After last week's Eyeborg story, Sneak wondered if there were any more slightly distasteful, incredulous, amusing and downright bizarre true tales of body-part technology innovation. And after much scouring of the interweb, Sneak was finally alerted to this little gem, by an eagle-eyed viewer.

It turns out that a Finnish software developer by the name of Jerry Jalava has managed to obtain a prosthetic USB finger, after losing said digit in a motorcycle accident last year. "But how does he type or work at a PC with his finger sticking in the USB port?", I hear you cry. How is he not electrocuted? Is the USB drive attached to his bone? How, and more importantly, why?

Well, as Jerry explains in his blog, the appendage is not permanently attached to his body but can be removed at will. So it's actually a removable prosthetic finger with a USB drive installed in the tip. Handy eh?

"Currently I have Billix, CouchDBX and Ajatus installed inside it," writes Jalava in said blog. "I'm planning to use the other prosthetic as a shell for the next version, which will have a removable fingertip and RFID tag."

So there you go; the wonders of modern science and the eccentricities of software developers perfectly encapsulated in a bite sized morsel of technology news. Next week: what happened when a web coder lost his right foot in a bizarre yachting accident.

14 Mar 2009