right royal edition

There's always a few safe bets for car innovations at the start of April.

Alongside the new Land Rover self-levelling tax disk holder (very useful on a 4x4), there's also the new BMW M3 2011 Royal Wedding Edition, in an exclusive Bridal White, with a special version of the logo.

I downloaded the advertisement using gestures with that new Google Motion software, which interacts via the camera on my iPhone.

It's a lot easier since the AA smoothed the roads around here with their AA Pothole Assist

iPad arcade cabinets in Topeka and Cadie

A tough decision to decide the best of the April pranks for 2010, but I decided I quite liked this one, the iPad Arcade Cabinet, provided amongst a whole collection of ideas from ThinkGeek.

The also produced the star-trek breakfast cereal (Tribbles and Bits), the screaming kitchen knife (your choice of 50 sounds) and even the child friendly "tell me your secrets" bear featuring a digital recorder. The toy 2001 monolith action figure with no moving parts was accurately portrayed with its squared primes ratios of 1:4:9.

None of this could be googled yesterday afternoon though, because Google.com had renamed itself as Topeka, after the Kansas capital which renamed itself 'Google' for a while to try to persuade Google to run some development there.

And finally, a brief hat tip to one of last year's best, the Cadie Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed Intelligence Entity.

This was artificial intelligence based upon the brain of a 12 year old Japanese girl.

Note the groovy music, rainbow colours and pandas on the website. Click the icon for an explanation and to marvel at the gmail autoresponse generator.

vein based electronic cash

Hand operated Kit-Kat vending machine.


Finger vein Coca-Cola vending machine.


Sony digital camera vending machine

iTable and OhMiBod with bluetooth

I was planning to write a post about the iTable today, but I see that several other people have beaten me to it. The version we had invented heard of had iLegs as well and could be configured in various ways. Unfortunately, even the most bizarre iPrefix products have been conceptualised and the words reserved.

Instead its better to look at the progress of the iTable as a concept.

The first one was pretty basic and rather obvious.

It didn't really have a purpose other than to take up space.

Not a survivor.

Then came one that tried to pack a punch.

Large and purposeful, but could it really do much more than display different place settings on the kitchen table and maybe provide a helpful online newspaper or two?

The latest generation have screens to the very edge.

This means they can be repurposed into other devices.

The one illustrated is switched off, although it is currently configured as a grand piano.

You'll see it also has a foldaway section (the optional iFold) for storage.


But of course, striving for technological greatness continues and there will be another generation, I'm sure.

Just like the other *ahem* well-known product the OhMiBod, which attaches to an iPhone or iPod to provide musical love. Even this has evolved from the earlier versions with the so called freedom cord, to the latest generation which positively buzz with bluetooth connectivity.