MenuPad

It's not a laptop, not a netbook, not a smartphone. It's not an iPod, it's not an iPhone. It can only be the iPad.

Classifying this gadget still escapes me. Many skeptics (including Hitler) considered this as the latest Apple craze's downfall. It's larger than a cellphone but not big enough for a laptop/netbook bag. It poses like a netbook but cannot multitask nor operate Flash. In other words, it's alanganin.

But apparently, this is of no concern for entrepreneur-owners of Australian restaurant Mundo Global Tapas in North Sydney Ridges Hotel, who've found perfect use for the iPad.

Instead of using traditional paper menus for their customers, the restaurant boasts of 15 iPads with a custom-built application which "contains pictures of how a particular dish will look like.

The customers can select how they want the meat to be cooked. Order is taken on the iPad itself by selecting the desired item/dish on the screen," reports i-pad-site.net. According to another report, the menu application has a feature which helps the customer decide what to order depending on their mood and the current weather.

There are other interesting stories about the iPad being used in the medical field for surgery, or for patients with difficulty in communicating. It appears there is a lot of use for this gadget we still fail to classify, as its use precedes its class. Any suggestions?

-Leo Rafael L. Quesada, Entry #7