Like someone pointed out before, the life of a fridge is very long, so the iPod dock would probably become obsolete down the line. I also don’t see the point of having your fridge acting as your amplifier: as you can see in the video, you can connect extra speakers to it. The Wi-Fi connection and iGorenje program makes a lot more sense, as it can be expanded in the future to accommodate new appliances and functionality. Plus, it is device independent. Although you can use any device, however, the interface has clearly been optimised for the iPod touch and the iPhone, which is the handheld they were using for their demos. According to them, they have some kind of collaboration contract with Apple, so Steve or someone else in Cupertino must be a fan of the brand.

The iGorenje system works quite well. It uses the Wi-Fi network in your home to connect your web-browsing device to your oven and washing machine, and when it’s released later this year you will be able to control all Gorenje appliances.

iGorenje’s interface is very easy to work out. Just touch the function, select the options you want and click Start. The appliance will get the parameters, start working and give you feedback in realtime, back to your iPod. For the oven, you can start from a recipe, a wizard that allows you to set the oven according to the kind of food and weight, and a custom program, which can be easily created in iGorenje and then stored. The process is fully automatic, so if you have something that needs to be cooked first slowly, then a really high heat in the last minutes, it will handle it for you.

For the washing machine, it’s exactly the same thing. This time you have different programs according to the clothes you put in, making it very easy to operate.

But while the whole thing seems polished and works well, do we really need this kind of sophistication in our kitchens? I may be too old school, but I like to cook in the kitchen, not by remote control. I like the idea of programming the oven in an easy way, although I will still be controlling it myself. What do you think? Is this the kind of evolution everyday home tasks need? [More IFA 2008 Coverage]

• It’s friday. You arrive home. You are drunk, like always. You have a Great Idea that, most probably, you will repent about the next morning. Knowing that you will spend the whole day in bed next saturday, you think about bringing the Qube foldable hob next to your bed, along with some bacon and eggs. You know, for brunch. You wake up on saturday with your face and chest covered with eggs, bacon in your underpants, olive oil on your hands, and a strange tingling sensation up your pooper. You repent. You don’t want to know. You vow it will never happen again.

• It’s friday. The next friday. You arrive home and you are drunk again. And hungry. You feel like banana pancakes. But you also feel like having a bath because you stink like a skunk dead from an overdose of MDMA and caipirinhas. Not knowing what to do, you go to the kitchen to get your Qube foldable hob, some bananas, pancake mix, maple syrup, and whipped cream to the bathtub. You wake up in the cold water next morning, two dozen pancakes floating on a mixture of water, maple syrup, and whipped cream. You can see last week’s underpants lying on the floor, still with bacon in them. You notice the same tingling sensation, but you can’t find any sign of the bananas. You repent again. A lot.

So maybe, the foldable hob to go thing is not such a good idea. Hanging it on the wall of a small kitchen, however, is a brilliant idea.

Gorenje Qube Fridge and Oven

They also had three beautiful stand-alone kitchen appliances in the same line–fridge and ovens–that are designed to be placed anywhere in your kitchen and easily moved around, like any piece of furniture. See them in video after the jump.

Gorenje Qube Top Oven

Unfortunately, these four kitchen appliances are still just prototypes. We were told the products will come to the market, but maybe not soon enough for me to install the wall-mounted Qube in my new apartment in New York. That if I can find an apartment before I leave at the end of this month. [More IFA 2008 Coverage]

The application is not built for iPhone/iPod touch, however, but it is served from a home server that controls the appliances directly. This allows not only to use the iPod touch, but also any other web device in your home Wi-Fi network. The program allows you to program the devices using a very easy to use graphical user interface.

For example, you can set your oven to cook a type of cake by just visually selecting a recipe and clicking start. In fact, you can even get recipes straight from the server itself. The only bad thing: the iPod dock thingie is taking the place of the built-in draught beer system, which in my book is quite -20 points. [More IFA 2008 Coverage]