One look at the photo above and you can see that Zinc Chan’s Icono Finger phone concept is both intriguing and dorky at the same time. The phone has you plugging your thumb and little finger into a mic and speaker so as to become the perfect half-man/half-phone beast. The hand gesture you are forced to adopt while using the phone makes it a sure hit amongst the surfing and skateboarding set. Totally gnarley!

The dialpad also attempts to reinvent the wheel, turning phone numbers into a series of sequential shapes. All of this oddness places the phone squarely into the "curiosity" department. However, the design certainly is top notch. Cute girl not included.

Hitachi has developed a steering wheel with a tiny device that reads the driver’s finger veins. This lets the driver use his/her fingers as switches for the engine, car stereo, and navigation system.

"If I place my index finger on this reader, it recognises it’s me. If I put the finger again, it starts the engine," Masahide Hayashi of Hitachi’s sensor design department explained at the Tokyo Motor Show near the capital.

No word on when we might see this in cars, but Hitachi said it hopes to launch it within three or four years.

eKey’s Biometric Entry System allocates different tasks to your various fingers, along with a camera and intercom. Your first finger controls the door lock, scanning your second finger will arm/disarm the security system, and your third finger will send a distress signal. Imagine, if you will, that you are being held at gunpoint. Using that middle finger to send the emergency call just seems appropriate.

Perhaps there should be a psychological test before being allowed to purchase electronoc goods.

Case io point: Thomas Martel was having a harder time than most with his iPhone interface, so his brilliant solution was to surgically cut away flesh from his fingers – something known as “whittling”.

"From my old Treo, to my Blackberry, to this new iPhone, I had a hard time hitting the right buttons, and I always lost those little styluses," explains Martel. "Sure, the procedure was expensive, but when I think of all the time I save by being able to use modern handhelds so much faster, I really think the surgery will pay for itself in ten to fifteen years. And what it’s saving me in frustration – that’s priceless."

Perhaps he just should have had his stylus embedded into his hand?

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Reminding me of the old Twilight Zone series (the B&W one of course), seeing this hand at the piano is a bit creepy.

Developed by scientists at John’s Hopkins University in Baltimore, this prosthetic hand more dexterous than ever before. It taps directly into the brain’s electrical signals, and it has been demonstrated that neural activity recorded from a monkey’s brain can control fingers on a robotic hand, making it play several notes on a piano.

"We would hope that eventually, we’ll be able to implant similar arrays permanently in the motor cortex of human subjects," says Mark Schieber, a neuroscientist at the University of Rochester.