Touch Revolution: NIMble touchscreen puts Android in a microwave

Most days, as we slam in our fifth microwave ready meal of the day, it occurs to us that those four and a half minutes on high certainly add up: we could spend that time browsing our favourite gadget blog. So thank heavens for Touch Revolution, with a concept at CES 2010 that could let you do just that.

Touch Revolution has put a Web-connected 7-inch touchscreen module in a humble washing machine and microwave, complete with Web browser and onscreen keyboard. The NIMble NIM1000 module packs an 806MHz ARM processor and video acceleration co-processor. It can also support MMC/SD, Wi-Fi, USB, Ethernet and accelerometer components.

Touch Revolution makes capacitive touchscreens, running Google's Android 1.5 platform. The microwave and washer dryer are designed to show off the potential for putting Web-connected digital interfaces into any appliance you can think of. The washer dryer uses Android as a platform to run its laundry, which could have uses like notifying you with a text when your washing is done. If Touch Revolution gets its way, the house of the future could see us checking our email in the shower, streaming music out of a lampshade and browsing our RSS feeds as we go number twos.

Web-connected appliances are a theme here at CES. The boundaries between netbooks, digital photo frames, ebook readers and digital organisers are becoming increasingly blurred. We know it's a trend because Sony has jumped on the bandwagon with the Sony Dash. Right -- who's hungry?