high tech

Columnist

Tuesday 17 April 2012

SEARCHING online for details of the latest gadgets is a great way to spend your time when you should be working.

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Tom Shields

My task for yesterday was to compile a small list of inventions I will be avoiding:

n A piece of kit which should be drowned at birth is the flying car. The PAL-V two-seat hybrid car and gyroplane personal air and land vehicle is now at the testing stage. Plans are afoot for motorway routes in the sky.

Not long until the word from the passenger seat is you're flying too high or too low. Or you're flying on the wrong side of the sky. Shouldn't you have turned left at that cloud back there?Her Onboard may ask you to adopt a holding pattern over your destination while she finishes putting on her make-up. Try not to suggest you could drop her off at her mother's without a parachute. And no jokes about broomsticks.n I have resisted so far reading books on a computer. Mostly because the hand-held thingmy will be temporarily lost down a sofa or permanently abandoned on a bus. One day I will relent and own a Kindle or a Kobo or more likely something Lidl are selling for a tenner.There is a new device which glows in the dark. You can read in bed without wearing a miner's lamp on your head. But I will not be buying one. Nothing to do with the technology. It's the name. It's called the Nook E-reader. Say it fast and it's almost like swearing.It could be embarrassing. Her Indoors will ask grumpily as to the source of the light disturbing her sleep. Not a good time to mention Nook E. It could be worse. The thing could be a Nook E-video player.n High on the list of unnecessary gizmos is a wee plastic thing that is to replace the Post-It note. It's called the Native Union Play and is a two-and-a-half inch video player which is also a fridge magnet.It can hold four hours' worth of Big Brother-style video messages about filling the dishwasher, putting out the washing because it's a good drying day, and getting something interesting in for the tea for a change. All of this while you're trying to get on with a day's work at the electronic croft.

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