Smartphones: 14 Great Things iPhones and BlackBerrys Can Do

Smartphones are intelligent, but with the 14 tips and tricks in this story, they could approach genius territory. We'll show you how to run seven separate devices from your iPhone, how to play Internet radio (mostly for free) on your BlackBerry, how to make free phone calls from an iPod Touch, and how to revive a dead cell phone battery (if it's detachable) while you're in winter weather.

For more, see the other stories in our "57 Amazing Things You Didn't Know Your Tech Could Do!" package, including our full list of tips and tricks.

Control 7 Different Devices From an iPhone

Perhaps you didn't know that your iPhone or iPod Touch can act as a Wi-Fi remote for many hardware devices. You simply connect the iPhone through Wi-Fi to the same local network, though in many cases you'll also have to install a PC utility (provided by the app developer) that listens for instructions from your iPhone over the Wi-Fi network. Here are my favorite tools to control PCs and other devices.

DVR Remote ($3) lets the iPhone drive a Series 3 TiVo, with access to all of the buttons and features of the innovative DVR. Best of all, you can tap text in with the regular iPhone keyboard instead of pecking at the on-screen alphabet with the arrow buttons.

i-Clickr PowerPoint Remote ($10) manages presentations, even showing your talking notes or upcoming slides on the iPhone. It's a great counterpoint to the remote available for Apple's Mac-only Keynote tool in iWork.

Apple iPhone 3GYou can control many music devices, too. Sonos owners should get the free Sonos Controller for iPhone for slick remote functionality. Roku Soundbridge fans with should try the $3 RokuRemote. And if you have a Logitech Squeezebox device, try running it with the $10 iPeng.

Switching to PC controllers, Air Mouse Pro ($6) acts as a PC keyboard and mouse, so you can control a computer from across the room. Air Mouse Pro's clean design and application-specific functions make it stand out among a crowd of App Store competitors.

The App Store also sells many VNC (virtual network computing) clients, which let your iPhone see the PC screen and control it. Look to those if you already have VNC server software running on your PC. Otherwise, I like the $30 LogMeIn Ignition for its easy setup and interface with LogMeIn remote-access software.

Use Your Smartphone to Sync Files Among Your PCs

You know that you can play music on your smartphone, or even on many generic handsets. But did you know that if a phone has a storage area for music, you can likely use that memory to stow PC files too? If your phone has a microSD slot--included on nearly all music-playing devices--and a mini-USB port, this trick should work.

First, install a flash-memory microSD card; the slot may be hidden behind the battery or in another hard-to-access place. Then connect the phone to a PC with a mini-USB cable. The phone might prompt you to enter the USB disk mode; approve that prompt, and the memory card will show up on the PC as a new drive. Some devices, such as RIM BlackBerry phones with built-in memory, will mount as two drives if such a card is installed; otherwise the device memory will mount as the only drive.

Just copy over your files to the new drive. Unplug the phone, and when you get to work or to another PC, repeat the connection process to move your files to the destination.

Play Internet Radio on a BlackBerry, 4 Different Ways

Apple iPhones don't need to have all the fun. Your RIM BlackBerry can tune in to many sources of Internet radio, giving you the perfect background music--or talk programs--for a commute or some R&R at the airport. Just be sure you have an unlimited data plan before indulging in any of these four streamers.

XM Radio Mobile on BlackBerry: Take advantage of the mobile version of XM satellite radio on your BlackBerry. It serves up 18 music and 2 comedy channels, for which you'll have to pay a monthly $8 subscription fee. Note that not all BlackBerry models are supported.

Pandora Radio: The free version of Pandora for BlackBerry gently introduces you to unfamiliar music with similarities to your favorite songs. You can rate favorites and skip disappointing picks to help the service fine-tune its recommendations. When you find an unknown band that becomes your new favorite, bookmark it in the service to return later.

FlyCast: The wide range of music genres and talk stations on the free FlyCast for BlackBerry echo what you'd get with a regular radio--if your radio could tune in to stations from around the world. Internet-streaming genres, such as '80s and club hits, complete the vast selection.

Slacker Portable Radio on BlackBerry Slacker Portable Radio App: A hybrid of streaming and caching, the free Slacker Portable Radio app can, in addition to streaming tunes, let you save gigabytes of music to a microSD card in your BlackBerry. Slacker allows you to store favorite stations on the card so that you still have music in areas where a network connection is limited or nonexistent, such as on airplanes or in tunnels. Enter a favorite musician or song, and the app will spin a personal station based on your preferences.

Make Free Phone Calls From an iPod Touch

Headphones with a microphone built into the earphone cord.You're now able to make free phone calls via the Internet on Apple's iPhone using the new Skype for the iPhone app. But if you own a second-generation iPod Touch, you can also make free calls, even though the Touch technically isn't a phone.

Skype's iPhone app will work with any second-gen Touch as long as you use headphones with a microphone built into the earphone cord. (Unfortunately, the original Touch has no audio-in capability.) On top of that, you'll need just a Wi-Fi network. The app allows you to make free calls to other Skype users and paid calls to non-Skype users. I like Skype's ubiquity and audio quality, but it has competitors; you might want to try Truphone instead. (For more on Truphone, see "Get Your Cell Phone Charges Under Control.")

Induce a Cold, Dead Phone Battery to Send One Last Text

Since many ski and snowboard mountains are covered by mobile networks, your phone can be a handy communications tool on the slopes. I especially like sending text messages to coordinate plans with friends unobtrusively. But if you forget to charge your handset and it runs out of juice, you still might be able to revive it and send one last text.

Cold weather reduces a battery's charge. If your phone shut itself off due to the cold, warm it up. Pop off the battery and put it next to any warm part of your skin (against your head, under your arm). Once the battery is warmer, try powering the phone back up; there's a good chance it'll have just enough juice for you to send a quick text.

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20 Tech Habits to Improve Your Life

1. Telecommute by Remotely Controlling Your Office Computer

Remote-control software; click to view full-size image.You can work from home--but use the computer in your office--through remote control software such as LogMeIn (free version available) or TightVNC (free). You can view the remote computer full screen, launch and close programs, read e-mail, copy and paste text between PCs, and access any files you left behind. Save money on gas, claim home equipment on your taxes, and convince your boss that you'll be more productive without leaving your house. Even the iPhone has some VNC clients, such as Mocha VNC and Teleport.

If you don't need full remote control but you do require access to your office or home files, set up Microsoft's free file-syncing tool, FolderShare. Your files will always be up-to-date, no matter where you're working or where you last updated them.
2. Schedule Automatic Hard-Drive Backups, Locally and Remotely

Backup software; click to view full-size image.Backing up your critical files is as exciting as purchasing home insurance, but just as important, too. Don't risk losing your irreplaceable digital photos by making empty promises to yourself to burn a couple of DVDs every few months. Instead, set up software and services to do the job for you while you concentrate on more-exciting projects. First, save yourself from an "OMG my hard drive crashed!" catastrophe with a top backup program. Or get started now with a free copy of SyncBackSE, and schedule regular backup jobs to your external FireWire drive, thumb drive, or network drive. (If you have FTP-server access, SyncBack can back up to that as well.)

Of course, local backup isn't enough. To protect your data against fire, lightning, theft, or other disasters, you want to back up your data to a remote server over the Internet. Both Carbonite and Mozy Home offer affordable unlimited server space and utilities that quietly back up your data in the background while you work.
3. Work Faster and More Efficiently Without a Mouse

Launchy; click to view full-size image.Streamline your computer work by teaching yourself keyboard shortcuts for your common actions, such as Ctrl-S to save, Ctrl-T to open a new tab in Firefox, and Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V to copy and paste (see our list of additional shortcuts). Then, become a keyboard master with the help of a keyboard launcher such as the free Launchy (Windows) or Quicksilver (Mac). You can start programs, open documents, and even do advanced actions such as resizing images and moving files without moving your hands from the keyboard.

You can also assign key combinations that automatically type out common phrases--such as user names, passwords, addresses, and e-mail signatures--with utilities like TypeItIn (Windows) or TypeIt4Me (Mac OS X).
4. Lose Weight, Get Fit, Save Money, and Increase Your Mileage Online

Wesabe; click to view full-size image.A new crop of social self-improvement sites help you monitor how much you've eaten, exercised, and spent, to motivate you and keep you on track.

Web services such as FitDay and Weight Watchers log and guide your diet and fitness regimen.

If Quicken or Microsoft Money has become too complicated to update, you can track your spending, balance your checkbook, and run charts on expenditures versus income at personal-finance sites Mint.com and Wesabe.

As for your car, avoid online gas scams. Additionally, you can squeeze the last bit of mileage out of every expensive tank of gas with a miles-per-gallon tracker like Fuelly or MyMileMarker. Entering your information into such sites gets you personalized suggestions, comparisons, and a community of like-minded people who can offer support and suggestions.
5. Clear Out Your Inbox Every Day

Beat e-mail overload once and for all by emptying your inbox completely--and keeping it that way. The "Inbox Zero" philosophy says that e-mail messages are just calls to action--not clutter that we need to hang on to. Create three folders or labels in your e-mail client: Action, Later, and Archive. Each day when you check your e-mail, make a decision and do something with every new message you've received until you've moved them all out of your inbox and reduced your message count down to zero. Ruthlessly delete the messages you don't need, on the spot. Respond to the ones that will take under 2 minutes. File messages that you want to keep for future reference in the Archive folder, those that will take longer than 2 minutes to reply to in Action (and add those to-do items to your list), and messages you need to follow up on at a subsequent date (such as Amazon shipment notifications) in Later. Then breathe a sigh of relief when you see that glorious declaration: 'You have no new mail.'

6. Get Your Cables Under Control

Pilot ID labels; click to view full-size image.When you have a tangled mess of dust-coated cords knotted into a bundle under your desk, disconnecting a laptop or setting up a new printer can be impossible. The cords for power, USB, speakers, and FireWire all look the same. Simple labels can help you avoid accidentally killing your entire rig by pulling one wrong plug. Print out your own with a label maker, or buy a prefab pack of Pilot ID labels to stick on your home-office or living-room plugs. When the cat knocks one out or it's time to rearrange, you'll be glad you did. Then, get cords up off the dusty floor with an under-the-desk cable tray such as this $10 Ikea model. To keep gadget and laptop cords from falling off the back of your desk when they're not plugged in, affix a simple cable catcher (or a binder clip) to the edge of your desk to hold them. Finally, plug your workstation and your collection of peripherals into a single power strip or UPS to shut down the energy hogs with a single switch when you're not using them.
7. Stay on Task With the Right To-Do List

Remember the Milk; click to view full-size image.The key to staying on track with the stuff you need to get done is writing it down and checking it off--whether you do so online, on your desktop, on your smart phone, or in a plain text file. PC World has tried a number of online task manager sites, and our pick is Remember the Milk. It provides all the bells and whistles you'll ever need in a to-do list online, on your desktop, and on your phone. RTM offers task categories (such as Work and Home), file attachments, notes, priorities, tags, due dates, and even "honey do" items (you can send tasks to other RTM users, such as your spouse or assistant). RTM also offers a Firefox extension that integrates the service with your Gmail inbox, so you can turn e-mail into tasks. Of course, no matter how good your software is, nothing can replace the visceral satisfaction of crossing off a line on your paper to-do list with the stroke of a regular old ballpoint pen.
8. Replace Your Laptop With a Thumb Drive or iPod

MojoPac; click to view full-size image.Instead of lugging a laptop on your next trip, save your aching back by taking your computer's desktop with you on a thumb drive or iPod. Portable Windows software offerings such as MojoPac and U3 put a full desktop on your USB thumb drive (or disk-use-enabled iPod), letting you run applications like Microsoft Outlook and save documents all on that drive. All you need is a host computer: You can plug the MojoPac drive into your in-laws' PC or a coffee-shop workstation, for instance, to access your documents and applications without leaving a trace behind. Alternatively, you can save and run free portable applications--like the Firefox browser, Pidgin IM client, and Sumatra PDF reader--from your thumb drive. Download those and other programs for free at PortableApps.com.

More: 23 Things to Do With a Thumb Drive
9. Use Your Camera Phone as Your Digital Photographic Memory

Qipit; click to view full-size image.Almost every cell phone model now includes a built-in camera, and they're good for more than just snapping pics of your buddies' bar shenanigans to blackmail them with later. Use your phone's camera and memory card to capture the spot where you parked, the label on a bottle of wine your spouse loved, the price on a new gadget to look up online, or an amazing meal you'd like to try to cook at home. A new crop of Web services can turn digital photos of whiteboards and documents into searchable PDF documents, too. E-mail your camera-phone shot of a whiteboard or document to Qipit, and the service will recognize the text and e-mail you the resulting searchable PDF.

More: Six Things You Never Knew Your Cell Phone Could Do
10. Create Your Own Price-Protection System

Amazon Price Watch; click to view full-size image.Deal search engines such as RetailMeNot.com or SearchAllDeals.com and social sites like BeatThat are great at finding the best prices before you buy, but PriceProtectr.com and similar services will save you money afterward by monitoring over 130 stores that have price-protection policies. If the price goes down after your purchase, that store might owe you money, but knowing whether the price went down is the trick. You can take advantage of price guarantees by going to RefundPlease.com, or track items on your wish list by using the free Amazon Price Watch software. Travel sites like Farecast and Orbitz also have price-protection systems and e-mail alerts for when prices reach a certain low point.

11. Consolidate Multiple E-Mail Addresses With Gmail

Gmail account add; click to view full-size image.You have more e-mail addresses than you do pairs of socks--so it makes sense to keep them all in one drawer. If you have mail coming to your ISP's account, your work address, your school address, and your throwaway Yahoo account from 1998, and you're having difficulty juggling everything, it's time to consolidate all those messages into one inbox. Google's free Web-based Gmail service is both an e-mail host and an e-mail client. Use Gmail's built-in Mail Fetcher to retrieve messages from up to five external e-mail accounts using the POP3 standard. In Gmail's Settings area, visit the Accounts tab to set up your external e-mail addresses, and you'll then receive all your mail in one roomy inbox. You can even send mail from your non-Gmail addresses via Gmail's Compose screen, too.

More: Get Organized in Gmail
12. Never Forget a Birthday, Teeth Cleaning, or Oil Change Again

E-mail reminders; click to view full-size image.When you're tired of scrambling to send Mom flowers at the last minute every year, set up a scheduled e-mail reminder for her birthday--and for any other long-term recurring tasks. Google Calendar can send upcoming-event alerts via SMS ("Pick up the dry cleaning at 3 p.m. today") or e-mail ("Schedule a hair appointment; it's been six weeks!"). Most Web-based calendars (like Google Calendar) and task managers (like Remember the Milk), as well as Web sites such as HassleMe and Sandy, support e-mail alerts.

More: 26 Tricks to Help You Tame Google Calendar
13. Never Forget a Password Again

KeePass; click to view full-size image.Your Web browser can save your user name and password for sites you log in to often, but you still have lots of other passwords to remember--Wi-Fi network names and passwords, computer log-ins, PINs and passphrases, even security questions and answers. Instead of writing everything down on a sticky note tacked onto your computer monitor, lock up your store of sensitive passwords in a secure, encrypted password database. The free KeePass works in Windows, Mac, and Linux, and assigns one master password to your database. Park your passwords, PINs, and software serial numbers in your personal secure database, and save yourself the hassle of having to call the IT department the umpteenth time to reset your password.

More: 15 Great, Free Privacy Downloads
14. Encrypt Your Private Files

TrueCrypt; click to view full-size image.Everyone has a folder or two of private files that thieves, children, competitors, coworkers, or casual passersby should never see. Whether you want to secure your stealth startup's business plan or some personal photos, the free, cross-platform TrueCrypt encryption software (review; download) is ideal for storing sensitive files in a password-protected virtual container. Only someone with the master password can open that container and read or write the files within; to everyone else, it's a nondescript single file full of jumbled-up junk. TrueCrypt can secure a single folder on your hard drive, or an entire disk--it's great for a thumb drive carrying precious data that could be exposed if the drive is lost or stolen.
15. Stream Content From Your PC to Your Tivo, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, or Wii

You don't need yet another box under your TV in the living room to enjoy your digital music and videos. If you own a game console or TiVo box, you're ready to start streaming media from your PC today--no Apple TV or set-top media box needed. Find out how to get started.

Microsoft also recently announced that, by this holiday season, Xbox 360 owners who are also Netflix subscribers will be able to stream "thousands of movies" using just their game console. In the meantime, you can stream Netflix movies from your PC to your Xbox 360 with the vmcNetFlix plug-in.

16. Get Your TV and Music Fix Online

Hulu; click to view full-size image.Forget basic cable--there's plenty of free TV available to watch online. If you don't want to catch your favorite shows at the networks' own Web sites, hit up sites such as Hulu, Joost, and Comcast's Fancast to get your full-episode TV fix. Also: Stream music for free to your computer from Last.fm, Pandora (both available on the iPhone), Deezer, or Slacker.

If you're on the road and missing your TiVo, use a place-shifting device such as the Sling Media Slingbox or Sony LocationFree to watch your own DVR content online.

More: The Best TV on the Web
17. Reach Favorite Sites and Searches Faster With Firefox Keywords

Firefox keywords; click to view full-size image.You probably hit the same Web sites and search engines several times a day. Why not get to those pages as quickly as possible? Instead of typing out long URLs by hand or hunting down the right search box, use Firefox keyword bookmarks to navigate to your favorite Web haunts instantly (here's how to set them up).

To search Wikipedia for George Washington, for example, you could key up to Firefox's address bar (Ctrl-L), type w George Washington, and press Enter to go directly to that topic page. You can use the same technique for Web pages that don't involve searches, too--for example, try setting the compose keyword to open a new Gmail message. To associate a keyword to a bookmark, enter a short, easy-to-remember keyword in the bookmark's Properties dialog box. Once you've set up a few keywords, you can use your Firefox address bar as a powerful, customized command line.

Bonus tip: Sync your Firefox bookmarks from home to the office to the laptop using the Foxmarks extension; it will keep your keyword vocabulary up-to-date wherever you're working.

More: 15 Undocumented Firefox Tips
18. Tweak, Monitor, and Extend Your Wi-Fi Network With a Firmware Upgrade (or Aluminum Foil)

Router firmware; click to view full-size image.Extend your router's signal, throttle your bandwidth, review usage charts, and more with an open-source router-firmware upgrade. The free DD-WRT and Tomato firmware each offer advanced features for managing your wireless network, including bandwidth monitors, quality-of-service graphs, and even router overclocking to extend your signal.

Want to make your Wi-Fi router's signal reach the attic and the basement the low-tech way? Some sites say they've achieved gains by fashioning a foil "windsurfer" parabola and attaching it to the router antenna.
19. Master Search Techniques to Pinpoint Files or Web Sites

Advanced search operators; click to view full-size image.Drill down through millions of search results for popular Google search terms by mastering advanced search operators. Enclose phrases and proper names in quotes (as in "Don't tase me bro" or "Michael Phelps") to get exact-phrase matches. Use the + and - signs to specify meaning, especially for words that have more than one definition (for example, salsa -dance), and use the filetype: operator to find certain kinds of documents (as in budget filetype:xls).

You can even search for all the ingredients in your fridge with the word recipe to figure out what to have for dinner tonight.

Then, take your search chops to your desktop, where organizing files in an elaborate folder scheme is no longer necessary. Use Windows Vista's Saved Search folders to build a dynamic store of all the files that contain the term "NYC," for instance, or all the digital photos taken on your birthday.

Gmail's built-in e-mail search capabilities are also killer. Use the from:, to:, and subject: operators to find specific messages, as in from:"Bill Gates" subject:"dinner date".

More: Advanced Google: Search Faster, Find More
20. Print Smart to Reduce Costs

Draft mode; click to view full-size image.You've already paid an arm and a leg to refill your home printer, so get into some smart printing habits to save money on ink and paper. Wherever possible, preview your document before you print, and shrink the selection down to fewer pages, or print only the pages you need in the document. Set your printer to the lowest quality (draft mode) when possible, and opt for double-sided printing or print several pages per physical page (when you're printing out PowerPoint slides, for example). When you're printing Web pages, use the Aardvark Firefox add-on to delete big colorful advertisements and other unwanted elements before you print. When you don't really need a hard copy, opt to print to a PDF document instead. Mac users can do this by default; Windows users can download the free CutePDF to print any document to PDF.

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10 Cool New Technologies You Need to Check Out

Presto: Instant-On for Any PC

You've probably heard about PCs like the HP Voodoo Envy133 and the Lenovo IdeaPad S10e that can start almost immediately, booting into a Linux OS so you can check e-mail or play some music. But so far, those systems have been embedded in a PC's BIOS, meaning that if your PC didn't ship with the capability then you were out of luck. Presto is a similar instant-on system that you can install on an existing laptop or desktop. Made by Xandros, makers of a popular Linux distribution, Presto should be available as a free beta on March 16.
Xmarks: Bookmark Collective

Xmarks is created by the same people who make Foxmarks, a browser add-on that synchronizes bookmarks for 3 million computer users. That user base gives the service information on 600 million bookmarked pages. Xmarks is a way to make all that information useful to other users.

You can interact with Xmarks two ways. If you go to xmarks.com, you can enter a site name and Xmarks will let you know what other people think of it. A rating scale tells you how often it's bookmarked, Xmarks users can review the site and Xmarks will tell you about related sites.

You can also install the Xmarks browser add-on (if you already have Foxmarks installed, the update will be pushed out to you soon). When you search at Google, Yahoo, or Microsoft's Live Search, Xmarks will look at the results and offer additional information about the three links per page that have the highest score -- a combination of how many people have bookmarked the site, plus its "bookmark velocity," how quickly people are adding the site to their bookmarks. That information looks like it can be pretty handy in finding the most useful sites in your list of search results.

Project Guru: Computer Help From Afar

Symantec has developed a way for geeks to reach out to friends and family over the Internet and fix their computers. With Project Guru, computer savvy tech gurus can invite people to join their Guru network, where they can remotely troubleshoot and repair PCs.

Symantec is developing a handful of tools for the service right now: a remote desktop, security and malware scans, performance tests, and error logs. The service is being tested in a small pilot program and Symantec plans to make a public beta of the service available later this year. The company hasn't worked out whether or not Guru will be free.

SmartyCard: Educational Baksheesh

Any parent who's struggled with a kid whose grades just aren't what they should be learns that sometimes, a little bribery helps. Consider SmartyCard a bribery facilitator. Parents set up accounts that provide rewards, in the form of CDs, toys, video games and books. Kids have to take tests on content that's appropriate to their grade level (the site now serves kids in grades

Home-Account.com: Fire your Mortgage Broker

Home-Account.com aims to demystify the mortgage process and make it easy to refinance your home without a mortgage broker.

Their system asks you a series of questions about your financial situation, checks your credit report, then gives you a list of offers for home loans you can choose from. The company says it doesn't get any commissions for matching consumers with loan companies. They argue that means consumers will get the best deals: Lenders would rather get a customer through Home-Account than pay a commission to a mortgage broker, so they'll give the best prices to Home-Account customers. Joining Home-Account costs $9.95 per month.

Pixetell: Facilitating Design-by-E-Mail

As more and more businesses depend on staff located all over the world, communication about things that are essentially visual -- the design of a Web page or the layout of a new store, for instance -- is becoming increasingly difficult. Plain e-mails make it too difficult to describe what you want and video conferences can be hard to schedule.

Pixetell hopes to solve the problem by letting people send e-mails that can include text, video, images and audio in one message. You can send a blueprint of a new store, with your scribbles on it and talk about what you're hoping to see in the next design. Recipients can reply with their own audio and video and their own marked up images.

The service is in private beta now. It's final price hasn't yet been determined.

Gazaro: Your Bargain Hunter

A number of services already search the Web for good deals on your behalf. Gazaro looks like it could be a solid addition by offering not just deals, but an analysis of just how good those deals are.

Gazaro, which is free and open to all, analyzes the price history of a product and tells you whether the price a site is offering is a really good deal or not, based on how prices have been in the past. In other words, $1200 for a particular flat-screen TV may be the best deal you can get now, but it's not a very good deal if the same TV was $1000 a month ago. With that kind of information, you may decide to wait for the price to go down again.

Touch Book: It's a Netbook, It's a Tablet

A Menlo Park company called Always Innovating says its Touch Book will be a netbook that turns into a tablet PC when you pull the screen away from the keyboard. The company also says the Touch Book's battery will last 12-15 hours on a charge.

The Touch Book uses an ARM processor, which means it won't require a fan and won't need much power. But company officials also say it'll be powerful enough to play video, and, even though it comes running Linux, that it can run other OSs as well. It may be significant, though, that the other OS they mentioned as an example was Android, not Vista. ARM processors are far from the most powerful chips on the planet.

The Touch Book is supposed to sell for no more than your average netbook, $299 as a tablet PC only without a keyboard and $399 with a keyboard. The company's Web site says the product is supposed to ship "in May or June 2009."

Vue: No-Fuss Webcams

If you want to keep an eye on things at home, but you don't want to string wires all over the place, Avaak Vue Personal Video Network could be just the ticket. These palm-sized cameras need no wires, attach to anchors you stick to a wall and can operate for as long as a year on one battery. They communicate with a gateway you connect to your router and voila, you can see your cat's latest follies through any browser.

The system appears to be super-easy, but not super-cheap. A kit with two cameras, one gateway and four mounts is priced at $300. The company promises to ship the Vue in early summer.
7 Billion People: Personalized Shopping

7 Billion People hopes to make shopping a more personal experience. The developers of 7 Billion People say they use linguistic and behavioral psychology to analyze what you do on the Web and from that data figure out what kind of shopper you are.

Their demo showed the service running on top of Amazon.com (though they noted that Amazon is not a customer). One company exec went into the site and immediately drilled down to the specs of a camera he was looking for, ignoring all reviews by other customers and recommendations of other popular products. When he returned to the site, his experience was tailored to him -- specs were front-and-center, while most information about reviews and recommendations by other shoppers was buried.

His colleague went to the same pages, but clicked first on user reviews and information like "Other people who looked at this product also looked at ...." When he went to an Amazon page for another product, the site immediately opened up the user reviews page, figuring he would probably be interested.

If 7 Billion People can get this complicated artificial intelligence right, the service could actually make online shopping more efficient for everyone.

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