"It's now 11 pm. Do you know where your laundry is?"

Wireless laundry room connections should help college students avoid wearing that same pair of socks—day after day after day.

The LaundryView monitoring system from Mac-Gray Corp., Cambridge, Mass., can connect to a school's network with or without wires. Students get real-time information about the status of the washers in their campus laundry rooms from any device that has a Web browser.

By the start of this academic year more than 50 colleges and universities in 20 states will have installed the new system. The wireless capability eliminates the need for a hard-wired Ethernet connection, reducing installation costs.