Atlantica - 01.02.2006, Page 16

14 AT L A N T I CA
THUMBS UP
Does anyone actually read anymore? What with TV, DVDs, video games, iPods… who wants to sit
down and read a novel when it doesn’t have any pictures? Plus, it’s always so hard to keep your
book open while you read. Well, not anymore. Thanks to Thumb Thing, you can enjoy endless hours
of reading pleasure without getting hand cramps. And it’s great for the beach, especially on those
windy days when pages flap around so hard they can poke your eyeballs out. At only three bucks
a pop, the plastic thumb aid is about the most spectacular and life-changing invention since the
bread slicer. www.thumbthing.com
THE PRIVACY OF YOUR OWN CUBICLE
If you believe gadgets bear any reflection of what people worry about, eavesdroppers and looky-loos
appear to be the latest force to be reckoned with in the modern workplace. Take Babble, a device released
last summer by Herman Miller, Inc. Babble plugs into your phone and scrambles your voice so that
colleagues can’t understand what you’re saying. The scrambled words are sent out through speakers that
you strategically place in your cube to throw off nosy neighbors and, from the other end of things, diminish
your colleagues’ distraction of having to listen to you yak. Of course, like a lot of products, it’s a bit of a
chicken or the egg situation. Now that I think about it, it is annoying when office mates listen in on my
phone conversations. And it is annoying to listen to them. But was I worrying about it 45 seconds ago?
TIME TO GO
Who needs to know the exact time down to the millisecond? Only people
who work for NASA or shift managers at McDonald’s. For the rest of us, there’s
the Talus ‘About Time’ Watch, a wristwatch that displays non-committal
timeslots like: “Slightly After 6,” or “Just Before 7.” (The latter, in real time, is
anywhere between 6:50 and 6:57.) As long as you don’t have a train to catch,
you’ll be fine.
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PHOTO COURTESY OF TALUS FURNITURE
009 airmail Atlantica 206.indd 14 22.2.2006 14:20:15