretically “connect” all of your accounts, but you’ll need to download bills (or scan them) from your providers and upload them to doxo. Manual management is said to be just temporary, which is good news for the lazy among us (guilty as charged) who’d rather not take the extra download/scan/upload steps. We can look to the fact that the startup has raised $5.25 million from Mohr Davidow Ventures and Bezos Expeditions as assurance that this idea has legs to stand on, and that providers will come. And doxo promises to announce signed agreements with national and regional service providers in the months ahead. There’s also a few key features that make doxo nice as is. If you opt to add all of your accounts, the doxo overview page becomes your own all-in-one personal bill center, reminder dashboard and online filing cabinet. You can also store your account information, save notes and to-dos per account and mark bills as paid to automatically file them away. Doxo, in partnership with Arbor Day Foundation, plants a tree for each customer that adds 12 or more providers or refers a friend, which adds a feel-good touch to the service. The service is currently invite-only, but 200 Mashable readers interested in going paperless can start e-filing their bills and use the code 4XWDKW21 during the signup process. Image courtesy of canonsnapper , Flickr Sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark BizSpark is a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today . More About: bills , bizspark , doxo , paperless , startup For more Tech coverage: Follow Mashable Tech on Twitter Become a Fan on Facebook Subscribe to the Tech channel Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

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New Web Service Is an Online File Cabinet for Your Household Bills [INVITES]

LG’s Odd New Vertical Dry Cleaner/Wardrobe Hybrid [Lg]

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 09:01:00 +0000

No, this lady has not gone mad. That’s not a refrigerator she’s putting her jacket in. It’s the new LG Tromm Styler and it’s a cross between a wardrobe and a dry cleaning machine. More »

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LG’s Odd New Vertical Dry Cleaner/Wardrobe Hybrid [Lg]

Chatroulette for Stoners: HighStranger Connecting Tokers Come November [Chatroulette]

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 09:00:00 +0000

Here I was thinking Chatroulette was primarily used by stoners, but seemingly some developers think there’s space in the market for another video chat site for strangers. More »

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Chatroulette for Stoners: HighStranger Connecting Tokers Come November [Chatroulette]