Internet Umbrella

June 29th, 2007

Rainy days will never seem as dull again thanks to a new internet umbrella by pileus. Pileus is an umbrella connected to the Internet to make walking in rainy days FUN! It has a large screen on the top surface, a build-in camera, a motion sensor, GPS, and a digital compass. The high-tech brolly allows you to take pictures with a built-in camera. These can be uploaded to Flickr (a photo-sharing website) via a wireless internet connection and within two minutes you can watch downloaded photo-streams on your umbrella screen with a simple wrist-snapping movement.

Invented in Tokyo the Pileus umbrella also has GPS and a digital compass, which uses Google Earth to help you navigate yourself around the world. They are working on incorparating a video camera as well.

The project started out as academic research at Keio University in Spring 2006, but now Pileus LLC is keen to make it a money-spinning venture. No word yet on how much the umbrella would cost, but it is likely to be very expensive.

Just don’t leave it on the tube.