Technology is a fickle mistress.

Hitachi's "Finger Vein" technology is the best we'd heard of in the biometric category; the idea was that a scanner would read the veins in your finger, a unique signature, and would subsequently link to your bank account or other personal information. If this saw widespread adoption, this means you wouldn't have to carry a wallet, credit cards, cash, keys, and a corporate ID--you could use your finger for each of the transactions these things require. As a person who is constantly forgetting things I would be a huge proponent of this system, as I've never managed to forget my finger.

Alas, we first reported of this technology well over two years ago, and while Hitachi has put it into use in their own corporate facilities, it has not seen widespread adoption. Which is why companies like iWallet USA are making carbon-fiber wallets with integrated biometric scanners that can only be opened by using your fingerprint.

It seems silly to use our fingerprints to open a physical device containing physical representations of our money when we could just use our fingerprints as money and cut out the middlemen, but what can you do.

In any case, while I am not a fan of the iWallet for the reasons I mentioned above, they do propose one neat feature: Linking your wallet and cell phone via Bluetooth. Separating the two devices by more than 15 feet would result in the sounding of an alarm, stopping you from walking out of the house with one but not the other.

Lastly, on the heels of the earlier entry about Time's tablet, I hate to make this The Day of Writing About Technology With Crappy Commercials, but check out the iWallet's laughable ad:

They talk about taking products "Into the 21st century" (which we're already in, last I checked) but the stock footage of Tokyo and New York is from the '80s and '90s!

via dvice