I spent the morning going through Popular Science's Best of What's New 2007. (I'm not real big on parades.) There was a lot of really cool stuff. I pulled out four that have some relevance in my life that mad me think, I've got to have that.

Of course there were lots of other cool things that it would be cool to have, but I'm not really in the market for a $100,0000 Audi or a $100,000 small plane, or a $1,000 portable satellite TV. And of course they had the iPhone, and of course I want one. But for a lot of reasons I wont get one until I can use it with my current carrier.

So below are the ones that I picked as the best of the Best of What's New 2007. Your mileage may vary.

The first one (and these are not ranked, they are just the order I found them) is called Teleflip.

CELLPHONE E-MAIL FOR THE REST OF US
FlipMail lets you read e-mail on your cell, without a full-fledged smartphone or a pricey data plan. The free service grabs copies of messages sent to your regular e-mail account, removes extraneous header information, and reformats the body into text messages. It will also convert outgoing texts to e-mails. To avoid runaway texting fees, you can choose whose e-mails get forwarded. Free; teleflip.com

I already use a free, ad supported, service that converts my cell phone's voicemail to text and delivers both the audio and the text to a Dashboard Widget so this is the prefect compliment to that. I don't have a lot use for this feature since I almost always have access to email, but it would be fun to have so I'm signing up today. Because it's free and I don't want to miss out on the opportunity to make a quick $5,000 helping the widow of a former oil minister from the Congo.

Next comes the Frisper.

PINT-SIZE SEALER THAT PACKS REUSABLE BAGS
Vacuum-packing keeps food fresh, but most consumer packers are large and cumbersome, and each sealing requires a new bag. Instead of closing the whole end, the Frisper—about the size of a portable CD player—punches a tiny hole in the bag to draw out air and seals the puncture with heat. This allows the Vac-Snap bags to retain a zip-style reclosable top, so you don’t have to cut them open. Instead, you can vacuum-seal them multiple times to store daily-use food like coffee beans. $100;oliso.com

What I really like about this is the possibility that I could use it with a regular Zip Lock Freezer bag. Not looking so much for some sort of permanent vacuum seal but just enough of a vacuum to keep sliced apples from turning brown in my daughter's lunch box. Or just enough of a vacuum seal to keep the air out of a bag until the contents are frozen. The unit is small and not too bad looking and the price isn't outrageous. They hit you on the bags which is where they probably make a good deal of their money. But I probably wouldn't use their bags anyway.

For the wireless fans out there, and I am and certainly one, there is the Meraki Mini.

SHARING THE INTERNET WITH THE WORLD
With a simple $50 box, Meraki Networks hopes to spark a worldwide Wi-Fi revolution. The wireless router lets a city block, or even an entire village, share the same Internet connection. By itself, the Meraki Mini creates a Wi-Fi network around a wired Internet connection. But add a second Mini within 150 feet, and it picks up and amplifies the wireless signal, creating a seamless network that spans nearly double the original area. Add more Minis, and the network can blanket acres. So instead of all your neighbors paying an ISP, you could let them tap into your connection. To boost the whole network’s bandwidth, just plug any of the Minis into another wired link. (With a $150 model of the Mini, you can control access or even charge users via a Web site.) Meraki’s founders, backed by Google, based the Mini on $1,000 commercial units. But they use widely available chips, smart software and cash-earning Google ads to bring massive networks to the masses, one piece at a time. $50–$150; meraki.com

Now I have no interest in sharing my internet connection with the world. Or even my neighbors. But for $100 I could put one upstairs and one downstairs and have a strong signal everywhere in the house. In the Garage. In the shed. In the basement. And covering the entire yard.

Lastly a little bit of fun that could save you a bit of mental anguish. Midomi.com

NAMES THAT TUNE

In karaoke bars, I belt out my favorites without shame, but when I tried midomi.com, I had to croon softly so my boss in the next office wouldn’t hear. Even at that volume, the site—which IDs any tune you sing or hum into the computer microphone—still correctly guessed most of my medley. Midomi analyzes pitch, melody, rhythm and other features of sounds. It then compares those measurements against its database of 200,000 ditties sung and submitted by users. It finds the right match 95 percent of the time. It even pinpointed an obscure indie tune and “Every Time You Go Away,” written by, as I learned, Hall & Oates. midomi.com

How many times have you had just a snippet of a song or a bit of a melody stuck in your head because you just can't remember the song name or the artist? If you could just put a name to it, it would finally go away.

There are lots more cool things on the list. Some of them are way cooler than the ones I highlighted here but they are just not relevant to my life. I mean they've got a DVD recorder that writes data in 3D on the disk. Cramming 300 gigabytes onto a DVD. And you don't even need funny glasses. How freaking cool is that. What you do need is a not so cool $18k to buy one.

Posted by: Stephen Macklin at 11:20 PM | No Comments | Add Comment