By now, we're used to the idea of the Internet of Things (IoT). You know, the integration of connected appliances and devices in our home that can communicate with each other? Think of it as your home getting smarter, and working together to make your life easier. Big name appliance manufacturers have already gotten in the game, from the Nest Smart Thermostat to washing machines that can wirelessly charge your gadgets. (article I wrote last week?) I just highlighted the whole thing you so would decide

Let's focus on the kitchen, the best smelling and tasting area of your home. Ovens can be smart these days, can't they? Surely they can send an alert to your smartphone that preheating is done, or that it's time to take out that pot roast. What about going a step further, and connecting it to the internet so it could literally help you cook? That's what Palo Alto company, SectorQube Inc., wants to do, and more. MAID is a connected oven that can do anything from reading you recipe steps, to linking up to your smartphone's fitness and calorie tracking data to suggest healthy recipe choices.

An acronym for Make All Incredible Dishes, MAID, which has been in development for three years, has a list of features that will make cooking in your kitchen easier. It is both a microwave and convection oven, is internet-ready, and contains a bunch of sensors to keep track of temperature, duration, and more. Best of all, it has integrated voice recognition to read off recipe steps when your hands are covered in dough. Don't want it to talk to you? MAID also understands gesture controls! Plus, it's 6-inch touchscreen display is great for displaying recipes and streaming videos from the MAIDs growing database.

This magic oven cares about your health. By syncing up with your smartphone or smartwatch, it can learn your eating and fitness habits, then suggest meal plans and recipes for you. The more you let it track your food related activities, the better it can understand your calorie intake and taste preferences. However, according to SectorQube, this algorithm is apparently still under development.

MAID is successfully raising funds on Kickstarter in hopes to further develop what is currently a working prototype. Ubergizmo warns that “what has been promised on paper (or rather, on the screen) might end up to be rather different at the end of it all”. But that's okay, this is the first of its kind, and “as far as the creators can tell, there's no other big competitor for this device in the works” (Mashable). At least for now, I'll check back with you in a month.