Over break, I made a trip to Fry’s Electronics. It started out as an innocent trip to help my mother find rewriteable discs for her job. It turned into something else entirely.
After being mildly verbally attacked by a salesman after I told him I strongly dislike Windows 8, I told him I didn’t, in fact, need any help with the monitor I was getting my fingerprints on, and walked away, nearly crashing into a stack of boxes containing something called “SMK Paddock 10 V2.” The picture on the box was of a desktop stand for an iPad.
“Eureka!” I actually said out loud, and took a box out of the strategically stacked pyramid of rhomboidal boxes. Just like in a bad sitcom, the entire forward half of the stack came sliding apart, distributing oddly shaped boxes left and right in front of me. Avoiding the disapproving look of the salesman who loves Windows 8, I went to find a different salesman to show him what I did. And to as if he could open one of the boxes for me. The young man obliged, and didn’t even chastise me for my mishap.
This is what was inside:
As you can see, a person could put their iPad in there, and there are adapters and plug-ins involved for various activities one might want to do with an iPad. For example, if I were collecting video interviews for a project like Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives, I could put my iPad into this device, and it works just like a tripod, except on a desktop. Additionally, the head swivels, and the whole iPad rests on a speaker, which also acts like a charger, or so the specs say on Amazon.
I’m not sure exactly how this contributes to my working definition of ‘innovation,’ but if I go with the idea that we are trying to collect narratives in a new way, then this qualifies.
And I accept.