Gadgety News

I love smartphones and I’m one of those people that loves it when convergence works. I was one of those guys that searched to find if I could actually buy the Wasp T12 Speechtool after seeing it on the very first episode of Nathan Barley back in 2005

Now I’ve stumbled across this bad-boy. The Pomegranate NS08 built and designed in Nova Scotia, of all places.

The millimeters-thin touchscreen phone handles voice, web browsing, and e-mail with ease but has some other surprises up its shell!

After checking your e-mail in the morning, the Pomegranate can brew coffee by using special single-serve coffee pods. There are currently four flavours available (Hazelnut, Columbian, French Vanilla, and Sumatran), which is a nice start.

Once you’ve gotten your first cup of coffee in your system, the NS08 features an electric razor for trimming on the go.

You also get a high-definition projector for movies and the thing will even turn into a harmonica: “You can play along with preset beats or go freestyle. No other phone in the world plays like the Pomegranate,” according to the NS08 website.

All of the above sounds fab but that keyboard looks almost impossible to use and the small problem that the phone isn’t real.

Sorry

It’s the brainchild of Nova Scotia tourism, the idea that “Someday you’ll be able to get everything you want in one device” but “Today you can get everything you want in one place”.

Now NS 08 makes sense doesn’t it?  Great idea and kudos to the marketing team!

Pomegranate Phone

Marketing is not really known for being up front in its way of making you part with your hard earned.

Market research is generally carried out via focus groups, analysing market trends and those people that pounce on you in the street with their clipboards at the ready.

It is the 21st century and research firm Nielson and California-based NeuroFocus have launched a service in Japan that scans the brain waves of potential customers to help companies improve marketing.

Not quite brain washing……

They say that they can measure how much certain ads grab the attention and tug at the emotional heartstrings of the people they’re targeting. 

This could do away with those 10 page research forms and multiple choice questionnaires.

lnstead of relying on someone ticking the box for “needs more naked flesh” the operators will be able to check the graphs and by looking at how your brain spasms they’ll be able to tell just how much nudity is required, when it appears and how blatent it needs to be for a guy to by an 8 bladed razor.

Japan Today

Pic Cred

Whilst most of us are waiting to buy the new iPhone 3G there’s equal anticipation coming from third-party companies and developers who are waiting to take advantage of the possibilities that the SDK and GPS offers.

AppLoop is a startup launching today that will provide developers with a self-service platform for tracking mobile application usage and distributing ads on top of these apps!

This sounds a little sinister to me - a little too sci-fi. Next step is to beam ads directly into your consciousness.

It claims to be the first ever real-time, location-based mobile ad network.

Using the iPhone’s native GPS capabilities AppLoop will tell when a consumer is close to a certain business address and then serve up ads for that business accordingly - kinda how those Bluetooth enabled bus-shelters and such have done. 

So, as you walk past stores or restaurants you will receive various promotions, coupons, and discounts for those places.

AppLoop will also feed back a set of statistics for developers to track usage, location, and session info. It provides custom action logging, which makes it possible for developers to track which of their features are used most often.

eMarketer reports that mobile ad spending will reach $5 billion this year alone - so it is definetly a big bucks business.

Techcrunch