Brilliant ideas that made it

You gotta love those USB flash drives. They8217;re cheap, shiny and tiny, and they offer a practically perfect way to transport computer files. On the other hand, you gotta hate it when you plug in a flash drive to receive a file you need iquest; and discover that the darned thing doesn8217;t have enough free space.

That8217;s the beauty of Lexar8217;s Mercury flash drive, whose case has a 8220;fuel gauge8221; 8212; a bar graph that tells you, without even plugging the thing in, how full it is. Thanks to a technology called E-Ink, this graph is always on and stays visible indefinitely, without requiring any power whatsoever.

THE MAGNETIC POWER CORD

Somewhere there8217;s surely a support group for people who have dragged their 2,000 laptops to the floor by tripping on the power cord. That doesn8217;t happen with Apple8217;s 2006 laptops, whose power cords connect with a powerful magnet rather than a pin or a plug. If someone trips or yanks on the cord, the magnet detaches and drops harmlessly to the floor. The laptop switches seamlessly to battery power, saving your data, your money and months of therapy.

THE TWO-STAGE FLASH

It may seem counter-intuitive that the more expensive the digital camera, the less likely it is to have a built-in flash. The manufacturers assume that if you8217;re that much of a professional, you certainly own an external flash unit. Panasonic8217;s Lumix DMC-L1 and LC1 cameras, though, offer the best of both worlds. If you push the open button for the built-in flash firmly, it pops up and faces forward. But if you push lightly, it pops up to a different position, angled 45 degrees upward iquest; yes, in bounce-off-the-ceiling position. Great idea, cleverly done.

A RECORD RADIO BUTTON

Samsung Helix is a regular music player, like an iPod though smaller. But it8217;s also an XM satellite radio receiver. That8217;s already a good idea, but here8217;s the clincher: When you hear a song that you like on one of XM8217;s 70-themed, ad-free music channels, one button-press records that song from the beginning 8212; even if you were a little late hitting record. In all, this gadget can hold about 25 hours8217; worth of recorded radio. Long-suffering music fans could probably have predicted that XM would be sued over this glorious idea, and, well, sure enough. Maybe what8217;s so great about this idea isn8217;t so much its ingenuity as its bravery.

MUSIC BEAMING

The Zune, Microsoft8217;s new music player, does something amazingly well that its rival, the iPod, doesn8217;t do at all: It lets you beam songs or photos wirelessly to another Zune. In practice, there8217;s more to the story. To avoid lynch mobs from the record companies, Microsoft designed the Zune so that beamed songs self-destruct after three plays or three days, whichever comes first 8212; even, idiotically, your own recordings like college lectures and garage-band demonstrations.

The Zune, therefore, is that classic case: a killer idea diluted by a ham-handed execution.

THE VIDEO-GAME WORKOUT

Nintendo8217;s Wii game console, on the other hand, is a stellar product that succeeds precisely because its central idea is unencumbered by corporate baggage 8212; and is fun. The masterstroke is its wireless controller, which detects the motion of your arm in three dimensions and in real time. As you swing, jab or whap through the air, your animated character on the TV screen swings the corresponding baseball bat, tennis racquet, fishing rod and so on.

Perhaps it8217;s a bit much to suggest that this video game may actually help to address America8217;s problem of sedentary youth. But my own two in elementary school play the Wii8217;s tennis doubles game nightly with full-body vigour 8212; and are perspiring after half an hour.

THE TRACKPEARL

On most BlackBerry cell phones, you scroll through on-screen choices using a side-mounted thumb wheel. Too bad if you8217;re a lefty or if you8217;re trying to move horizontally across the screen. The tiny and terrific BlackBerry Pearl solves both problems neatly: it has a front-mounted trackball. This ball is also clickable, so you can scroll to something and then select it with a single quick thumb flick. And because this trackball is pearly white, translucent and illuminated, it nests neatly with the phone8217;s name and concept. A pearl, indeed.

THE FACE FINDER

Several 2006 Canon cameras, including the image-stabilised SD800IS, offer face-recognition software. In this mode, the camera identifies human features in a scene, even in group photos. Little rectangles appear around each face up to nine in a scene as you view the back-panel screen; these little rectangles move around, tracking your subjects as they shift. The facial recognition eliminates shots in which, for example, the camera locked its focus on something in the background. And it forces the flash to throttle way back to avoid blasting nearby faces into whiteness.

POINT WITHOUT POINTING

The speech-recognition software in Windows Vista offers anyone who can8217;t type 8212; or doesn8217;t like to 8212; a slick, efficient alternative. Wearing a headset, you can dictate text into any program and 8220;click8221; any button or tab by saying its name.

But what if you don8217;t know its name? What you can say, though, is 8220;show numbers8221;. The program immediately overlays every clickable thing on the screen with colourful numbers. You can just say call out the number appearing on the corresponding function and the computer works out the command.

THE UNCOMPLICATED CELL PHONE

Plenty of people have, while grousing to their spouses, imagined a cellphone that does nothing but make phone calls 8212; no Internet, camera, music, text messaging, or any other complicated gimmickry. In other words, it8217;s not such a new idea. GreatCall, however, has actually gone and built one. Its Jitterbug phone is a big finger-friendly flip phone with huge light-up number buttons, no nested menus at all, and 8212; get this 8212; a simulated dial tone.

New York Times / DAVID POGUE