Fetish

__ Fetish __

__ Hand Job __
Get ready to ditch your keyboard. Berkeley Sensor & Actuator Center's Virtual Keyboard system lets you glue 10 little chips onto your fingernails and type away anywhere. These system peripherals contain tiny, battery-powered MEMS accelerometers that track your digits' location and movement, transmitting via low-power radio to a nearby receiver that plugs into any computer.

__ Available 2005.
Virtual Keyboard receiver: $50; fingernail chips: $20 per set of 10. Berkeley Sensor & Actuator Center: +1 (510) 642 3214, www-bsac.eecs.berkeley.edu. __

__ Heli Cool Scene __
Using micro-air-vehicle technology designed for close-range military surveillance of urban combat and hostage situations, MLB's remote-controlled 6-inch Heli Rocket dual camera uses a ring wing and a ducted fan engine to fly anywhere and hover in place. The camera snaps pictures from vantage points no photographer could reach - in the air, over the water, off a cliff. The engine runs on butane, which you replenish with a standard cigarette-lighter refill.

__ Available 2004.
Heli Rocket: $500. MLB: +1 (650) 424 9552. __

__ Heads Will Roll __
Videoconference with your tots while they're in the nursery and you're in Nepal. AT&T Labs' Kids Communicator is a crib-friendly videophone suitable for standard screen-front talking and gawking. But the adult user has an additional toy: a joystick that operates the phone's internal motor, making the screen physically roll around inside its spherical shell. The kids will love this feature: Seeing Grandpa's head turn a few somersaults is always good for a laugh.

__ Available 2004.
Kids Communicator: $200. AT&T Labs: +1 (650) 463 7071, www.att.com/technology. __

__ Non-Bleeding Edge __
Making mincemeat of the Gillette Mach 3, Light Solutions' Laser Razor dispenses with sharpened steel entirely and smoothes your beard or body with a solid-state semiconductor laser. To use it, you apply a cooling gel - just like shaving cream - and shave as usual. The lightshaver's near-infrared beam penetrates your skin to make all your stubble fall out in about two days, while temporarily stunting hair follicles to delay future growth. The result is a shave so close, it'll last a couple of months.

__ Available 2010.
Laser Razor: $500. Light Solutions: +1 (650) 335 1100, www.lightsol.com. __

__ Friendly Fire __
Low-Smoke Pyrotechnics bring skyrockets indoors. Relying on a combination of nitrogen-rich fuels and nonmetallic oxidizers, these fireworks are safe enough to use in your carpeted living room. They work for stage productions and rock concerts as well, producing brilliant hues that are unmatched by old-fashioned black-powder pyrotechnics. Best of all: The by-products are environmentally friendly - little more than nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and water, with only trace amounts of the toxic metal salts produced by traditional big bangs.

__ Available 2001.
Low-Smoke Pyrotechnics home variety pack: $60. Los Alamos National Laboratory: +1 (505) 667 4592, www.lanl.gov. __

__ Global Viewage __
IBM's WorldBoard puts entire libraries of travel information in the palm of your hand. Looking through the GPS-assisted viewer, select a wireless network channel; the real-world things you see will be overlaid with text and graphics. Get tips on Madrid's restaurants from the Michelin Guide, or read the travel notes your friend took when he vacationed in Morocco. In your own neck of the woods, take a virtual tour of places you never have time to visit. When you're ready to sound off on what you've seen, just plug the viewer into your PDA and mark up the world your own way.

__ Available 2002.
WorldBoard: $400. IBM: www.research.ibm.com __

__ Model Tee __
MIT Media Lab's Golf Instructor Underwear keeps a very close eye on your form. As you swing, metallic fibers woven into the snug-fitting suit detect where and when the fabric stretches, deducing the movements of your individual muscles. The pocket processor then uses this data to reconstruct body motion and diagnose trouble spots. Plug the unit in and see yourself onscreen as a 3-D, animated model - you can rotate and zoom in to reveal bad habits that simple videotapes miss. The cloth even generates its own electricity, so you'll never need batteries.

__ Available 2003.
Golf Instructor Underwear: $300. MIT Media Lab: www.media.mit.edu. __

__ Headline Snooze Network __
Wake up, look at the time, and you'll really find out what kind of day you're in for. Hewlett-Packard Laboratories' Smart Alarm Clock - part of its "Cool Town" vision of personalized consumer products - checks your schedule, then queries the Net to decide when you should get going. If a jackknifed big rig is causing a major pileup on your route to work, it'll roust you earlier than usual. But if your morning flight's delayed, it lets you have more beauty rest. The Web-based service runs on other networked devices as well, turning your laptop or PDA into a traffic-minded rooster.

__ Available 2001.
Smart Alarm Clock: $100. HPLabs: www.hpl.hp.com. __

__ Positively Stunning __
Keep a safe zone around you with the Freeze Beam stun gun, which shoots beams of energy to immobilize enemies as far as 100 meters away. An argon-fluoride excimer laser creates a conductive two-lane path - a circuit - of ionized air between you and your target. The gun's generator then pumps out a pulsed direct current tuned to cause involuntary muscle contraction - without burns or cardiac arrest (assuming good health). This energy-intensive process requires a suitcaseful of equipment, so your weapon may work better for riot control than stopping a bear in the backcountry.

__ Available 2002.
Freeze Beam: $10,000. HSV: + 1 (619) 583 8247, www.hsvtechnologies.com. __