Where Will it end?

Dagenham's sixth most prestigious reseller boss takes a closer look at new technology, cute animals and sock-loving snobs. For some reason.

The rise of the celebrity music technologist has been well documented in recent years. Dr Dre (massively successfully) and Ludacris (marginally less successfully) have flown the flag for headphone-hawking rappers. Neptune-based überproducer Pharrell Williams appeared in one of those execrable Microsoft ‘I'm a PC' ads (god, he must really need the money. No? Oh, OK) while Alicia Keys was recently appointed to single-handedly reverse the fortunes of RIM.
Perhaps most famous of the tuneful technophiles is will.i.am, who not only has a totally not-made-up position as director of creative innovation at Intel, but has also launched a bonzer new high-end iPhone accessory. Mr i.am believes the future lies in "wearable technology", (what, like hearing aids?) and is charging up £300 for his blingtastic device.
One channel firm I spoke to was no big fan of the tech, but admitted they'd take it on for marketing purposes, while another opted against the idea, describing the kit as "clompy".
Dre, Luda, Pharrell and Alicia may have made some bona fide sound-system bangers in their time and all have leant their good name to some pretty impressive tech innovation too. And I can vouch for the fact that the Black Eyed Peas mainman has also come up a bit of kit every bit as worthwhile as his music.

I now pronounce you
A feature of a recent tech show I went to was an "elevator pitch" (oh, god, really?) section where vendors were given a minute or two to convince a room full of business owners that their tech could hold the key to the future of our businesses.
Obviously, we were all looking for bleeding-edge innovation, astronomical margins and enormous untapped market opportunities. But more than that, it seems, we were looking for an exec who pronounced his company name in a slightly funny way.
One French presenter - who spoke better English than most of the UK contingent present - had a curiously wired way of enunciating his firm's moniker. So much so that the terribly mature audience burst into fits of giggles every time he said it.
All of which resulted in the vendor scoring top marks across the board. I for one have signed up to sell ten grand's worth of the devices. Now, if only I'd been paying attention to what they actually were...

Just kitten
In excellent news for just about everyone, I read some thoroughly irreproachable research this week claiming that looking at pictures of cute animals can actually enhance your productivity.
Stats from bods at Hiroshima University suggest that looking at adorable snaps of baby otters and cats in slippers can improve focus. Test subjects who spent time looking at heart-warming images prior to undertaking concentration tasks found that their performance was 44 per cent better than those who did not.
Actually I was going to take part in this study myself. But just as I was about to start the test Gordon sent me a GIF of a baby mongoose getting stuck in a cardboard box. Megalolz! :-)

Caught in the net
Imagine my complete underwhelmedness this week to receive research from sock subscription service (don't ask) socked.co.uk that claims technology is killing our relationships and friendships.
Staff at the pointless website asked probably at least four people about their tech habits at home. Evidently socked staff have never been married as they seemed surprised that some 80 per cent of respondents play with their phone during dinner, while 76 per cent sit in silence with spouse in the evening while they browse the web.
A perfectly reasonable 84 per cent get annoyed if they are interrupted while using their phone of tablet while a not-particularly-surprising 98 per cent said they'd never held a dinner party.
Mark Hall, gentlemen creation officer (oh, come on) at socked claims he wants "to get gentlemen acting like gentlemen again".
"When somebody says 'LOL' in real life, you know we need to change," he wailed, snobbishly.
Fair enough, pal. Why don't we settle this like gentlemen, then - what do you say to pistols at dawn?