Sausage Stylus a Meaty Must-Have
Chilly iPhone users tap into meaty snacks
DVICE
South Korean iPhone users turn sausages into styluses.
There's a problem with the iPhone's touch-sensitive screen -- it requires actual human touch.
But what happens to iPhone users when it's too cold to take off their gloves? There's not tapping, scrolling or swiping going on. And using a simple fix like the tip of a pen or end of a pencil won't work because of the touch technology responds to the electrical currents running through the fingertips.
Enter the sausage stylus.
In South Korea, creative carnivores have discovered that a certain brand of prepackaged sausage doubles as an iPhone stylus. According to gearfuse.com, sausages produced by CJ Corporation work with the iPhone because the meaty snacks are packaged with electrostatically charged plastic, which fools the phone into thinking there's a human finger touching the screen.
Sausage sales in South Korea have increased by nearly 40 percent because iPhone users trying to get by in the cold have turned meat sticks into tapping and swiping assists, Clusterflock discovered.
A Korean news outlet reported the story and, thanks to the wonder of the language translator, there's an English version, although the meaty details are a bit blurry because of the language hurdle. And, alas, CJ Corporation doesn't distribute its magical meat in America, so shivering iPhone fans still have to take off their gloves -- or fork over some steep shipping charges -- to play Doodle Jump.
Posted Friday, Feb 12, 2010 - 10:29 AM EST
