Welcome to Gadget Dreams and Nightmares, the first-look gadget column that indulges in a long, hard gaze at the latest-announced gizmos before deciding to hold them up for all to gape in wonderment or to cast them aside into the wasteland.
Our finds on Mount Gadget this week include a machine that mixes drinks based on your tweets, a 3D-drawing pen for kids, and a smart cube.
These are not reviews, friends, as some of the items are mere prototypes, and I have not laid hands on them. The ratings are a guide only to how much I'd like to try each, and they are not in any way an indicator of the products' quality.
Tweet Your Aperitif
Sometimes you'll stumble upon a delectable tweet: a melange of words, pictures, videos or GIFs that looks good enough to eat. But is it good enough to drink?
Data Cocktail is a system that hunts for the latest five tweets that include keywords related to available ingredients, and then will mix a drink based on them.
The machine will print the "recipe" for the crowdsourced drink, just in case it happens to be absurdly delicious, while sending a thank you note to those Twitter users who contributed to the concoction without meaning to.
It's a prototype, but the creators suggest they could put Data Machine to use at events with custom ingredients and keywords tailored to specific needs or preferences.
This is essentially a compelling data experiment -- a way to visualize what the world is talking about in a microcosm. It's a neat project, which, funnily enough is exactly how I like my drinks: neat. No ice, please, Data Cocktail, and I hope this works: #bourbon #bourbon #bourbon.