All products featured on WIRED are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links.
GPS cell phones. Wall-piercing radar scopes. The skinniest laptop you've ever seen. All proof that downturns don't stop innovation. This season's standouts will make you salivate.
So set aside any economic angst and let technolust rule.
Editors: Jennifer Hillner and Paul Spinrad Photographer: Craig Maxwell Stylist: Hiroshi Yoshida/Artist Untied Designer: Daniel Carter Writers: Denis Faye, Melissa Feldman, Eamon Hickey, Stacey Smith Lang, Dave Schiff, Tim Surette, Scott Taves, Andrew Tilin, Sonia Zjawinski Photo Coordinator: Anna Goldwater Alexander Photo Assistant: Sherry Heck Copy Editors: Pennie Collins, Merrill Gillaspy, Jennifer Prior, Hon Walker Research: Sarah Schmidt
Worm Bench: $4,850. R+D Design: +1 (718) 349 7240, www.r-d-design.com.
Personal Probe Want to examine microorganisms, analyze handwriting, or check your Firestones for tread separation? Scalar's redesigned ProScope USB Digital Microscope captures still, moving, and time-lapse images at 50X magnification, 640 x 480 resolution. The handheld device saves them to your desktop with the touch of a button. A 1X lens allows the unit to function as a webcam, and optional 100X and 200X lenses are available.
ProScope USB Digital Microscope: $199. Scalar: (800) 441 6877, www.scalarscopes.com.
Radio-Free Everywhere Philips' 220-watt FW-i1000 is the first stereo minisystem with online audio capability. Just press the Internet button, and it taps your home broadband connection to access more than 1,000 streams from around the world. You can sort stations by genre, language, or region, and the site-seeking iM tuning service comes free of charge.
FW-i1000 Internet Audio Mini System: $499. Philips Consumer Electronics: (800) 531 0039, www.philips.com.
The Great Leveler Stanley's IntelliBeacon ensures that your Lichtenstein is always well hung. Put the level atop any ladder or table, and a spinning laser beam shines a dead-horizontal line around the room or a plumb-vertical ray from floor to ceiling. It's the perfect light-enabled ruler.
IntelliBeacon: $1,500. Stanley: (800) 782 6539, www.stanleyworks.com.
Color, Fast The bubble-shaped LightOrb adds mood to any space. A microprocessor inside controls red, green, and blue LEDs for a full spectrum of luminous possibilities. Push the face of the orb to select its glow mode: one solid hue, blinking multicolors, or a gradually changing wash.
LightOrb: $25. Color Kinetics: (888) 385 5742, www.cksauce.com.
Slight Bright The Scenium HDTV with built-in DirectTV receiver is a boob-tuber's dream. The 50-inch picture shines 25 percent brighter than typical LCDs, and the unit has a viewable angle of nearly 180 degrees. Amazingly, this monster weighs only 100 pounds – hardly portable, but the days of pulling a groin muscle moving the big screen are over.
Scenium L50000: $7,499. RCA: +1 (317) 587 0887, www.rcascenium.com.
Commercial Break Because ReplayTV 4320 can automatically skip the ads it captured while recording a TV show, you need never disturb the flow by playing fast-forward target practice. The digital video recorder holds 320 hours of programming – more than any other – and can connect via cable or DSL. This means you'll be able to download movies once the entertainment industry gets its act together for video-on-demand.
ReplayTV 4320: $1,999. ReplayTV: (877) 737 5298, www.replaytv.com.
Restoreth The Soles Whether you're pounding the pavement or power shopping, your feet routinely get worked. Click the foot-activated controls of Interactive Health's WarmAir Percussive Massager, and your tired dogs are bathed in comfort. Acupressure nodes and twin Ergo-Pad heads on the double footprint-shaped platform deliver a stress-melting massage while 115-degree air blows away any recollection of standing all day.
WarmAir Percussive Massager: $90. Interactive Health: (800) 742 5493.
Light The Night Swivel the Navigator's solar panel to catch maximum rays by day, and it'll provide four hours of light after dark. Perfect for car camping, the 5.5-pound fluorescent lantern has a motion-sensor mode, so it automatically brightens when you set out on a nocturnal mission.
Solar Navigator: $99. Gaiam: +1 (303) 464 3600, www.gaiam.com.
Fold 'n' Go Around town, the Di Blasi motorbike gets more than 100 miles per gallon and cruises at 30 mph. For off-road excursions, fold up the 68-pound cruiser and throw it in a car trunk. The bike sets up and kick-starts in a couple of minutes – you'll be tearing through those scenic apple orchards in no time.
Di Blasi Express: $2,479. Distributed by Midnight Pass: (877) 844 4438, www.midnightpass.com.
Monster PDA Engineers at Taiwan's CMC Magnetics have built an amazing beast. Their multitool works as a camera, MP3 player, FM radio, voice recorder, and PDA. The 11-ounce CyberBoy captures stills and video clips at VGA resolution, and it syncs data and downloads content using USB. Other essentials include a scheduler, address book, and task list.
CyberBoy: $350. Distributed by Gadget Universe: +1 (818) 349 0863, www.gadgetuniverse.com.
Beautiful Streamer Most Internet appliances are just dumbed-down computers, but SimpleFi is a welcome exception. It streams audio wirelessly from a PC to your higher-fi home stereo, and it follows your preferences to find and cache new Internet radio content. Enjoy the rich sonic pageant online without sitting at a desk or burning yet another CD.
SimpleFi: $279. Simple Devices: +1 (650) 342 7848,www.simpledevices.com.
Barely There You've never seen a laptop thinner than the PC-UM10. At 0.65 inch thick, it makes other slim models look bloated. And this less-than 3-pound wisp is no weakling. A 600-MHz Pentium III processor, a 20-gig hard drive, and 128 Mbytes of RAM are standard. The optional extended-life battery mobilizes it with nine hours of juice.
PC-UM10: $1,999. Sharp Systems of America: (800) 237 4277, www.sharp-business.com.
Verbal Latitude First to comply with the FCC's mandate, Samsung slid a GPS receiver into a cell phone. The new chip makes getting exact driving instructions a snap. The 4.1-ounce handset runs on the CDMA network and includes an improved interface that veteran Samsung users will especially appreciate.
GPT: $170. Samsung: (800) 726 7864, www.samsungelectronics.com.
Total Detection Because merely identifying every laser and radar type known to the law isn't enough, the GPSRD detector separates the benign from the bad. It uses a GPS and electronic compass to locate and remember any potential false alarms. Next time you drive by that microwave tower that puts out a speed trap-like field, you can keep the pedal to the metal.
GPSRD: $249. Uniden: +1 (817) 858 3300, www.uniden.com.
Peace, Love, and Data GreenServ works to sustain the environment along with your business. Optimized for low-power consumption, each server draws a measly 30 watts to run a 700-MHz VIA C3 processor with 20 Gbytes of storage and 64 Mbytes of SDRAM. Do your part to prevent rolling blackouts in the global village.
GreenServ 1150 Rack Server: $1,695. Rauch Medien: (877) 324 0887, www.rauchmedien.com.
GPScope Plop this compact 8-inch telescope down anywhere and power it up, and its onboard GPS receiver and electronic compass will home in on the celestial body of your choice. What could be more elegant? Connect it to your PC to customize and update its database of 40,000-plus heavenly objects, should a new star appear.
NexStar 8 GPS: $2,499. Celestron: +1 (310) 328 9560, www.celestron.com.
Fear of Frying The perfect omelette used to require a sublime awareness of time, temperature, and medium. Now all you need is a Smart Pan. Just select Egg, for example, and the handle-mounted control module flashes and beeps when the nonstick surface achieves optimal temperature – and beeps faster if things get too hot. The 12.5-inch pan is cast in hard-anodized aluminum.
Smart Pan: $100. Digital Cookware: (888) 442 6256, www.digitalcookwareinc.com.
Talk Is Cheap Vending-machine cell phones once existed only in William Gibson's fiction. Now 30 bucks gets you 60 minutes of prepaid US airtime using Hop-On's disposable, recyclable cell. Just press the Call button, say the phone number, and an automated operator takes care of the rest. Outgoing calls only, for now – but if you don't like being interrupted, this could work to your advantage.
Digital Cell Phone: $30. Hop-On Wireless: +1 (714) 590 4901, www.hop-onwireless.com.
The Cutting Edge The poor turning radius of lawn tractors forces many backyard greenkeepers to craft cutting patterns more intricate than alien crop circles. But the SST18's front and rear wheels can whirl at different speeds and even counter-rotate, allowing the mower to execute tight, turf-friendly spins and travel in neat, adjacent rows. The steering system adjusts to make maneuvering more natural when you're running in reverse – dealing another competitive blow to the Joneses.
SST18 Lawn Tractor: $4,999. John Deere: (800) 537 8233, www.johndeere.com.
Sit For A King The Jasmin Washlet, new to the US, lets you experience intimate hygiene as citizens of other industrialized nations do. The unit easily replaces most toilet seats and features front and rear warm-water spray, pulsating massage, seat warming, air deodorization, and a heated-air dryer. You control all this royal treatment via a wall-mounted or handheld remote.
Jasmin Washlet: $1,199. Toto USA: (800) 350 8686, www.totousa.com.
Synthetics are the fabric of today's music. As a wave of post-MP3 mixing gear and software floods the market, the line between manipulating someone else's recording and playing an instrument yourself continues to blur. Guitarists need not worry about tuning or breaking strings. Pianists can squeeze MIDI from their baby grands. Turntablists don't need vinyl. And bootlegging has gone digital. With tools like these, processing makes perfect – while we still appreciate the real thing.
A Chilling Experience You may feel light-headed after listening to Harman/Kardon's three-piece Champagne speaker system for PCs: Vmax technology mimics the full surround-sound experience. The set, finished in wood grain, includes a bucketlike Magnum subwoofer that sits on the floor and twin flute-shaped Odyssey speakers for your desktop.
Champagne: $170. Harman/Kardon: +1 (877) 266 6202, www.harmanmultimedia.com.
Vinyl Killer Pioneer's CDJ-1000 isn't the first CD player that you can scratch on, but it's the most sophisticated. It digitally re-creates the sound of a needle on vinyl, following your maneuvers on an LP-sized wheel that feels like a standard turntable. Load a CD, and a display maps the overall volume of the music so you can visually locate the passage you want. Or you can store cue points on a removable MMC memory card.
CDJ-1000 Digital Vinyl Turntable: $1,149. Pioneer Electronics: (800) 782 7210, www.pioneerelectronics.com.
Liquid Ivories Teach your Steinway new tricks with the Piano Bar. Install the strip above the keys of any grand or upright. Optical sensors translate your ivory tickling into MIDI, letting you render the music as any sound and assign different voices to different octaves, using standard MIDI equipment.
Piano Bar: $2,350. Buchla and Associates: +1 (510) 528 4446, www.buchla.com.
Dock 'n' Roll If the MP3 revolution is about sharing, why do all the players take a single set of headphones? PlayDock PD200 converts the Creative Nomad Jukebox into a scene-making MP3 boom box. Charge up the battery and blast your favorite tracks for 10 hours of beer-to-beer networking.
PlayDock PD200: $200. Cambridge SoundWorks: (800) 367 4434, www.hifi.com.
No Strings Attached After years of making custom MIDI guitars, Harvey Starr standardized his design and created the production-ready Ztar Z6. The electronic ax has long buttons at each would-be intersection of fret and string, and six rubber ridges to note strumming and picking. Now devoted guitar players can rival keyboard geeks in composing MIDI tracks and exploiting synthetic sounds.
Ztar Z6: $2,195. Starr Labs: +1 (619) 233 6715, www.starrlabs.com.
Record Keeper Archos' Jukebox Recorder encodes and saves 100 hours of music on its 6-gig hard drive, letting you convert old vinyl to MP3 without a PC, in real time. The device is non-SDMI compliant – like the downloadable music players of yore – so it plays shared MP3s freely, without checking whether anyone has paid.
Jukebox Recorder: $349. Archos: +1 (949) 453 1121, www.archos.com.
Plug-and-Play DJ Looking to become a dexterous DJ fast? Plug DM2 into a PC, and cut your chops on Mixman software, twin turntables, a fader, and a warper. Build compelling mixes from the included library of samples or import your own tracks from a PC or Mixman's Web site. Soon you'll understand why DJs like to stay up all night.
DM2 Digital Music Mixer: $120. Apzu: www.mydm2.com.
Live-Action Audio Roland's DiscLab records, mixes, and burns a CD of a live performance on location. Plug a couple of mikes into the 8-track mini audio workstation to bootleg a show or capture that living-room recital. You can mix the music in your lap, add effects and samples, then use the onboard CD-R/RW drive to write it onto a stereo-playable disc.
DiscLab CDX-1: $1,495. Roland: +1 (323) 890 3700, www.rolandus.com.
Pacesetter Pop a MetroGnome MM-1 in your ear, and you'll march to the beat of your own drummer. The 0.2-ounce, wearable metronome keeps tempo at 40 to 208 beats per minute, with time signatures ranging from 1 to 7 per measure. It quietly keeps you in check during practice or performances – and can help maintain your pace while you're jogging.
MetroGnome MM-1: $25. Korg: +1 (516) 333 9100, www.korg.com.
Short Stack Cyber-Twin looks like a classic guitar amp, but the 130-watt Fender mimics the sounds of dozens of vintage amplifiers, selectable at the turn of a knob. It also simulates 11 types of reverb, and you can establish your own sonic personalities to match your vacuum tube dreams.
Cyber-Twin: $1,700. Fender Musical Instruments: +1 (480) 596 9690, www.fender.com.
Slab-Stick Black Diamond's Bionic Crampon never met terrain it couldn't bite. The trap's low-profile, chromoly steel frame keeps boot close to rock for fancy footwork. When you reach a 60-foot ice wall, the Bionic's fully vertical points dig in for the climb.
Bionic Crampon: $178. Black Diamond: +1 (801) 278 5533, www.blackdiamondequipment.com.
Climate Controller Climb confidently into your single-prop – density altitude numbers are a button-push away. The pocket-sized Kestrel 4000 gauges the usual array of meteorological data (barometric pressure, altitude, temperature) as well as that which serves resident fire jumpers and bush pilots (wind speed, humidity, and dew point).
Kestrel 4000 Pocket Weather Tracker: $329. Nielsen-Kellerman: (800) 784 4221, www.nkhome.com.
Dirt Devil Porsche owners dream about the Cannibal's power-to-weight ratio. With each of its double-overhead cam engine's 33 horses responsible for pushing just 11.5 pounds, the four-wheeler devours motocross courses and skyscraping dunes. An aerospace aluminum frame houses a replaceable brush guard – just in case the disc brakes don't stop the 70-mph machine short enough.
Cannibal: $6,995. Cannondale: (800) 668 6872, www.cannondalemotorcycle.com.
Rapid Results Here's a kayak that truly goes with the flow. In white water, the agile 7.5-foot Mutant spins happily in frothy holes. Paddle a winding creek and the asymmetrical, rounded hull ensures maneuverability. Run into a two-story drop and take the plunge: The river boat's squat, buoyant body keeps its nose from scraping rocky bottom.
Mutant: $1,125. Wave Sport: +1 (336) 434 7470, www.wavesport.com.
Above Freezing Tell your little adventurers what Iditarod survivors already know: The Cocoon4 won't leave them cold. Zip a kid into the small-body version of the sealed goose-down bag, then add air with the included pump to increase the 8-pounder's insulating power. Sleepovers on the tundra remain whine-free to 45 below.
Cocoon4 Junior: $795. Pneugear: (877) 886 1181, www.pneugear.com.
Full Mettle Jacket Smokey's in line for one of these. The soft fleece hide of the Thermal FR swaps polyester for nearly melt-proof Nomex fabric – the material of choice for Formula One racers. The jacket is tested to withstand 1,200 flame-enhanced degrees.
Polartec Thermal FR Jacket: $180. Workrite: (800) 521 1888, www.workrite.com.
Where The Rubber Meets The Road The LL1 is the first street luge for the People. Like its custom-built, race-ready peers, the aluminum sled is steady at 65 mph – thanks to overdeveloped skate trucks and Goodyear rubber. But this road board's simplified design costs a quarter of what the one-offs run, and the movable boom and headrest accommodate laid-back adults or kids.
LL1: $400. American Land Luge: +1 (603) 783 9692, www.americanlandluge.com.
Hydro-Dynamic Be a human outboard with Pure Carbon fins. Hand-laid and laminated, the 2-foot-long, carbon-fiber blades bend with each kick and then snap back into shape, providing spear fishermen and breath-hold divers with maximum thrust. The rubber foot pocket offers a tight fit, which is reassuring when you're 260 feet down and swimming to the surface for air.
Pure Carbon Fin: $420. Sporasub: (800) 874 3236.
Springboard The Ultra Core Trip keeps wakeboarders out of the water. Liquid Force's proprietary balsa core is lighter, stronger, and livelier than foam, and forms the heart of the launchpad. So hit the wake on the gossamer 5.4-pound plank and sky high enough for flips or air rallies. Six fins underneath the concave bottom supply traction for hard cuts and successful one-point landings.
Ultra Core Trip: $600. Liquid Force: (800) 820 7781, www.liquidforce.com.
Running On Air The Airboard doesn't just ride like it's on air. It is on air. The one-man hovercraft's 13-inch impeller keeps the fiberglass skimmer 4 inches above the ground and moving as fast as 16 mph. Fly over flat land or sea and use the outrigger brushes to corner around rubbernecking traffic.
Airboard: $8,000. Arbortech: www.airboard.com.au.
With digicams hitting the 5-megapixel mark, resolution should no longer dictate which shooter you choose. Focus on boxes with intelligent designs and extras like onboard printers or accessories like ultraslim scanners, stylish cases, and back-pocket storage banks. With this many options, cameras are becoming multifunction devices in their own right.
Sneak Peek Wear your heart on your feet, if not on your sleeve. Nike's Runamok Pic slip-ons have a plastic window on the top flap that's designed to display the small, wide photos taken with a Polaroid i-Zone camera. Slide in your favorite shots to complement your latest mood or attire.
Runamok Pic: $60. Nike: (800) 344 6453, www.nike.com.
More is Less For one-fourth the price of competing 5-megapixel SLRs, Minolta's DiMAGE 7 brings high-end digital photography within the means of people who held on to their stocks. The 17-ounce sharpshooter has a lightweight magnesium body and comes with a versatile 7X optical zoom lens.
DiMAGE 7: $1,499. Minolta: (800) 528 4767, www.minoltausa.com.
Double Duty Acting as both a USB-connected webcam and a 1.3-megapixel camera, Intel's inexpensive Pocket Digital PC Camera uses a proprietary compression scheme to shoehorn up to 256 VGA-quality stills, or two minutes of 320 x 240 video, onto just 16 Mbytes of internal memory. A Smart Media slot lets you add more, like a 64-meg card, should you want to bank well over a thousand shots at VGA resolution.
Pocket Digital PC Camera: $169. Intel: (800) 538 3373, www.intel.com.
Image Conscious Yes, you can be a serious photographer without a boring all-black bag. The Glamour Photo Case comes in bright red, blue, and green. Built from the same tough nylon used in Dickies workwear, it holds two SLRs or a digital video camera, and a host of lenses.
Glamour Photo Case: $150. Crumpler: (800) 664 0344, www.crumplerusa.com.
On-The-Spot Printer Similar in stature to a digital camera, Sony's DPP-MP1 dye-sub-printer inks out vivid, business card-sized photos in 90 seconds. The 1-pound Fotomat eschews connectors for image-filled Memory Sticks from compatible cameras. An optional battery kit ($69) means you can print your pictures wherever and whenever you shoot them.
DPP-MP1: $280. Sony: (800) 352 7669, www.sony.com.
Instant Gratification Polaroid's mio, a curvaceous instamatic, spits out wallet-sized prints. Two focus settings handle either up-close-and-personal portraits or far-off landscapes. And unlike those of other recent Polaroids, the mio's lens deftly retracts when the camera's idle, so the glass won't get scratched.
mio: $99. Polaroid: (800) 343 5000, www.polaroid.com.
Developer On Board One-up the inkjet set with SiPix's VGA-resolution digicam. Its onboard printer delivers continuous-tone 2 x 2.5-inch glossies on demand. Hook it up to a PC via USB and you can print snaps taken by other cameras.
SCP-1000 Shoot & Print: $299. SiPix: (866) 888 1678, www.sipix.com.
Funnier Home Videos JVC's GR-DVP3 helps videographers dress up run-of-the-mill footage. Connect the pocket-sized DV camcorder to your PC or Mac to download MP3 sound effects like laughter, applause, and cheering. Easy-access buttons let you punch in any one of 12 sounds, allowing you to embellish as you film.
GR-DVP3: $1,700. JVC: (800) 526 5308, www.jvc.com.
Paper To Pixels Why waste desk space and dollars on a big scanner when you just want to digitize snapshots? HP's 6 x 10-inch scanner turns standard prints into 300-dpi files in less than 14 seconds each. Put your photo albums on disk or online in a few dark winter nights.
Photo Scanner 1000: $99. Hewlett-Packard: (800) 722 6538, www.hp.com.
Memory Bank Filled up your memory card? Pop it into the Digital Album, offload your snaps, and go shoot some more. The battery-powered DA reads all major flash memory formats and holds 20 gigs' worth of photos on its 2.5-inch hard drive. Plus, it plays back on any TV using an AV cable, so no one can escape your vacation slide show.
Digital Album (20-Gbyte): $599. Nixvue: (800) 664 0344, www.nixvue.com.
What do kids want? The usual: tools that give them superpowers, more knowledge, or a creative edge. The little sponges absorb new technologies effortlessly and have a sixth sense for what's lame. Our picks – from a hands-free controller to a play movie camera – engage kids of all ages in fun, real-world experiences that go beyond staring at a computer screen.
An Alien At My Table Me-Mo-Mo uses a novel teaching tactic: ignorance. The spindly alien arrives speaking the gibberish of his home world, and kids must help him learn language, math, and logic by playing a series of games. As they complete each activity, inputting answers with a wireless IR keyboard, Me-Mo-Mo wiggles, sings, and gets more articulate. Payoff!
Me-Mo-Mo (ages 5 to 8): $50. VTech Industries: (800) 521 2010, www.vtechkids.com.
Eraserhead Watch out, Crayola: Pixter is Photoshop on training wheels, packed into a travel-ready tablet. Draw, save, and erase doodles, and use a digital rubber stamp to add flocks of ducks or flutters of butterflies.
Pixter (ages 5 and up): $39. Fisher-Price: (800) 432 5437, www.fisherprice.com.
Look, Ma, No Hands! The cymouse headset's infrared sensor translates your nods and shakes into mouse input. For example, navigate Final Fantasy by shaking your head, or rotate weapons in Doom II with a quick nod, leaving your hands free to punch, kick, or unleash whatever zombie-incinerating ordnance you're packing.
cymouse (ages 8 and up): $179. Maui Innovative Peripherals: +1 (808) 875 0555, www.cymouse.com.
Robodog 2 i-Cybie moves as gracefully as Sony's 1999 Aibo, but thanks to declining technology costs, sells for less than one-fourth the price. The cybercanine does tricks when you either clap or say commands (for the latter, you'll need to complete voice-recognition training). Using IR, i-Cybie can chat with its Robo-Chi predecessors, and when the pup "tinkles" it sounds like breaking glass. Bad dog!
i-Cybie (ages 14 and up): $199. Tiger Electronics: (800) 844 3733, www.tigertoys.com.
Cruise Control Radio-control gliders can be hard to navigate, but a chip inside the Intruder facilitates takeoff and landing by grabbing the helm in times of need. A Novice setting softens the learning curve, and an Auto Land function brings the foam-bodied plane safely down to earth should it leave radio signal range.
E-Chargers Intruder (ages 8 and up): $60. Spin Master Toys: (800) 622 8339, www.spinmaster.com.
Five Ways To Fling A Cat It's raining cats and, well, cats. Fine-tune Cat-A-Pults' five adjustable flingers, and you've set up a long-running chain reaction that sends all the foam felines into flight. Kids and parents alike will appreciate this set, designed by Arthur Ganson, whose real-life Rube Goldberg-like creations have been exhibited nationwide.
Cat-A-Pults (ages 6 and up): $40. Exploratorium: +1 (415) 561 0390, www.exploratoriumstore.com.
Penultimate Frisbee This mischief-friendly disc capitalizes on the eye's persistence of vision, turning a single row of LEDs into a flying, programmable billboard. A bit of button-pressing enters any text message up to 12 characters long (including spaces), which appears when the disc is thrown Frisbee-style across the night sky. There's no censorship filter, making this flying ode to the First Amendment a must for the terminally immature.
E*Writer (ages 5 and up): $20. MGX International: (800) 477 6667, www.1-800-4promos.com.
Poppin' Wheelies Destined to infuriate strip mall security guards, Heelys are the next step in personal mobility. Each shoe has a detachable 36-mm urethane wheel and fast-rolling ABEC-7 microbearings under the heel. The arrangement allows teens, urban commuters, and warehouse fulfillment monkeys to transition instantly from ordinary walking to a speedy, long-stepping roll – much to the amazement of bystanders and the horror of anyone legally liable. Getting the hang of it is tricky, so put on your urban armor before taking these to the sidewalk.
Heelys (ages 10 and up): $100. Heeling Sports: (866) 433 5464, www.heelys.com.
Classroom Confidential Already the bane of schoolteachers nationwide, Cybiko's handheld now does even more. The new version adds an MP3 player (available free with rebate), walkie-talkie, and voice recorder to its wireless gaming, text messaging, and PDA capabilities.
CybikoXtreme: $150. Cybiko: +1 (630) 529 1029, www.cybiko.com.
Auteur-Matic Future Fellinis rejoice: The heir to Pixelvision is here. The Play Digital Movie Creator stores four minutes of video with sound. Bundled postproduction software provides titles, filters, special effects, and a sound library. Get your kids hooked and save years of wear and tear on the family camcorder.
Intel Play Digital Movie Creator (ages 8 and up): $99. Intel, (800) 521 2010, www.intelplay.com.
You're on a mission. Clad in full party regalia, charged with a power nap (or an equivalent), you and your posse head out to a massive, all-night rave. It's happening in a remote, deserted location, and details are sketchy. So you employ the latest spy gear to help you lock on your target, scope it out, and join the fray. With such hardcore equipment, it's a cinch to get your groove on.
See Through Walls Wondering if you've found the right address – or looking for a vacant building for your own little splinter party? Place the RV2000 against a wall and you can "see" ravers moving on the other side, represented as blips on a screen. The radar device detects action from up to 30 feet away through wood, concrete, fiberglass, and other nonmetal materials. Under more serious circumstances, the system – which can be legally operated only by police and other public safety agencies – is used to suss out hostage situations.
RV2000: $25,000. Time Domain: +1 (256) 922 9229, www.timedomain.com.
Getting A Visual That postindustrial panorama of urban decay now showing above the dance floor is coming to you live from a nearby toxic waste facility. Delivering the artsy feed is the EntryLink wireless video camera, which resists water, impacts, and chemicals as it beams images to a receiver as far as 5 miles away. Hazmat units use this system to allow a command point to see and hear what an armored entry team encounters.
Hazmat EntryLink Wireless Video System: $14,995. Search Systems: (800) 722 2824, www.searchsystems.com.
Wireless Tap You've reached the secret, last-minute recording that divulges a rave's location and password. Get the details on tape with P3's Micro Cellular Recorder, which simply plugs into your cell's headphone jack. Because close-range signals can muddy a tape, standard microcassette recorders have trouble tapping mobile phones. But P3 shields the cassette to eliminate this type of interference.
Micro Cellular Recorder: $59. P3 International: (800) 895 6262, www.p3international.com.
Proof-Positive ID Visionics' Identification Based Information System can help the door staff double-check IDs. The handheld data terminal snaps photos of would-be gate-crashers' mugs, scans their fingerprints, or reads the magnetic strip on their driver's licenses. It then whisks the info away to a central server for quick, sure identification. So you're not on the guest list and brought a fake ID? They'll know who you are anyway – and whether you're wanted by the authorities.
IBIS: $30,000 and up. Visionics: +1 (201) 332 9213, www.visionics.com.
Aerial Recon Hitting an outdoor bash? Floatopod lets you survey the scene before you go. A Panasonic videocam is buoyed by a tethered balloon that withstands BB guns and hurricanes. You can pan, tilt, zoom, and monitor from anywhere via the Web. You'll see if the party's an empty field or the next Woodstock.
Floatopod Skydock with Panasonic WV-CS554 Dome Camera: $16,200. Floatograph: +1 (707) 253 0485, www.floatograph.com.
Video Bug With CUBE at the party, everybody's a star – whether they know it or not. The Bic lighter-sized color-video transmitter has a lens opening of less than 1 mm, and can be built into furniture and fixtures in the bar or elsewhere. The peepcam sends encoded 2.4 GHz signals to a receiver unit strategically placed in a quieter locale. Multiple installations let timid guests take in the wild proceedings from a safer, remote area.
CUBE: $5,000. Quark Research Group: (800) 343 6443, www.quarkfiles.com.
Low Profiler The Ultra-Pocket Digital camera stows away in your shirt or pants without bulging and takes quick, 640- by 480-pixel candids. The Autobrite sensor excels in low light, meaning you won't interrupt the natural mood with a flash. The 8-Mbyte memory holds 24 images – enough to jar many dim recollections the next day.
Ultra-Pocket Digital: $129. SMaL Camera Technologies: +1 (617) 806 1970, www.smalcamera.com.
Data Transport Use the tiny, shiny Firefly to put your home-mixed ambient tracks onto the PC-powered audio system playing in the chill room. Weighing just 5 ounces, the 4-inch hard drive holds 5 Gbytes of data and transfers it via firewire at 12 Mbps. This makes it perfect for transporting and quickly uploading party music – or more sensitive information, like Antarctic military base blueprints.
Firefly 5GB Super Slim Drive: $400. SmartDisk: +1 (941) 436 2500,www.smartdisk.com.
Small-Scale Disarmament Check your weapons at the door. Garrett's SuperWand, the first handheld metal detector with any sense of style, helps keep the peace by answering guns, knives, and brass knuckles with either an audible alarm or a silent vibrate/ LED signal. The operator gets frisky by sliding a hand into the ergonomic handle and waving it over the subject's body.
SuperWand: $230. Garrett Metal Detectors: (800) 234 6151, www.garrett.com.
Cell Block Mobile phone interruptions kill the buzz at any social gathering, but the Executive Silencer eliminates the problem. Switch it on and all mobiles within 60 feet are rendered useless with blasts of radio noise. In the US, you're required to gain FCC approval before using the device, since it also knocks out police bands. But you can buy the mini-jammer at manufacturer CCS's London store, for use where local laws permit.
Executive Silencer CTN102: $2,500. CCS International: +1 (212) 688 8500, www.spyzone.com.
Night Vision If the dimly lit ocean of revelers has separated you from your friends, Nikon's NightSearch monocular can help you spot them. This 14-ounce, water-resistant night-vision scope features improved Gen II tubes, which are almost as sensitive as top military-issue (Gen III) imaging systems – and vastly superior to the widely marketed units built around cheap, Russian-made optics.
7409 NightSearch: $2,000. Nikon: (800) 645 6687, www.nikonusa.com.
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