Keen eBayers may have seen kitsch hands-free kits for mobile phones up for sale, fashioned from old rotary-phone receivers hacked to include Bluetooth modules or wired to work with Nokias. Perhaps this inspired Burnside Telecom's Desktop Mobile, a little gadget that takes a standard SIM but lets you plug in an entire desktop phone. Burnside suggests a range of applications, such as providing comms for a building-site office, but Sneak feels the right place for such technology is the car dashboard. After all, it's illegal to use a mobile phone while driving, but nobody has yet suggested it might be illegal to use Sneak's vintage two-handed candlestick-and-shot-glass phone while steering with the knees...

10 Dec 2004