There's an internet enabled device designed for just about every room of the house. You can even have music streaming to you in the bathroom while you get ready for the day on various devices available today. But the device for the kitchen either hasn't quite caught on yet or it hasn't been invented.
At its basic functions, some tech savvy cooks might like to be able to search for & follow recipes online. Someone might want to check e-mails or update their schedules (or Facebook) while waiting for the pasta to soften in the boiling water. Maybe someone getting ready for work might want to catch the traffic & weather in the morning while they get their breakfast. Whatever the reason, the desire (and sometimes need) for information and/or entertainment is undeniable. People will always crave more information and/or entertainment regardless of the method of delivery.
Perhaps an iPad or even an inexpensive laptop with wireless networking functionality could suffice for these basic functions. And while I'm sure there are some who probably utilize these devices for these purposes in the kitchen, it hasn't widely caught on. The kitchen has always been a place for storing & preparing food and hasn't traditionally been a place thought of to go to for performing internet or tech related activities.
This is why I think that while the kitchen may not NEED the internet anymore than most other rooms in a home, I do believe there are definitely some ways it could be made very useful especially if these functions are incorporated into a device that just about every kitchen already has...the fridge. Perhaps you've been to Best Buy or Fry's and seen the fridge that has it's own little tv screen with cable hookup on the door. To me, getting a cable hookup installed for your fridge right next to the water connection for the ice maker seems a little much. But since internet connections in our homes have become so commonplace and easy, no additional hardware would be required.
But my idea of this internet enabled fridge would take the concept much further than what you'd typically do on a laptop. It would have simplistic touch screen menus designed for specific functions making it easy to access the information you frequently visit (recipes, traffic, weather, news, stocks, RSS feeds, e-mail, online music, pictures, etc). But the coolest feature would be in how it handles the contents of the fridge. How about if your fridge could keep track of what is in the fridge for you? Not sure if you have any cream cheese for that bagel? Or what if you know you have sour cream but you can't find it? What if the fridge could tell you which shelf to look on to find your desired food product? What if it could tell you when you're getting low on a particular item, build a shopping list for you, and help you purchase those items?
This is the idea of my fridge of the future. Just about every item you purchase at a store today has a barcode (produce being the major exception). (RFID tags would provide much better functionality but are both more expensive and are generally not currently associated with items at the grocery store.) The fridge can have a built in barcode reader that reads the barcode and first tries to find a match either from barcodes you've previously scanned or matches it finds on an internet database (several already exist). If it finds no match, you can define the product manually. When you place it in the fridge, each shelf and drawer will have individual pressure sensors that will measure the weight of each item and keep track of where the last scanned item was placed. The item gets scanned when it is taken out of the fridge and when it is put back and recognizes the difference in weight to let you know when you are running low on an item. It would then start building a grocery list for you that you. You could organize this list into separate lists for different stores or other categories. You could add/remove items manually. You could send the list to a shared network printer. You can even save the list online for viewing from your mobile device. If you don't want to make a trip to the store, you could place your order online with services like Safeway.com or other similar offerings.
One last feature could be the integration of recipes with the contents of your fridge. Say you're looking at a recipe and you want to know if you have the required ingredients. For at least the refrigerated items, it can tell you which items you have & which items you'd still need to purchase.
This is the fridge of the future coming to kitchens and appliance stores...someday. At least this is my vision anyway, now I just need to find a manufacturer to pitch the idea to.
