Reporting from the 2007 Software Exhibition of Korea today. I've had a frustrating few weeks in the lab -- my attempts to introduce artificial intelligence to the undergarment industry are going nowhere fast. Turns out, people don't really want Smart Underwear . And the AIs aren't crazy about where they're being dispatched, either. So I figured: road trip. South Korea in June is always lovely. Anyway...

Here's a prototype gadget set to hit the market soon in Asia. It's a screenless MP3 flash player from iRiver , working in association with a little mom-and-pop operation you may have heard of, The Walt Disney Company.  Disney has done a remarkable job, of course, branding the ubiquitous Mickey Mouse worldwide. But for some reason I've yet to determine, Mickey has achieved deity-like status in urban centers of Asia, particularly Tokyo and Seoul. The bulbous head, the oversized symmetrical ears -- even in silhouette or abstracted into 3-D, the Mickey Mouse profile has become something of a Platonic Form in the pop culture superconsciousness. It's weird. I'm tinkering with an algorithm to figure it out.

 So I suppose it makes perfect sense to go ahead with a Mickey Mouse flash player. Those ears are functional, by the way -- one controls volume, the other switches audio tracks. But I have to imagine, from a strictly practical viewpoint, that this thing could be rather uncomfortable in the hip pocket. And I hate to think where all this might lead. If 3-D corporate mascot MP3 players start flooding the market, I'm officially unplugging for good to raise lobsters in Maine.

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