It gets cold in January in Seoul and for iPhone users the weather can be a problem when trying to answer them with a pair of gloves on.
It’s even harder to answer their iPhone when they DON’T have gloves on because touchscreens apparently rely on the conductivity of the human finger to work and a freezing finger is not conductive, condusive or commensurate.
I didn’t know this until last week, but now I do… and I also know that South Koreans have beaten Frozen Finger Syndrome by reverting to the CJ snack sausage as an alternative to their fingers. A ‘digital’ solution maybe.
The company behind these sausages says that’s because they have the ‘same conductivity and electrostatic properties as a human finger, so the touchscreen registers the sausage as though it were a finger’.
As PR messages go, this is genius and apparently the CJ snack sausage is ‘large enough to hold in a gloved hand, but small enough to prod the screen’. THANK GOD we’re talking about mobile phones and not something else here.
Over in North Korea the idea of their neighbours using food to touch a device that can be used to communicate with other people is probably akin to cavemen setting up as a team of coders to build a planet. Feast or famine would just about sum it up.
Apparently the CJ snack sausage communications team is now targeting the mobile phone user base as part of their advertising. This news dovetails quite well with my editorial last week that my car, the Subaru Outback, is a favourite among lesbians, something the car manufacturer is now keen to promote.
Touchscreens, snack sausages, lesbians, rugged station wagons, where will it all end? What’s next? Nasa teaming up with a mobile games manufacturer to launch a new Angry Birds game. Sorry, now that is completely ridiculous.
Monty Munford has more than 15 years' experience in mobile, digital media, web and journalism. He is the founder of Mob76, a company that helps tech companies raise money and exit. He speaks regularly at global media events with a focus on Africa, writes a weekly column for The Telegraph, is a regular contributor to The Economist, Wired, Mashable and speaks regularly on the BBC World Service.
