Gizmos and gadgets

Scientific American.com recently posted on the 20 hottest gadgets from the consumer electronics show:

• the 369-pound, 22-inch Woofer [1].
  I need one of these for my iPod. OK, I don’t have an iPod. But if I had one, I would definitely get one of these.
• the umbrella that pings Accuweather and flashes if it’s going to rain [2].
  The problem is a data quality one as their weather information source is Accuweather. I had once assumed that the accu in Accuweather was intended to imply accurate, however, in my experience their reports rarely are, especially when it comes to predicting rain. I come to this conclusion based on the emprical data drawn as a golfer who spends many of his non-winter-months monitoring weather reports for golf days.

  If Accuweather was accurate then having such an umbrella would be quite the conversation piece; an ego boost. A proudly held accessory! But, unfortunately one is more likely to find it flashing at odd and of course inconvenient times. Thus one can expect to be faced with the conversation that will go something like this:
  “why is you umbrella flashing?“
  “it’s going to rain.”
  “Oh” [pause] “but it’s sunny out.“
  “Yes, well the weather forecast says…” [and then the blithering starts; the long explanation of how the umbrella made the determination and that in fact it is not the umbrella it is in fact the data source, and through various anthropomorphic steps you have mentally associated the success or failure of this umbrella to your own personal success or failure and therefore it is absolutely imperative that you defend the integrity of the umbrella so that no issues or short comings be linked to it and thus yourself]
  “When is it going to rain? “
  “I don’t know.”
  “Oh.” [and silence follows]. The death knell oh.

With honourable mention to:

• PC Gamers bike [3]
  Just because it encourages exercise while playing silly games [editorial comment]. Unless you have a Wii. I’m going to get a Wii be cause my dear friend (an unnamed senior official at Microsoft, in the Jim Allchin e-mail “I’d buy a Mac” sense) recommended one.
• Car MD [4]
  Just because it could be something really neat to put on the dashboard of a car that would present a lot of useless information but nevertheless look really high-tech. I hope it has pie charts.