Two Cool Gadgets I Wish I Had a Use For

BenForta.com mentioned the WebServeUSB pocket webserver on his blog today.  Wow… there is something amazingly attractive about carrying a webserver in your pocket.  I want one of these, but I have no practical use for it.  The only thing I can possibly see anybody using it for are:

• Simple static websites – HTML
• Simple dynamic website hosting – PHP and Access
• Site demos – for sites running PHP and Access

Unfortunately I have no need for any of that.

I also want the Solio solar charger.  I’m sorry, but this product just looks cool.  I’m not sure why I want it though.  Perhaps it has to do with latent feelings of jealousy towards a sixth-grade friend who had a solar-powered wristwatch.  Damn you, Jimmy Swalgen, damn you.  How cool I thought it was that it had to leave it outside on his front steps for like 8 hours in order to charge it up.

Solar energy is like stealing that’s legal.  Actually it’s a two-fer.  On the one hand you are stealing energy from a 5 billion year-old ball of plasma that is 92.95×10⁶ miles from earth.  You are snatching photons traveling at 670,616,629.4 mph out of thin air.  How cool is that?  And simultaneously you are sticking it to “The Man”.  I don’t need no stinkin’ power grid!

But unfortunately, modern society makes a product like this (especially at $100) virtually unneccesary.  I can’t think of a time during the majority of my day when I am more than 4 feet from a power outlet.  Still though…. the geek factor is so high.  I still want.