Friday Takeaway: It's Also Good for Autographs

Collecting autographs is an interesting phenomenon. You could argue that our fascination with celebrities and the cult of personality is equally fascinating, but what it is about collecting the signature of a famous person that gets people so excited? After a fan of the president nabbed his autograph on an iPad, though, a new question has been raised: is a digital autograph just as good?

Take a look at the video below to see for yourself. President Obama didn't physically sign the iPad (on the back, or much worse, on the front). Instead, he penned a digital signature.

Frankly, the iPad is really the first device to make this sort of thing possible. Smartphone screens are too small, and touchscreen laptops are too bulky to tote around for autograph collecting. The iPad is perfect, but only in certain situations.

For instance, if you're off at Disneyland and your kids want to get autographs of all the characters, the iPad wouldn't work (unless you had an iPad-friendly stylus handy, as well). Their costumed fingers wouldn't registered on the iPad screen.

Beyond that, is having a digital autograph really the same worth as having a handwritten one? You can't hang your iPad on the refrigerator or a wall in your house (at least, we wouldn't recommend doing this permanently). You could print it out, but then it's not really authentic.

While it's a fun gesture, and something you can certainly give a whirl next time your at a major event, we don't really see this catching on. But what a promo for the iPad it was!