is a new umbrella. But the one that I want makes walking in the rain much more fun. Its connected to the internet, has a screen, camera, digital compass GPS. I could take a photo with the camera and upload it to Flickr; watch videostreams from YouTube;Reference Google Earth using location data from my GPS. I could view the birds-eye 3D version of the city whilst experiencing the real sights. If a city had made a cultural tour for Google Earth, I could follow that around, and interact with the photos, tags and videos others had uploaded as well as adding my own.
If I can’t have a Pileus umbrella, then I shall have to make do with a feral robot. NYU and Yale have together developed the capabilites of robotic dogs in environmental super-hounds: modified noses, brains and legs enable the dogs to seek out contaminents like Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC) or Trichloroethylenes in waste ground. the dogs then submit the pollution data back to a number of sources, where humans can then take over with evidence-driven discussion, monitoring and remediation around polluted sites.