They say innovation is the mother of necessity, but we’ve had no success thus far tracing the lineage of these six new products that someone, somewhere, thought were a necessary good idea.

1. Six new products we couldn’t
possibly need
They say innovation is the mother of
necessity, but we’ve had no success thus
far tracing the lineage of these six new
products that someone, somewhere,
thought were a necessary good idea.
Debuted earlier this year at major
electronics shows and destined to soon
be on store shelves near you, unless
someone has come to their senses, we
bring you six wacky new products that
probably didn’t need a red carpet
moment.
Image courtesy of David Castillo Dominici / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
By Jeff Jedras

2. Pop Phone
Native Union
Just the other day I said to myself
“gee, my smartphone is too small,
and I miss tangling my phone cord
into an unmanageable mess.”
Well, now there’s a solution to my
convenience: the Native Union Pop
Phone. Described by the vendor as
“an interpretation of the classic 50's
Bakelite design telephone,” for
$39.99 when someone asks you can
say “why yes, that is a ridiculous
old-fashioned telephone handset in my pocket.”
Call me when I can plug a rotary dialer into my micro USB port.

3. Cell-Mate
Accessories & More Inc.
Think the concerns about cell
phone radiation are nervous nellie
malarkey and want to prove it to
the world? Think wearing a
Bluetooth handset just isn’t
annoying your friends enough?
The answer is simple: duct tape
your cell phone to your head.
If you’re worried about pulling out hair though, there’s always the Cell-Mate.
Hey, it’s from a company that built an automatic vegetable peeler, so you know
they know what they’re doing.

4. MP4 Player with Breathalyzer,
Pest Repeller and Flashlight
SATY
Convergence 1.0 (a term I’ve just now made
up…you’re welcome) brought functions such as an
MP3 player, camera and telephone into one device –
the smartphone. Well, hold onto your pants because
here’s Convergence 2.0, bringing together functions
that have absolutely nothing at all in common.
Have you ever been watching an old episode of Glee
on your MP4 player while drinking heavily and
wondered, am I legally intoxicated or are those
mosquitos biting me? Really, you have? Well, now
SATY can help you with all of that with one converged
device.
Also, it has a flashlight.

5. Wandant
Fujitsu
Big data, meet the family dog. Rover,
meet big data.
You’ll need to pick up that new, larger
external hard drive because Fujitsu
wants to give you all the canine big data
you can wag a tail at, with Wandant.
Basically, you strap this doggy pedometer to Fido and your dog’s steps are
tracked. Also, thermo-hygrometer sensors measure temperature changes in your
dog’s home environment. You can download 14 days worth of data onto your
smartphone and into the cloud (where else) for later analysis on your desktop.
For that, of course, we’ll need doggy analytics. Or, you know, won’t.

6. Smart Appliances
Panasonic
Your toaster can’t be a wireless hotspot yet, but
thanks to Panasonic your fridge will soon be
cloud-enabled. Unfortunately, you’ll still need to
go to the grocery store as there’s no app yet to
download a tub of Haagen Dazs into your fridge.
There is an Android app for your smartphone so
you can call your fridge while you’re at work to
ask if it’s still running though (but if so, you’d
better go catch it).
Forget Android though. Stay tuned for the Apple iFridge: it will be smaller, more
expensive, and heavily marketed.

7. iPhone bottle opener case
Opena
Sadly, there’s no smartphone app
that can open your bottle of brew.
There is, however, a smartphone
case that can thanks to Opena, and
its iPhone case with slide-out bottle
opener.
The company says it’s the world’s
iPhone case that opens beer bottles
and, while usually I’m skeptical of such vendor claims, I totally believe this one.
It comes in black and white cases so people can see that yes, you’re an iPhone
owner and therefore, you’re cool. And then they see you slide out the bottle
opener, and all that respect disappears.