A Show of Unwashed Hands

By | November 22, 2011

Igene

Ever been grossed out, a la Seinfeld, by someone who visits the bathroom but doesn’t seem to know what washbasins are for? You need the iGene

i-Gene [sic] is designed for washrooms or areas where hand hygiene is critical. It detects movement and after a given period of time (pre-delay setting) will play the following real voice message. “Please wash your hands before leaving this area.”

Usually, I’m not for any kind of nanny-state type stuff, but it does amaze me how few people (read: men) wash their hands after a spell in the bathroom. Now I’m up for not just installing an iGene in every bathroom but of having anti-bacterial handgel guns on either side of the door to fire at miscreants as they try to sneak out without performing any manual cleansing.

Of course, the solution is to fit decent hand dryers so that people a) don’t have to calculate the value of hygiene against the possibility of catching a cold from damp hands and b) can have fun drying their hands in a warm and powerful jet.

The other move would be to either install automatic doors so you don’t have to put your clean hands on a doorknob used by all the non-handwashing Poppys or to at least put a bin outside the bathroom so clean-minded folk have somewhere to discard the paper towel they have to use to open the door to avoid getting all bacterial again.

Seeing Your Files in Three Dimension

By | November 22, 2011

3d1aThis kind of thing has got to be the future of files and folders so long as we have files and folders: the Innolab 3D File Manager from Adam Miezianko, Kristopher Rambish, Karen Fung, Zavnura Pingkan at Boston University. (Thanks, visualcomplexity.com)

This design is like a ferris wheel which organises contents by their relationships rather than their physical position on a hard drive. Each spiderweb thread marks the ties between folders holding contents related to the open file folder (center, in purple).

The file manager runs on Linux. It’s actually old: 2003, so something of a shame this kind of thing hasn’t caught on. The closest, I guess, is 3D Topicscape and perhaps WinFS, the storage system that was dropped from Vista back in 2004.

Keeping Your Back to the Crowd

By | November 22, 2011

Whizbiz1I’m surprised this is not bigger than it is: the device that lets every woman be a man. Better known as the Whiz:

“Its unique shape was tested by over 1,400 women in clinical trials and since then by thousands of women of all ages, from all walks of life. When held properly the Whiz Plus will not leak and stays completely dry on the outside.”

I’m particularly impressed by the accompanying advice, which a few of my male friends could stand to be reminded of:

When outside aim downwards, keep your back to the crowd and never ever pee into the wind!

Oh, and put the seat down after.

Has Anyone Resigned From aSmallWorld Yet?

By | November 22, 2011
A friend pointed me to aSmallWorld, the networking site that will only take members invited by other members (my friend wasn’t a member.) I can understand the benefits of this (I have hundreds of contacts on LinkedIn but know about two of them) but it was the service’s blurb that amused me — I can’t help imagining lots of hopeful folk sitting around patiently hoping to get an invite. I just hope I get one so I can employ Groucho’s well-worn resignation cable.

clipped from www.asmallworld.net
We have imposed certain criteria in order to keep the network exclusive. To join, you need to be invited by a trusted member.

If you have not received an invitation, you can ask your friends to invite you. If you have no friends who are members yet, please be patient.

The Violinist in the Subway

By | April 13, 2007
Seth Godin comments on the world class violinist ignored by commuters in the subway. His conclusion (I think): we all ignore because in our world of natural suspicion we rely on marketing to flag what is and isn’t valuable.

True, I guess. What scares me too, is the possibility that we wouldn’t have even been able to distinguish between a world class violinist and a mediocre fiddler outside their appropriate setting.

It bothers us that we’re so overwhelmed by the din of our lives that we’ve created a worldview that requires us to ignore the outside world, most of the time, even when we suffer because of it. It made me feel a little smaller, knowing that something so beautiful was ignored because the marketers among us have created so much noise and so little trust.