October 2, 2006 We’ve seen several new ideas for carrying one’s valuables in the form of the Jimi wallet and the Tsaya Thigh Holster for gals who don’t like to carry handbags but both are designed for minimalists, not for those of us with busy lives and lots of paper and stuff to schlep around. So the arrival of the details of the Wallet 2.0 really got the brain cells working. The US$30 Wallet 2.0 has a soft silicone outer case, so it moulds to the shape of your hip or breast pocket more readily than a leather wallet. It's also water repellant, but the real trickery is inside where it uses specially designed folders like those in an organizer or planner. There are five different refill sheets designed to hold paper money, coins, ID and credit cards and there are more interesting and useful sheets on the way. There’s a flash demo here.
The soft silicone outer case, comes in five distinctive colours – not everybody wants to so readily identify the repository of their key valuables with a flouerescent red or green case, so we’ll warrant that black will remain the top seller – there’s also a bright blue and a white. Each Wallet 2.0 also includes five different refill sheets and costs US$29.95 online.
Finally, we’re not sure about the name – when we ran a story on Web 2.0, we copped a lot of flack from our primarily opinion-maker readership who were very vocal in their opposition to Web 2.0’s pretence that its anything more than Web 1.0 and a few years.
The wallet hasn’t evolved much in centuries – the use of Velcro and synthetic materials became commonplace over the last decade or so, but the functional design for handling and preserving assorted life necessities afforded by the Wallet 2.0 make it worth a look.