So, yes. I may be a complete dork here. Right, so I am a complete dork here, but Shiny Shiny is reporting on flashdrives in the shape of fruit. And, for some reason, I find it utterly idiotic and absolutely cool at the exact same time. I can’t imagine walking around with a plastic strawberry or watermelon in my pocket, but I do enjoy the thought of seeing random strangers look at my laptop with a sideways long glance when trying to figure out why there’s a strawberry sticking out of my computer.
Is she trying to make a statement?
Maybe she just likes fruit.
Those do look delicious!
I’m interested in this Shiny Shiny site, which declares:
“Shiny Shiny takes a female standpoint on the consumer technology world, with news, reviews and opinion on all things gadgety.” Two things catch my attention:
First, they use “female” rather than “feminine” – yet their sparkly pink logo and design are certainly more “feminine” in the sense of culturally constructed versions of gender than “female” in the sense of biological sex. And just what *is* the female standpoint they speak of? Are all females standing on the same point from which they consider the world of technology? And is that standpoint reduced to consumerism, the seeming central theme of the site?
Second, the site’s motto is “A girl’s guide to gadgets.” At first I just noticed a grammatical pet peeve, assuming that it should read “girls’ guide.” But then I realized: that singular “girl” perhaps implicitly acknowledges the rather limited, individual version of girlhood represented here…
Or at least that’s my most generous reading.
I hope they introduce banana shaped flashdrives soon – preferably in flavor too.
But it is fascinating to see companies design and market products that are a hybrid of art and technology; two areas that are usually regarded as extreme opposites. Such an example is the Mac and other apple products. Most art students in school prefer the Mac, even if it is priced a double the price of its PC retail equivalent (four times the price of a home-built PC). But again, in a capitalistic culture such as ours, it’s necessary to apply aesthetics to a product in order to sell beyond other products that already have a common functionality. But I’m still waiting for the apple-shaped Mac.