5 awesomely useless gizmos

The year is 2010. Only five more years until we get to laugh at Back to the Future II. I’m still waiting for my flying car and self-drying jacket, but at least we can rest easy knowing our scientists are hard at work making some crazy stuff to distract us. Thanks to www.gizmag.com, I was able to search their 2010 posts and find some pretty silly stuff. So in no specific order, here are 5 bits o’ tech that serve almost no function.

5. The $160,000 diamond-encrusted cell phone.
Really? Do we need to pimp everything we own? I mean it was bad enough when people started wearing gold braces, but this is a bit excessive. According to Gizmag, “The sparkling unit is encrusted with 12.5 carats of pink diamonds, resulting in approximately 1225 individually set gems arranged around a whopping 3-carat navigational button centerpiece. As if that weren’t enough credentials to enter the Blinged Out Phone Hall of Fame, the Nokia Supreme also packs solid platinum veneers and screws, amounting in a total of 83g of platinum. The phone has been crafted in a limited edition run of only three, and of course sells with the obligatory granite clad case with leather interior.” As much as I hate to admit it, I’d get it if I had 160k to blow. As useless as it is, it’s pretty awesome.

4. The Xrocker Vibe platform.
Do you like playing Guitar Hero or Rock band? I sure do. Ever wanted to play it in an earthquake? Well now you can! The Xrocker Vibe platform is akin to playing while standing on a subwoofer. It supposedly tries to emulate a real stage experience by playing the bass through your feet to simulate the stage vibrating to your rock. This is all pretty swell, until you miss a note and hear an obnoxious plunk and notice your score multiplier drop. I’m sorry, no matter how hard you try, you’re holding a plastic toy with a virtual crowd. For the “real rock experience,” learn guitar. That said, I’d totally use this all the time. How else could I truly rock out to “Livin’ on a Prayer”?

3. The pocket knife/garage door opener.
You ever get so tired of having to get out of your car and lift up your heavy garage door? No? Oh yeah, that’s because everyone on earth has a garage door opener clipped to those little sun-blind thingies right next to that C.D. rack. Well now you can inconveniently store that device in your pocket so you can fish around trying to reach between your cell phone and iPod to get it out. Hey, but it can also turn on that outdoor light you set up so that it turns on automatically when someone drives up. While I’m all for cramming things in other things, this just seems a bit more useless than awesome. Though if they tacked on a cell phone, mp3 player, camera, and microwave I bet Verizon would pick it up.

2. Custom laser-etched tires.
Two things still disappoint me about lasers. They aren’t in gun form yet and they aren’t spelled with a “z”, as spell-check often reminds me. Despite these vital flaws, however, we’ve found some pretty cool uses ranging from pointing at things to carving the bad out of your eyes. However, we didn’t have enough car pimping lasers yet. Until now. Now people can custom-make their tire treads, supposedly so you can better experiment with traction, but mostly so I can drive with flaming skulls on my wheels. You can even illuminate it with that awesome neon glow you’ve got going on there. Spinners eat your heart out, I want to carve “awesome4life” 100 times on my treads.

1. The iSwing app.
Ok, I suck at golf. I’ve gotten the two best hits possible and now I never need to play again. One hit a branch and landed back on the tee, and the other went backwards. But now apparently my cell phone can help me out. The iSwing allows you to record your swing, then play it back and you can even draw lines to show where you need improvement. The main flaw I see is you need to be able to recognize where you need improvement. Now call me crazy, but I have this little feeling that just watching your own swing won’t exactly get you on the PGA. However, it’s apparently pretty popular in Japan and Korea, and it might just let me see how I managed to hit a ball the wrong way. Whoever you are though, you’re not gonna be the next Tiger. You need the iSwinger app for that.