Facebook is looking to extend its reach with a new acquisition. Photo: Reuters

Facebook has acquired a company that makes voice recognition technology for wearable devices and internet-connected appliances, the latest sign of its ambition to extend its reach beyond computers and smartphones.

Facebook said it acquired wit.ai on Monday, without providing a price for the deal. The 18-month old company, based in Palo Alto, California, makes software that can understand spoken words as well as written text phrased in "natural language".

A Facebook representative declined to provide details on how Facebook planned to use the technology or with which group within Facebook the wit.ai team would work.

Wit.ai turns speech into data.

The deal comes as technology companies are racing to bring internet connectivity to a new crop of devices, from watches to washing machines. Voice recognition, the technology that helps power services such as Apple's Siri, is considered a key building block for the new devices to earn mainstream consumer appeal.

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Facebook, the world's largest Internet social network, with 1.3 billion users, is increasingly looking beyond the PCs, tablets and smartphones currently used to access its service. In March, it acquired virtual reality headset maker Oculus VR for $US2 billion.

The deal for wit.ai is likely to have been significantly smaller. Wit.ai announced in October that it had raised $US3 million in a funding round led by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.

Reuters

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Bright spark: Ben Burge is hoping consumers will want to be involved with their choice of electricity suppliers. Photo: Salona Chithiray

Meet Ben Burge, the math whiz trying to shake up the staid retail energy market with a smartphone app and a good dose of analytics.

When he is away with the family, his mother-in-law pops by discreetly to do a load of washing. Her only explanation for his seemingly clairvoyant ability to know when to send her thank-you flowers is strategically placed web cams.

The truth is far more prosaic. Burge, chief executive of online retail energy challenger Powershop, knows when she's there because the company's app on his smartphone registers an unmistakeable spike in his home's energy consumption.

An app for buying alternative power. Photo: Salona Chithiray

It's a powerful tool and one he wants to put in the hands every Australian in a bid to take on the major energy retailers with cheaper and cleaner electricity.

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Burge, once Australia's youngest CEO of a listed company, eMitch, at 25, and keen skateboarder, has already picked up 30,000 customers in Victoria whilst at the helm of what Powershop claims is the world's first retail online energy market.

It lets consumers use a smartphone app (oniPhone andAndroid) or the web to monitor their energy consumption at home and choose the source of their electricity from alternative energy projects including wind, solar or even sugarcane processing and landfill generation. A move that could help increase demand for renewable energy.

A screenshot from the app.

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Ben Burge, the man hoping to re-ignite the electricity market

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This article is about foot washing as observed by Christians. For foot washing as observed by Muslims, see Wudu.

Maundy (from Latin mandatum or mendicare),[1] or Washing of the Feet, is a religious rite observed as an ordinance by several Christian denominations. John 13:117 mentions Jesus performing this act. Specifically, in verses 13:1417, He instructs them:

As such, many denominations observe the washing of the feet on Maundy Thursday of Holy Week[1] Moreover, for some denominations, foot-washing was an example, a pattern. Many groups throughout Church history and many modern denominations have practiced foot washing as a church ordinance.[1]

The derivation of the word Maundy has at least two possibilities for the origin:

The root of this practice appears to be found in the hospitality customs of ancient civilizations, especially where sandals were the chief footwear. A host would provide water for guests to wash their feet, provide a servant to wash the feet of the guests or even serve the guests by washing their feet. This is mentioned in several places in the Old Testament of the Bible (e.g. Genesis 18:4; 19:2; 24:32; 43:24; I Samuel 25:41; et al.), as well as other religious and historical documents. A typical Eastern host might bow, greet, and kiss his guest, then offer water to allow the guest to wash his feet or have servants do it. Though the wearing of sandals might necessitate washing the feet, the water was also offered as a courtesy even when shoes were worn. I Samuel 25:41 is the first passage where an honored person offers to wash feet as a sign of humility. In John 12, Mary of Bethany anointed Jesus' feet presumably in gratitude for raising her brother Lazarus from the dead, and in preparation for his death and burial.

The Bible records washing of the saint's feet being practised by the primitive church in I Timothy 5:10 perhaps in reference to piety, submission and/or humility.

There are several names for this practice: maundy, foot washing, washing the saints' feet, pedilavium, and mandatum.

Christian denominations that observe foot washing do so on the basis of the authoritative example and command of Jesus as found in the Gospel of John 13:115:

Jesus demonstrates the custom of the time when he comments on the lack of hospitality in one Pharisees home by not providing water to wash his feet in The Gospel of Luke, chapter 7, verse 44:

The rite of foot washing finds its roots in scripture. Even after the death of the apostles or the end of the Apostolic Age, the practice was continued.

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Foot washing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

NEW DELHI: In a first such move, Central Public Works Department (CPWD), which is responsible for maintenance of 1.76 lakh government houses across 53 cities, has specified a time-frame for attending to different complaints. It's 6 hours for blocked drains or restoration of water and power supply and a maximum of three days for cleaning drains and overflow of water.

CPWD has come out with a "maintenance charter", approved by urban development minister M Venkaiah Naidu, an official release said. The government has also made a provision for Rs 1,202 crore for maintenance works for the current financial year.

Besides government accommodation, CPWD is responsible for maintaining office area of a total of 22.6 lakh sq metres, including some well known monumental and prestigious buildings such as the President's Estate, Parliament House and the Supreme Court, apart from hospitals, colleges and sports complexes.

As per the maintenance charter, CPWD is required to inform the public the time-frame for attending to different complaints. For major complaints such as internal wiring and repair of doors and windows the maximum time limit set is 30 days. As for periodical services such as white washing, painting and cleaning water tanks, it's 60 days.

CPWD had earlier introduced two toll-free phone lines -18002664499 and 1899114499 for lodging maintenance complaints from any of the 53 cities across the country. Action taken would be informed to the complainants on their mobile phone numbers.

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Laundry is the washing of clothing and linens.[1] Laundry processes are often done in a business, room or area in a home or apartment building, reserved for that purpose; this is referred to as a laundry room. The material that is being washed, or has been laundered is also generally referred to as laundry.

Laundry was first done in watercourses, letting the water carry away the materials which could cause stains and smells. Laundry is still done this way in some less industrialized areas and rural regions. Agitation helps remove the dirt, so the laundry is often rubbed, twisted, or slapped against flat rocks. Wooden bats or clubs could be used to help with beating the dirt out. These were often called washing beetles or bats and could be used by the waterside on a rock (a beetling-stone), on a block (battling-block), or on a board. They were once common across Europe and were also used by settlers in North America. Similar techniques have also been identified in Japan.

When no watercourses were available, laundry was done in water-tight vats or vessels. Sometimes large metal cauldrons were filled with fresh water and heated over a fire; boiling water was even more effective than cold in removing dirt. Wooden or stone scrubbing surfaces set up near a water supply or portable washboards, including factory-made corrugated metal ones, gradually replaced rocks as a surface for loosening soil.

A posser could be used to agitate clothes in a tub.[2]

Once clean, the clothes were wrung out twisted to remove most of the water. Then they were hung up on poles or clotheslines to air dry, or sometimes just spread out on clean grass.

Before the advent of the washing machine, apart from watercourses, laundry was also done in communal or public washhouses (also called wash-houses or wash houses), especially in rural areas in Europe or the Mediterranean Basin. Water was channelled from a river or spring and fed into a building or outbuilding built specifically for laundry purposes and often containing two basins - one for washing and the other for rinsing - through which the water was constantly flowing, as well as a stone lip inclined towards the water against which the washers could beat the clothes. Such facilities were much more comfortable than washing in a watercourse because the launderers could work standing up instead of on their knees, and were protected from inclement weather by walls (often) and a roof (with some exceptions). Also, they didn't have to go far, as the facilities were usually at hand in the village or at the edge of a town. These facilities were public and available to all families, and usually used by the entire village. The laundry job was reserved for women, who washed all their family's laundry (or the laundry of others as a paid job). As such, washhouses were an obligatory stop in many women's weekly lives and became a sort of institution or meeting place for women in towns or villages, where they could discuss issues or simply chat, equated by many with gossip, and equatable to the concept of the village pump in English. Indeed, this tradition is reflected in the Catalan idiom "fer safareig" (literally, "to do the laundry"), which means to gossip, for instance.

Many of these washhouses are still standing and even filled with water in villages throughout Europe. In cities (in Europe as of the 19th century), public washhouses were also built so that the poorer population, who would otherwise not have access to laundry facilities, could wash their clothes. The aim was to foster hygiene and thus reduce outbreaks of epidemics.

The Industrial Revolution completely transformed laundry technology.

The mangle (wringer US) was developed in the 19th century two long rollers in a frame and a crank to revolve them. A laundry-worker took sopping wet clothing and cranked it through the mangle, compressing the cloth and expelling the excess water. The mangle was much quicker than hand twisting. It was a variation on the box mangle used primarily for pressing and smoothing cloth.

Meanwhile 19th century inventors further mechanized the laundry process with various hand-operated washing machines. Most involved turning a handle to move paddles inside a tub. Then some early 20th century machines used an electrically powered agitator to replace tedious hand rubbing against a washboard. Many of these were simply a tub on legs, with a hand-operated mangle on top. Later the mangle too was electrically powered, then replaced by a perforated double tub, which spun out the excess water in a spin cycle.

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2.2-magnitude quake hits Chiang Rai

The Nation - Sunday 28th December, 2014

The department said the quake's epicenter was about 4 kilometers underground. A 6.3-magnitude quake happened in this northern province early May and hundreds of aftershocks ...

The Nation - Sunday 28th December, 2014

Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha said Sunday that his government may cooperate with the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration to build underground car parks so that motorists would not park on bike ...

The Nation - Sunday 28th December, 2014

Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha said Sunday that he has no plan to dissolve local administrations as feared by members of provincial administrative ...

The National - Saturday 27th December, 2014

A man casts his vote during a municipal election at a polling station in Dala township in Yangon, Myanmar, on December 27, 2014. Khin Maung Win/AP ...

MENAFN - Saturday 27th December, 2014

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China to help Thailand develop thermal and reusable energy power plants Prayut