Best Pogue's Posts

Marketers determine what the masses want, product managers guide the design, engineers bring the thing to life - it’s a lot of cooks. No wonder so many people across the country are, at this very moment, staring at newly unwrapped electronic holiday gifts in utter bewilderment.
Even so, brilliant ideas sometimes make it off the drawing board, past the layers of lawyers and onto store shelves. Sometimes, a delicious idea is part of a triumphant overall product. Other times, the flash of greatness is wasted on a turkey.
Here, then, is my second annual Top 10 List - not of the greatest tech products of the year, but of the greatest ideas, individual features, that surfaced. It’s a little tip o’ the egg nog to the great thinkers whose ideas made it out of committee.
THE FLASH-DRIVE FUEL GAUGE You gotta love those U.S.B. flash drives. They’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 - and discover that the darned thing doesn’t have enough free space.
That’s the beauty of Lexar ’s Mercury flash drive, whose case has a “fuel gauge” - 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 there’s surely a support group for people who have dragged their $2,000 laptops to the floor by tripping on the power cord.
That doesn’t happen with Apple ’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.
Better yet, this magnet has no “right side up”; it works no matter which way you slap it on. Oh, and it lights up to confirm that you’re plugged into a working outlet.
THE TWO-STAGE FLASH It may seem counterintuitive that the more expensive the digital camera, the less likely it is to have a built-in flash. The manufacturers assume that if you’re that much of a professional, you certainly own an external flash unit.
Among other virtues, an external flash can be aimed upward so the light bounces off the ceiling, rather than blasting into your subject’s face. The result is more even and flattering light.
Panasonic’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 - 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 it’s also an XM satellite radio receiver.
That’s already a good idea, but here’s the clincher: When you hear a song that you like on one of XM’s 70 themed, ad-free music channels, one button-press records that song from the beginning - even if you were a little late hitting record. In all, this gadget can hold about 25 hours’ 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 what’s so great about this idea isn’t so much its ingenuity as its bravery.
MUSIC BEAMING The Zune, Microsoft ’s new music player, does something amazingly well that its rival, the iPod, doesn’t do at all: It lets you beam songs or photos wirelessly to another Zune. It’s easy and fast, and it could be a great way to discover new music recommended by your friends.
In practice, there’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 - even, idiotically, your own recordings like college lectures and garage-band demos.
The Zune, therefore, is that classic case: a killer idea diluted by a ham-handed execution.
THE VIDEO-GAME WORKOUT Nintendo’s Wii game console, on the other hand, is a stellar product that succeeds precisely because its central idea is unencumbered by corporate baggage - and is tons of fun.