Getting My Interactive Kettle Online

I had dinner last night with an old friend who's in town for a few days on a business visit. Much of our conversation centered on social media, technology and the results of some of the developments we're likely to be seeing in the next few years in areas such as reading, consuming and interacting with news and information. That part of our conversation wasn't so much about the obvious things like newspapers and other dead-trees media (which we did discuss: we thought the interesting PDF version of the manual that the manufacturer doesn't print any more. That's where we are today. Where we need to get to is when you can interact with the content you go to online. And by that I mean both you as the human being interacting as well as the product interacting automatically. So with such day-to-day consumer items like my TV or kettle, for instance, I'd like to see those devices automatically do things like register my purchase with the manufacturer (and the nearest service agent), or check their configurations against some place online that would automatically update the device with the latest whatever. Well, maybe the kettle won't need that, but you never know. This is getting into experimental areas such as your fridge notifying you when you need to get more milk. What the fridge actually needs to do is tell the local supermarket, not you. That gets added to your purchase options which the supermarket then delivers to you on your next delivery cycle. But back to the manual. What's needed here is something far more intelligent than a printed booklet or online PDF file. And it needs to be drop-dead simple, both in understanding the information you encounter as well as how to get to that information. In the case of the kettle, I'd suggest that once it's registered itself online (naturally the kettle has some form of built-in connectivity to do that) you receive some kind of automatic notification of a place you can go to online for that manual. That notification would be to whatever is your preferred or usual device - it would know where to find you (a scary concept to some but Back To The Future films, but just think of the possibilities! Add to Yahoo! My Web Neville Hobson is the author of the popular Crayon. Visit Neville Hobson's blog: