Diary: Coffee stop, ginger top and dodgy pop

?1.12.10
Drinking problem
If, like Diary, you watch a lot of science fiction, real-life technology usually turns out to be a bit disappointing. Not because cool gadgets don’t exist – they do – but because they get put to such boring uses. If someone in a sci-fi film had a touch-screen device that could access a worldwide web of information, they’d use it to locate a bomb or hack into the spaceship’s mainframe. In real life we use our phones to play Angry Birds or pretend we’re popular when we can’t be bothered to talk to the people around us. It’s the same with face-recognition technology.

We could have used it to catch murderers or provide access to a secret vault, but instead we’re using it to sell instant coffee – there are now vending machines in Tokyo that scan your face and offer you a drink based on your appearance. The future is here, and it’s served in a plastic cup with a thin layer of scum on top.

?3.12.10
Simply rude
One in three Guardian readers has slept with Simply Red singer Mick Hucknall, according to an online poll. The paper posted the poll on its site after the ginger-dreadlocked lothario claimed in an interview that he had bedded many hundreds of lucky women during Simply Red’s heyday. We’d be interested to know how many Research readers have slept with Hucknall, although we’ll be wanting more than just the raw figure – please email us with the postcode at which the encounter took place, your age, gender and salary, a short video diary of the experience, and how likely you’d be to recommend Hucknall to a friend or family member on a 0-10 scale.

?9.12.10
Soul searching
As 2010 drew to a close, Google published its annual list of the most searched-for terms, revealing what the human race has been unhealthily preoccupied with over the past 12 months. The top three terms are fairly predictable (Facebook, BBC, YouTube) but the fastest rising terms are quite revealing. At number one is Chatroulette, a site that allows people to talk to strangers about nothing in particular, and at number two is Formspring, a site that allows people to talk to strangers about nothing in particular. At number three is iPad, a popular device offering a user-friendly interface for visiting sites like Chatroulette and Formspring to talk to strangers about nothing in particular.

?13.12.10
A song for the people
The people have spoken. With more than 15 million votes counted, the X Factor, that great example of the co-creation of music talent, has presented its choice for this year. But it’s not over yet: winner Matt Cardle still has to shift more records than everyone else to bag the Christmas number one and kick off his career. Topping the festive chart had seemed like a foregone conclusion for X Factor winners – until last year when an online campaign sent an expletive-filled 17-year-old Rage Against The Machine song to the top spot, in defiance of the talent show’s domination of the airwaves. As for this year’s winner, he’s already annoyed certain sections of the music-buying public by picking a track by hairy Scottish indie rockers Biffy Clyro for his single - which has been renamed from the slightly off-putting Many of Horror to the more acceptable When We Collide. Predictably enough, there’s a campaign under way to get the original version to number one instead (of which readers will, by the time of publication, know the result). It all goes to show that the public can be bloody awkward at times.