Operation Gadget first mentioned the SkyBox Personal Beverage Vending Machine from Maytag back in February. At the time, my thought was, “Who wants this sort of thing in their home theater room?” I’m starting to think I was wrong. Back then, the product was just rolling out and I hadn’t seen it in stores. It’s doing well at local stores like The Home Depot, apparently playing a part in a number of home upgrade projects.
But the most interesting recent development in the SkyBox story is the development of a SkyBox weblog within the Diversified Services Group at Maytag. The site is called Ka-Thunk.com and debuted on June 25 with an article that ought to appeal to many technology fans (they called their first blog entry Hello world!) Webloggers of the world take notice– they built it on WordPress, which leads me to believe they either knew a lot before they started or got some pretty up-to-date advice. They’re even producing RSS feeds and touting it as a feature.
So far, the weblog’s been used to talk about new panel designs (so you can put your favorite team’s name and logo on your SkyBox), credit to their web designer, stories about promotional events on radio and TV stations, and mentions they’ve gotten on other weblogs. It looks like Maytag “gets” corporate blogging as many of us have suggested it ought to work. I wonder if Doc has seen this.