The Sharpener

Fresh - July 4th

KeyFree Login
It’s important to practise safe logging when clicksurfing the worldwide internets. Everyone knows this. But the difficulty is that if you have different passwords for everything, you’re screwed if your computer breaks (or decides to forget your passwords), because you then have to go through the laborious task of resetting your logins for your email, Facebook, Twitter, eBay and everything else you check on a regular basis.
What if you could have some kind of device that knew all of your passwords, and automatically logged you into all of your online doo-dahs as soon as it sensed that you were near a computer? By jingo, you can – and it’s already in your pocket. It’s your handy pocket-sized portable mobile telecommunications device. Ford France and Ogilvy have collaborated to create KeyFree Login; inspired by the keyless-go in Ford Fiestas and suchlike, you just need to sit at any computer and you’ll be able to contentedly click away without having to remember your passwords and/or type them in. (Although there’s always the possibility that your phone will get lost/stolen/pooed on by a particularly precise seagull, in which case you’re back to square one.)
http://player.vimeo.com/video/43886541

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Barter for sleep
Two hotels have recently introduced novel methods of payment in return for a night’s stay under their roofs. The Clarion in Stockholm offers a ‘Room for Art’ scheme whereby a room can be paid for with an A4 piece of art - their criteria are pretty woolly, so presumably you can just scribble a doodle of a penguin or something onto a sheet of printer paper and you’re good to go. Similarly, the Performance Hotel in Stuttgart offers rooms in return for ‘a reading, concert or dance’. I know a dance. It’s kind of like that Ricky Gervais dance, as performed by a rhythm-blind octopus. Again, the requirements are open to abuse. So, what would you take in return for goods or services…?
http://www.clarionstockholm.com/room-for-art
http://performancehotel.wordpress.com/

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Mantry
I don’t have any money, and consequently I give a huge amount of thought (too much, probably) to the things I buy. But a lot of fellas are in the exact opposite situation – cash to spend, and no particular desire to think about shopping. For these lucky folk exists Mantry – ‘the modern man’s pantry’. All you have to do is sign up for $48/month and they’ll send you ‘a curated selection of items to fit the modern man’s lifestyle’, including things like Norwegian Reindeer Jerky or Oaxacan Hot Chocolate. If you're a single gent and want to appear cosmopolitan when you bring a date home, this is the kind of thing you want lurking in your cupboards. They pick the goods for you, so every package should be an interesting surprise. It'll certainly give your fridge more of a feelgood vibe than my own, which currently contains one can of Guinness, a nearly empty tub of olive spread and half a tin of Ambrosia custard. Thank goodness I'm already married.
http://mantry.com/

Daniel Bevis