I’m a big hot springs fan. Well, I love water. I’ve always wanted a hot tub, but didn’t want to deal with the expensive wiring and installation. Not to mention, I’ve moved quite a bit in the past year, and moving a typical hot tub isn’t easy.

Then I found Softub.

It looks a bit strange at first, but man – it was exactly what I was looking for. It’s totally not your typical hot tub. It plugs right into a standard wall outlet. It’s lightweight – I can carry it! It’s easy to assemble/disassemble – the motor (that protruding part in the photo) and the tub. Connect the three tubes, fill the tub and you’re off!

Not to mention, it’s called a Softub because it is soft – it’s made with marine grade vinyl and foam, so it’s lightweight, yet durable.

What is really innovative is how it’s heated. Unlike typical hot tubs that have separate heating elements, Softub uses the heat from the pump motor to heat the water. The result is a very cost efficient tub. I estimate it costs me $15/mo in electricity to operate (the site claims $10, but I suppose that depends on the cost of electricity where you live and the average outside temperature).

The design is a bit abnormal for traditionalists. It’s perfectly round and there are no “seats”. But it is soft! An the filter protrudes out from the side, inside the tub. But if you can get over those minor differences, you’ll love this.

For a little less than the price of a heavy, bulky, regular tub, you can have an easy to install, lightweight, portable hot tub. I’ve had mine for nearly three years now and it’s simply amazing!

Of course, there are some drawbacks. The lid on my model doesn’t go over the edge of the tub completely – as a result, rain water tends to leak into the tub, resulting in the water becoming dirty quick (or filling the tub up). One drawback to the unique heating method is that the tub doesn’t get hotter than 104 degrees F. This is probably acceptable for most soakers, but I would prefer a few more degrees. The air/bubble mechanism isn’t very robust, so don’t expect a “rolling boil”. Finally, the Softub product isn’t widely distributed, so you may not have a local service shop to call on – I had a minor problem under warranty and had to ship my motor.

All in all though, the Softub is well worth the investment.

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Running a little behind on tagging your photos? Or maybe you have a backlog of photos that have never been tagged? Or perhaps you’re new to Flickr? In any case, TagCow makes photo tagging a super easy and automated process.

Photo or image tagging has historically been problematic for computers – they have enough trouble interpreting text, much less an image. TagCow uses a combination of people and computers to tag photos, fast. Through some black box approach, they distribute your images to a dispersed team of people via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. These people are paid to tag your images. The TagCow system even let’s you “train” the tagging to look for specific people, places, etc. if you want.

You can upload your images. But if you have a Flickr account, simply enter your login credentials within your TagCow account and TagCow automatically pulls down your images, appends any new tags, then reposts them to Flickr. Existing tags are not lost and photos remain intact. Plus, you can set the service to “listen” for any new images, so they automatically grab and tag any new photos.

I recently provided TagCow about 7,000 images to tag. I found the service relatively simple. However, they did have some “technical” problems which prevented them from completing the process in the two to three day time period. But they provided me a credit for my troubles. In general, the tagging is not extensive, and the “hints” you provide may get overlooked on some photos. But for a service like this, I don’t expect perfection or 100 percent accuracy. In short, it’s well worth the price.

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