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OWOW’s series of digital instruments has you wave, rotate and air-drum tunes

The ubiquity of computers, smartphones, and tablets have all led to a distinctly digital personality when it comes to music creation. Instead of it being regulated to those who spend years mastering a particular instrument, devices have made it so that anyone with a tune in their head can express it with whatever instrument, sound effect, or voice they can find on the internet. Unfortunately, this has made current methods of music creation look more like coding and less like playing.

With their CRD and DVC series of digital instruments, the Omnipresent World of Wizkids (OWOW) is looking to reinject a bit of fun and actual playing to music creation. The series consists of five compact, plug-and-play instruments played with both touch and gesture controls: waving their hands lets users manipulate sounds with the Wob instrument, rotations of the Wiggle instrument will produce different versions of previously assigned effects while users can air drum above the Drums instrument to create percussion. The Pads instrument is a physical miniature drum pad while the Scan is the most experimental of the bunch; with it, users draw dots or lines beforehand that are interpreted as sounds as the Scan is passed over the design.

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Reason ensures that energy savings come out in the wash

The Premise. The washing machine has seen subtle changes to bring them into the 21st century, but their designs have remained largely the same. One inventor has made the washing machine simpler, more energy efficient, and more compact.

The Product. The Reason washing machine has a slide-out drum, not unlike a trash compactor, and can handle loads of a single garment all the way up to a winter comforter and duvet. The Reason weighs the load of laundry and calculates the appropriate amount of water and detergent, and custom tailors each cycle to only use what is needed to clean garments. The entire device is operated with a single button, and can handle loads up to 12 kilograms.

The Pitch. Based on the feature set and innovation of the Reason, one can’t fault inventor Andrew Reason for being excited about his project. However, with the epic movie-trailer soundtrack and the metaphors to saving enough resources to fill Olympic pools and shut down power plants, the promotional video comes off a little strong. Reason includes a whole array of demo videos however, showing off every aspect of the machine. The Reason needs to raise £40,000 to complete the prototype stage and get the initial production out the door.

The Perks. The Reason washing machine will be sent out in December of this year for those that pledge support of at least £779, complete with detergent and conditioner. A year supply of the detergent and conditioner is available for £150, and those that want to change their laundry routine earlier can get in on the first batch for £4,000, receiving their washer in October.

The Potential. The Reason washing machine is an interesting design that’s a perfect fit in smaller apartments and economy housing because of its small space requirements and the ability to cut back on utility costs. The initial investment price may be a little high for those looking to cut costs, but Reason calculates that within an eight-year time frame, the washer will have paid for itself. While that may seem like a long time to wait to break even, the machine does thankfully come with a ten-year guarantee.