We've all been in the room when the human race's answer to the Blue-Footed Booby's ritual-to-impress gets under way. As with the birds, it's usually the male of the species that whips it out first, rapidly followed by similar, competing displays from all the other males in the room.
“It's got ten quadzillion gigs of memory and can transfer a 100 gig file so quickly it actually does it in negative time.”
“Ja, well mine stores the entire output of Warner Bros and MGM ever and I don't even have to open it to watch, it transmits it straight into my head.”
It's amazing, but no one ever simply says: “Mine makes calls” anymore. It's only a question of time before your office Booby boasts that his cellphone makes a mean cup of Columbian, after he's used it to shave, right?
Believe it or not
In a world where we're ....bored silly with extravagant claims, gizmos and boondoggles that we'll never understand how we lived without once we try them, it's hard to stand out from the crowd.
Pamela Weaver, contributor, ITWeb
Well, the wait is over. Say hello to the Pomegranate NS08, the ultimate smartphone that not only lets you take photos and browse the Internet, but also functions as a 72-inch projector, makes your choice of four coffees and, for the full-on road warrior, also offers a shaving facility for those early morning meetings.
Oh, and did I mention it also has a handy harmonica feature? All with 120-hour battery life, thanks to the “power kernel” technology inside. The “ultimate all-in-one device”, as the developers claim on their Web site, offers ultra-thin, touch-screen functionality to power users.
While few people are actually big enough Boobies to swallow the above, it says a lot about the zeitgeist that the Pomegranate was part of an elaborate (and, to date, very successful) campaign to promote the Canadian province of Nova Scotia as a desirable location for entrepreneurs and business people. The tagline: “Having everything you want in a phone may be a stretch, but a place that has everything definitely exists.”
The chat rooms and forums have been hopping with discussion on the topic of what the ultimate phone would offer users and many bloggers have linked to the site; it's hard to know who was taken in by the seriously-impressive design and who just liked this campaign for what it is - clever.
In a world where we're bombarded and, dare I suggest it, bored silly with extravagant claims, gizmos and boondoggles that we'll never understand how we lived without once we try them, it's hard to stand out from the crowd. This $300 000 campaign undertaken by the Nova Scotia government has already resulted in over 200 000 hits since launching a month ago - and reports are that the majority of people stayed around for long enough to check out the Nova Scotia site, which the Pomegranate one eventually leads browsers to.
The Web site - www.pomegranatephone.com - certainly proves the popularity of any technology with a fruity moniker. Whether people are tempted to take a bite out of Nova Scotia, however, remains to be seen.
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