Tired of washing and drying your clothes the 1.0 way? The American Inventor Spot blog has a fascinating roundup of new concepts in laundry. First there's the Whirlpool Bodybox, a design concept that puts a washer, dryer, and walk-in shower side by side in a single unit -- oh, and they throw in a sink, too. Then there's the WashDryIron, a device which dries clothes on hangers, saving the need for ironing. Inventor Oliver Blackwell estimates that it will save 10 days worth of ironing a year. (Wait a second -- do our dear readers really spend 40 minutes a day, every day, ironing clothes?) And then there's a joint research product by Whirlpool, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Panasonic and Procter & Gamble to hook washers and dryers up to home networks so that you can get alerts on your PC, cell phone, or TV when the latest load of laundry is done.

A reader is quick to point out that on college campuses, the future of laundry is already here. Laundry-machine distributor Mac-Gray's LaundryView service, which shows the availability of washers and dryers in a dorm's laundry room over the Web, has already been installed at several colleges.