Gadgets

I was watching some coverage from past British Golf Open's (80's-90's) last night and was amazed to see how they were updating the scores on the course. Up until as recently as the late nineties they were still using scraps of paper and runners to update the main leaderboard...

Anyway, there's little doubt technology continues to move forward at an electric pace, you only have to look at the iPhone to see that. Here's a couple more fun products that display this too, both of which have been around for quite a while now.

The wireless umbrella - the umbrella is linked to your home's wireless network and takes weather feeds from the web. If it's going to rain then the handle will pulse to tell you to pick it up. Cool, but it does mean relying on a forecast which is hardly the most reliable, but good for those (men) who never pick a brolly up until it is thumping with rain.

The second one is the Surfers pillow, which works in exactly the same way - through your wireless connection. After you pick your favorite surf spot, the software monitors the conditions at that location and, at a designated time in the morning, send a signal to the pillow. 

If the waves are high, the pillow will vibrate strongly, jolting you out of bed; if they're low, the vibrations are a little softer. The pillow can even communicate the frequency of the waves: long, regular intervals between vibrations mean good waves, while fast, irregular intervals signal fewer waves. Mercifully, if the surf is too low, the pillow doesn’t activate at all--ensuring that dreams of perfect ground swells and radical curls continue uninterrupted. Might be one for you Murph.

Cheers

Nic