First, you get keyless entry.

Then, if you lose the fob, you pay a huge amount to reprogram it, even though the work involved is minimal.

However, Toyota has demonstrated that car companies can figure out new sources of revenue on a car you've already paid for.

There are a range of 'Connected Services' you opt for and it's only after a couple of years that you realise that it costs you money to enter your own car!

The 'subscription' is $8 a month, or $80 per year.

Imagine paying this, not for a convenience or an upgrade but simply to get into the car and start driving.

There are already howls of protests from customers - all legitimate because it is seen as a rip-off.

Some of these 'services' continue to be available for free only on the luxury models.

The airline pay model of starting at a base price and then paying extra for everything from seating to food is invading other industries as well.

There's software loaded on cars to control several aspects of the driving experience and creating new tiers of customers is an experiment.

As long as our cars were purely mechanical, we owned everything. But the business model of software companies that make recurring payments a tidy stream of growing revenue is spreading to automobiles as well.

An aside - the 2017 models of Toyota where the subscription never kicks in could command a higher premium in the used car market!

The complex wrap on a simple idea

On a large billboard in Piccadilly in London, a small boy walks across and points to the sky.

In the background where he's pointing, a plane passes. And the details of the flight along with where it is headed appears. This happens with every flight out of Heathrow.

It looks absurdly simple and gets attention because the details change, even while the action doesn't.

A nice touch is the boy strolling back after the plane has passed by.

So how was it executed?

An antenna mounted on the roof of a nearby building reads live flight data from every aircraft transponder within 200 kms.

The GPS coordinates, speed, latitude and longitude are read, cloud cover in the area is determined to check visibility and that goes into instructions sent to the billboard.

Only when all these cross-coordination points match does the flight detail and the animation appear on the billboard.

It got over 350 million views and won the Cannes Golden Lion in 2014.

What's admirable is the simplicity and the accuracy of the information displayed timed to perfection.

The costs, paperwork and permissions would have taken an enormous amount of background work, in addition to the setup.

And since it is placed at a high traffic point in the middle of London, the branding opportunity was justified.

For a simple idea like this one, imagine the number of bureaucratic, technological and logistical hurdles that had to be overcome.

In the end, however, the charm works.

Meditation as extreme sport

The ski resorts were closed.

But the slopes were open.

There were no crowds owing to Covid.

And one expert skier programmed a drone to follow his breathtaking slide through virgin slopes as he teetered over giant crevasses and edges.

It's makes you wonder why people do it.

Mountaineers and skiers demonstrating their skill and control long before the proliferation of social media.

It's 4 minutes of sheer adrenalin as he weaves his way down treacherous slopes and the drone swoops in on him from angles that no human could have managed.

At times, he's just a black fleck in an ocean of white.

At others, you can hear him slice through the snow cutting through it with two knife edges, leaving scars in his wake that the next snowfall would fill. 

There are moments where he's skiing through pine forests of white trees.

And quiet contemplative ones as he treks up to the mountaintop before he straps on his skis and shoots himself off the edge.

There are times when the cliff face is almost vertical and it makes you dizzy just thinking of what it would have been like when he leans over and lets go.

The point of no return.

When all those years of practice and reflexes kick in without seeming effort.

Almost towards the end of the film is a sheer mountainside of white snow.

And he flies off it at an angle, making his way downwards.

Maybe at that speed, you get meditative and move into a zone where stillness is the speed.

And he wants to be there as often as he can.

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