You saw it here first

It seems very much as if a Japanese company has gone and taken my idea: you can now buy a Geiger counter attachment for your phone. If you recall just about a year ago I said that radiation detection could be part of an expanded sensor suite in smartphones.

Yeah it's not on board but close enough

Most people don't know but all camera phones are equipped to detect radiation already - their camera sensor. Another enterprising programmer uses this fact to turn the stock iPhone into a radiation detector - albeit not a very good one. Simply stick some black tape over the lens to block out the flood of visible light and bam, instant Geiger counter. In the article the software provider clearly likes my vision of smart phones too:

The team behind the app plans to develop a tool that uses data gathered from various users to generate a map showing radiation levels in different locations - hence the wiki prefix. With the ultimate vision of developing a platform that uses a network of devices - particularly smartphones - as a sensor network to measure various aspects of environmental quality, the company also has plans to develop apps to measure Wi-Fi waves, relay antenna waves, magnetic fields, earthquakes, greenhouse gases, UVA/UVB light, oxygen and temperature.

UV, check. Temperature, check. I like the way they think!

In other news, the Geneve Motor Show is showing off a few extended range electric cars, which you no doubt recall me praising back in November. I won't claim originality for that one, but really, the motor show has gone electric-mad. Infiniti paraded their sports coupe and even Tata waded in with a frankly astonishing effort. Naturally many other manufacturers are there with pure electric cars - no one will want them now guys - but frankly electric cars are a bith 19th century now. Petrol-electric, or for the pure-as-the-driven-snow eco mentalists, diesel-electric, will rule the road from now on. Batteries are too limiting and the fuel cell car is really still a pipe dream in terms of costs. We have petrol stations now, the technology works now, the price is within reach now. Hyrdogen has none out of three on that score, and pure electric? Don't make me laugh. No one with the choice of buying only one car will have an electric, since you can never go on a road trip as the Top Gear team showed with amusing results last year. In the words of Clarkson: "You just have to hope that [your girlfriend] doesn't live at the other end of the country."