Gadgets for Love: Can a Toilet, Headphones, a Pillow, Blanket and Coffeemaker Help Your Relationship?
'Good Morning America' puts high-tech gadgets to the test.
June 7, 1011 — -- You love your spouse, but are some of the little things -- the bad habits, the intimacy of living with another human being -- dragging you down?
Not to worry! Here a few ideas ways that technology can come to the rescue.
Calling this toilet the Cadillac of toilets doesn't do it justice. It's more like the private jet of toilets. If you are sharing this toilet with your partner, it will automatically lower the seat and close the lid after every use, auto flush -- and it has a deodorizer function.
Now moving into the just ridiculous category, it has a heated seat and foot warmer, bidet functions, its own music system and an LCD control panel reminiscent of an iPad.
The company's newest bathroom product brims with luxurious features. By no means do we think you need this device to save your marriage, but the future of cohabitation in the bathroom is coming and this is what it might look like.
Cost/where to buy: $4,000 to $6,000. Visit Kohler to learn more.
Sennheiser Communications' Stereo TV Listening Headphones
The problem: you want to read, he wants to watch the ball game. Or one member of the family has some hearing loss and blasts the TV volume so they can hear. Wireless TV headphones are a great solution. The base connects to the TV and a wireless signal is transmitted to the headphones.
The Sennheiser pair I chose for the segment are an earbud model and smaller than previous ear muff styles used in the past. Also they use infrared wireless technology not the slightly less reliable RF models. But you can certainly find a good pair of wireless TV headphones for as little as $75.
Cost/where to buy: $260 to $400. Various online retailers or visit Seinnheiser Communications to learn more.
Keurig Single Serve Coffee Maker
He drinks coffee; she drinks tea. He likes iced coffee and she only drinks it hot. He gets up early, she sleeps late.
Do you make two separate pots of coffee or does one person suck it up and drink what the other one likes? Wouldn't it be nice if you could have just one appliance that met everyone's needs?
The Keurig single serving coffee makers brew one cup at a time. They start at about $100 for the device and you buy separate brew packets that have a myriad of flavors and choices. You can choose to brew regular, decaf, or tea. A new feature is brew packets that are meant to be brewed directly over ice. There are also other single serve coffee manufacturers like Nespresso, Cuisinart and Tassimo.
Cost/where to buy: $80 to $250. Various online retailers or visit Keurig to learn more.
The ZZOMA Anti-Snoring Aid Pillow
There are many pillows that claim to prevent you from snoring, but they are pillows for your head. The Zzoma pillow is actually a sleeping aid you strap around your waist and it forces you to sleep on your side: a position that is less likely to induce snoring. While this is no cure for sleep apnea, it does help mild snorers to retrain themselves to become side sleepers.
Cost/where to buy: $99.95. Various online retailers or visit ZZOMA to learn more.
When I saw the Better Marriage Blanket it seemed like a joke. They promise reduced nocturnal smells because a layer of activated carbon fabric in the blanket diffuses and suppresses gas.
The idea came from a scientist who bought a chemical warfare suit at an Army Navy store to help hide his smell when he went deer hunting. He noticed that other smells were suppressed inside the blanket and made a prototype for the bed he shares with his wife and said she no longer complained of being awakened in the night by … odor. I put my family through a lot and I refused to test this in its native environment, so in my tests with other odors I found it did dampen smell, but once an air conduit became available the smell obviously leaked.
In other words, the Dutch oven doesn't seep through the blankets but if you lift the covers all bets are off.
Cost/where to buy: $29.99 and up. Order through Better Marriage Blanket.
