14 DAY TRIAL // As I was thinking I have seen just about anything, I saw this: the smartest umbrella ever invented. The Pileus Internet umbrella is connected to the Internet to make strolling on rainy days a real pleasure.
This revolutionary umbrella has a large screen on the top surface, but come with an integrated built-in camera, a motion sensor, GPS a digital compass. Not even Mary Poppins ca get lost with this!
But, apart from so many high tech options, this umbrella provides two major functions. The first one is a social photo-sharing and the second one is a useful 3D map navigation, to know exactly where to take your lover on a rainy night.
The popular photo function is connected to a major web service, called "Flickr". The service enables users to take photos with a camera placed on the umbrella. Later on, the pictures are uploaded to the service in a matter of minutes via an Internet connection.
While strolling in the park, the owner can enjoy watching family photos and photo-streams downloaded from Flickr. And with a simple wrist snapping, s/he can even watch videos.
Using the 3D Map navigation powered by Google Earth, the umbrella enables the user to detect a location data from GPS.
The map is always updated. It has a large screen to create a genuine virtual reality above your head. The GPS and the digital compass functions can be switched by simply flipping a switch.
According to Pileus, a future direction of this development would be to put a context data on the Internet and provide social local-navigation, social local-ads and mostly real time in-place communications. Just imagine walking in new York, while the smart umbrella offers you the perfect guiding services, while playing a relaxing music. It would simply be an insult to call this gizmo a mere "umbrella"!