An eco-friendly “courtesy flush” app
For those of you who feel the need to mask certain sounds while in the loo but don’t like to waste water or hurt your throat from ongoing pseudo-coughs, you’re not alone. In fact, if you haven’t already guessed it, there’s an app for that.
A Tokyo-based company, Polygon Magic, Inc., has created an app called “eco-oto”, designed for all of you who are self-conscious about your…erm…toilet talk. Interestingly enough, the company claims that (direct quote here, I am not responsible for the shoddy use of English): “In Japan, for example, more than 80% of women get embarrassed to make an excretion sound at public space and 50% of men also flush water in a few times to erase their sound and neutralize the stench.” Huh. That’s a lot of wasted water when you think about it.
So what, exactly, does the eco-oto app do? If you know your Japanese, you might have an idea. Eco is, of course, short for ecological and oto has been taken from the Japanese word sound, put them together and eco-oto translates to ecological sound. The app will play a flushing sound for 30, 60, 90, or 120 seconds. According to Polygon Magic, that’s a savings of around 6-8 litres of water per flush.
The app is available from the iTunes store for $0.99. I wasn’t willing to flush my money down the toilet to try it out, so I’m not sure how realistic the flushing sounds are. Think the eco-oto is a great concept or a crappy idea?
Filed Under: Mobile Apps > Tech Trends
Tags: eco-oto, flush, iphone app, ipod touch app, toilet
So now there’s an app for that. When will phones come with a bar-code scanner? We could scan products in a store and pay for them online automatically. No more checkout counter. When’s that app coming? Remember I said it first, so I get royalties on the application when it’s available.
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Why would you scan them in a store and then pay for them online?
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because then you don’t need to stand in line and wait to checkout….
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There is an app in the app store to read a bar code and tell you what it actually is.
It worked good for me until my phone crashed due to a high rate of impact with a concrete block!!
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“So now there’s an app for that. When will phones come with a bar-code scanner? We could scan products in a store and pay for them online automatically. No more checkout counter. When’s that app coming? Remember I said it first, so I get royalties on the application when it’s available.”
Thats actually a really, REALLY good idea. Imagine how much easier and more efficient that would be… it just scan your own stuff, pay it through electronic transfer, text your confirmation number to the store, and away you go. And since we’re bringing our own bags anyways, there’d really be no need for tills at all. And all those employees could be shifted into helping customers find stuff. ^.^ Go you.
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Now all we need is a public toilet with a built-in phone.
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What about a phone with a built-in toilet? Now that wold be useful.
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POOOOOOOOOOP
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@Al there alreadu are several apps foe barcode scanners
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Too funny, I am fluent in Japanese, spending several weeks to months a year there. I have never heard this application in use, and good luck trying to hide a really good gassy dump. lol
social graces are very important in Japan so this might catch on.
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I live in Japan and these machines are in most public toilets. From what I understand they aren’t as popular in men’s toilets because it is the women with the pee sound complex.
I think this app is kinda dumb because most places have them already built in. And if they don’t , I don’t want to be the only one making the water noises.
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