Happy motherblogging new year chums!  Welcome to the first Digital Digest of 2012.  I promise I’ll make it a good one.  I say promise, there’s every chance that it won’t be all that.  I am contending with two weeks of turkey fatigue, an extra inch around my stomach in jean size, and I currently have the attention span of this dog thanks to the fact that I got a brand spanking new iPad for Christmas.  I don’t mean to gloat, but I do.  I got an iPad.  It’s bloody fantastic.  I take back everything I ever said about Apple, and Siri.  Precious, beautiful Siri.  I mean you don’t get Siri on an iPad, but I’m sure she really is bloody lovely in reality.  Bless.  Oh and while we’re talking about the iPhone, you may as well insert a generic plug for any of the current Absolute Radio apps here.  Anyway, let’s start 2012 with a bang, yeah?  Yeah!

Last week, online…

O2 is set to provide free internet to millions of users during 2012 (and most importantly the Olympics), in what is said to be Europe’s biggest WiFi zone, covering the boroughs of Westminster and Kensington & Chelsea.  According to the BBC, the network will be powered by a system installed on ‘street furniture’.  What on earth is street furniture?  A quick Google search returns results like this and this.  Ergonomically designed, benches of art.  When I think of London street furniture, I think of something like this.  Especially in Stratford.  Oh rest of the world, you really have no idea what you’re in for, do you?

The network is going to be rolled out this month, and should be completely finished by March.  And if you were really wondering, it turns out that street furniture is actually lamp posts.  Not, as I previously thought, an MCing and heavily tattooed sofa, brought up in the mean streets of Bow, who got shot nine times, survived, and was then signed to Shady records.  Here’s the artwork to his first album, Straight Outta Tha Furniture Shop.

Also last week, research company KPMG revealed that 37% of the top 200 car executives believe that ‘infotainment’ is just as important as car safety.  This means that in the very near future, in-car speech recognition and internet connection over WiFi and 3G will become a complete normality to the likes of you and me.  It’s already happening: the new Audi A7 has built in 3G connectivity, and a collaboration project between Toyota and Intel was announced towards the back end of the last year.  Now, before my Siri love in began, I would have suggested that this was the next step in the total world domination by the machines.  But now, I’m not even going to put the same old Terminator reference link in.  Nope.  This is the start of a brilliant and bright future.  In fact, I imagine it’s now all going to look something like this.  Happy little cars!  Driving themselves!  (Ignore the fact that there aren’t any humans.  Probably dead.)

App of the week goes to Action Movie FX.  Just download it and love it.  I won’t give too much away, save for the fact that it’s been made by J. J. Abrams production company Bad Robot, has been released to support MI:4, and you can make videos like this.  I’ve given everything away.  Just download it.

That’s it for another week.  I leave you with a toddler getting pranked by his parents, and a set of adverts that Will Ferrell did for Old Milwaukee beer in America, for free, and nobody knows why.

I’m off to speak to my phone, and not drive my car.