Adios 2021!
- By Stefan Hammond
- December 20, 2021
The Year of the Tiger starts in February. But we kick 2021 out of the door a month earlier.
As ever, the annual flip of the calendar page is a great time to look back at some of the hits and misses of the previous year. And December's colossal goof is a doozy. Apparently, someone accidentally sold their Bored Ape NFT for one percent of its intended price.
The Bored Ape Yacht Club
MSN reports that someone using the username maxnaut “meant to list his Bored Ape for...around [USD]300,000 [in cryptocurrency]. Instead, he accidentally listed it for...one hundredth the intended price.” Oops.
“It was bought instantaneously,” said MSN. “The buyer paid an extra USD34,000 to speed up the transaction, ensuring no one could snap it up before them.”
“The transaction appears to have been done by a bot, which can be coded to immediately buy NFTs listed below a certain price on behalf of their owners in order to take advantage of these exact situations.”
It's difficult to guess the value-equation for such ephemera, but here's the Bored Ape Yacht Club: “A limited NFT collection where the token itself doubles as your membership to a swamp club for apes.” Clearly, the practice of NFT collecting uses its own lingo.
“The Bored Ape Yacht Club is a collection of 10,000 NFTs, each depicting an ape with different traits and visual attributes,” says MSN. “It may sound arcane, but it's one of the most prestigious NFT collections in the world.”
It sounds arcane.
The Internet of Silly Things
Tony Poulos, the editor of Disruptive Views, coined this term because, as he wrote in 2015: “My first attempts to cover the burgeoning IoT device sector unearthed a myriad of things that were so, well, silly that I dubbed them IoST or the Internet of Silly Things.”
December's colossal goof is a doozy
“The Bluetooth toothbrush made a splash at MWC in Barcelona earlier this year...but the latest round of IoST gizmos leaves me concerned with the future of mankind,” he wrote. Poulos, whose salty observations on Mobile World Congress were the hit of Barcelona tapas bars during MWCs past, is spot on. All too many would-be inventors hyped concepts of forks and toothbrushes connected to the Net because, well, most such devices were silly and were never made or disappeared quickly.
The IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things) is doing quite well, thank you. Silliness seems silliest when tied to dreams of marketing to the masses as a better mousetrap. But CDOs can never ignore the cornucopia of consumer tech.
Consumer cornucopia
Consumer technology continues to leach into the enterprise space, often to good purpose. Some technologies examined in earlier articles like Google Glass and the Internet of Things have been re-sited to controlled deployments ― where they should have been in the first place.
But consumer-oriented tech must always be monitored for good ideas and less-ideal concepts. For example, the MaskFone, from Hong Kong-based Binatone, integrates microphones and earbuds into a facemask. It's all road warriors need ― just slap it on your face, and you're set for the day.
CDOs must not ignore the lessons of consumer tech
“Featuring replaceable PM2.5 and N95/FFP2 filters, a built-in microphone, and earphones, MASKFONE successfully eliminates the need to remove your mask, and there by [sic] assuring you maximum protection,” says their website. It's machine-washable and, as the manufacturers point out on their site: “Given the state of the world and the COVID-19 pandemic, wearing a mask has become an advisable measure for everyone to take.”
Fold your phone
If you've ever wanted to fold up your mobile phone, now you can. Samsung's rhythmically named Galaxy Z Fold3 5G unfolds into “a screen so big that it's like a whole new world,” says a review in PC Magazine.
"The concept of big-screen folding phones was all the rage in 2019,” says the review, “but Samsung is the only maker in the U.S. that continues to pull the trick off.” That may be, but the Korean monolith is also at least partly responsible for coining the malevolent verb “to debloat.” A simple search of “debloat Samsung” produces this: “Samsung likes to include a number of its own applications that a user might not necessarily need.”
The ultimate mouse?
If you're a power user with USD1799 (MSRP) to shred on a folding phone, potential bloat might not be a massive problem. Then again, if your palms get sweaty during a frenetic gaming session, what to do? Get your hands on a Zephyr PRO RGB sweat-proof gaming mouse with a built-in fan.
You guessed it: this mouse rocks both customizable LED lighting and a fan. “Redesign the angle of the fan from 45° to 180°, brings out a stronger cooling blast directly into your palm,” says the website of U.S.-based Marsback.
Looking back to 2022
Some are already looking back to a simpler past as the new year approaches. Behold the neo-retro Amiga A500 Mini in all its clunky beige-case glory.
“Set for release in early 2022, the Amiga A500 Mini will emulate the Amiga 500, 600 & 120, featuring 25 classics including Alien Breed 3D, Kick Off 2, and Pinball Dreams, with the option to add your own games,” say the manufacturers Retro Games Ltd.
“Perfect for throwback fans and retro gamers, it comes with the original-style 2-button mouse as well as a newly engineered 8-button precision gamepad for ultimate control over your play.”
Back to the future once again. All the best in 2022.
Stefan Hammond is a contributing editor to CDOTrends. Best practices, the IoT, payment gateways, robotics, and the ongoing battle against cyberpirates pique his interest. You can reach him at [email protected].
Image credit: iStockphoto/Maria Marganingsih