Interpac Business and Migration Solutions Melbourne Australia

(July.8)

You can do a lot with an iPhone these days -text, take pictures, surf theWeb and make a phone call.

And soon, thanks to two Australian entrepreneurs, you will be able use it to open a bottle of beer byway of the "Opena", a hard plastic case that fits over the iPhone and is equipped with a slide-outbottle opener.

"Basically, Australians are fairly heavy drinkers, as you may or may not know," said Melbourne-based Chris Peters, an industrial designer who developed the product with Rob Ward, a formertoolmaker.

"We're always out at friends' houses and so on, and in some cases you may not have your keys onyou ... So we thought, why don't we attach a bottle opener to an iPhone case? We always have ourphones on us."

Working from three basic rules - the case had to be slim, there had to be no chance of the openerscratching the iPhone, and the opener had to work without putting any pressure on the phone - thetwo developed a prototype.

Testing including running through what a promotional video termed "the worst case scenario" inwhich a friend has shaken up the beer and it foams over. The case - and the iPhone - came throughunscathed every time.

Aside from a few initial glitches because the first prototypes were too weak, development wentsmoothly. Start-up funding via a website that allows anybody to pitch in, has also gone well, enablinga sales launch within weeks.

"The strangest thing that happened was when we were doing the filming for the video and we had acourier drop off a parcel," Peters said.

"He gave us some very unusual looks when we had about 20 open beers at seven in the morning."

Though some who posted on the pair's Facebook page expressed doubt about the wisdom ofputting a phone that close to a foaming beverage, the response was mainly positive.

Source from Chinadaily