Trending vending

In a world where people are increasingly demanding and seeking instant gratification its perhaps not a massive surprise that I've read a load of stuff about vending machines lately. 

Whether you are French or not, we all like a fresh baguette, well I do – a proper one, not one of those shiny ones that has been hanging around in a basket for hours in Tesco. One that is warm through and has that great crisp crunch. Here we have an enterprising frenchman who has seen the future and apparently it's not garlic bread, but instant baguettes - hot from a vending oven thing.

Here at home with volatile markets driving up the desirability of precious metals (and the shopping centre presumably making a bit of a statement about their clientele) Westfield have a vending machine offering gold in a variety of gift wrapped weights up to a 250g bar at £10,000.

In the US Facebook is demonstrating its internal innovation credentials with a vending machine that has reduced the cost of managing replacement accessories by about 35%. The brainwave of a support engineer (who possibly doesn't like too much personal contact) it tracks and manages keyboards, mouses and the like.

Best Buy have been rolling their Express vending machines for consumer electronics out at airports in the US for a while but they are so successful that they are pushing out to other venues including Disney resorts and college campuses. 

With plenty of technology like this maturing and Mark B at dreamforce highlighting the future of 'connecting to the social enterprise' through simple physical interactions like this those clunky old boxes are starting to feel interesting again...