Puffbox

I’m heading off for a couple of days in Oslo next week; and I’m most grateful to Monday’s Gadget Show for reminding me of the problem of using a touchscreen phone in freezing conditions – namely, that you can’t touch the touchscreen through gloves. Thankfully they also suggested a solution: these North Face e-Tip gloves, which have silver woven into the index finger and thumb tips – and yes, they do indeed allow you to use a touchscreen.

They’re decent ‘soft shell’ gloves, with sticky silicone bits on the palms – although the cyborg styling is maybe a bit much. I wouldn’t fancy them for typing on the on-screen keyboard, but for yer basic scrolling and stabbing – skimming over a Twitter feed or calling someone already in your contacts list – they’re fine. £22 from the North Face shop in Covent Garden. The weather forecast suggests it could be a good investment.

I’m heading north to speak at this event organised by the Norwegian ministry of government affairs; I’ve been asked to talk about innovation in British politics and government, and will be sharing the platform with Håkon Wium Lie, who’s something of an online legend – MIT, Cern, W3C (where he invented CSS), now CTO at Opera. No pressure.