We're seeing them much more these days – gadgets and gizmos squished and mashed together to form new supergadgets. From the cameraphone, once considered cutting edge and now the favorite of celebrity stalkers everywhere, we've gotten to the all-in-one cellphone-camera-PDA-e-mail-Web device. But are some manufacturers taking things a bit too far?

The Swiss Army knife, perhaps the original all-in-one gadget, went high tech in 2004 with the introduction of the Victorinox SwissMemory, a little red pocketknife with a gigabyte of flash memory storage built in. The SwissBit S.beat goes further down the path to digital domination with the introduction of a line MP3 player-equipped knives in capacities of up to four gigabytes. Talk about a bummer if you forget to put that one in your checked baggage!

If you prefer driving to flying, the gadgetmakers have you more than covered. Motorola's v325 with VZ Navigator is one of what are sure to be many cellphones with GPS navigation capabilities built in. I can see the appeal here: You're talking on your phone in the car already, so why not stare at it for directions, too? What? Driving? Focusing on the road? No problem....

The iPod is spawning its own kind of gadget convergence. As it has evolved, it has gone from storing and playing just five gigabytes of music, to holding 60 gigs of music, photos, movies, and whatever else one needs to tote around town. Car integration is big in this category too. FM transmitters broadcast your tunes to your car radio, sometimes charging your player at the same time. Whole companies base their businesses around accessories for the iPod and portable devices like it.

A host of major automakers are playing nice with the iPod, too, offering factory-installed hookups for the popular music player. That makes sense to me, as do developments like the new Infiniti G35's built-in hard drive. What doesn't make sense are the car- and computermakers trying to go the other way: Enter the Ferrari and Lamborghini-themed laptops (complete with engine-noise start-up sounds!) What!?

The home has seen even more gadget convergence. First we saw the combination VCR/TV. Then the DVD/TV and DVD/VCR launched. Now you can get a refrigerator with a TV or even a blender with an integrated recipe database and LCD. Home-theater seating comes with built-in speakers or a high-tech rumble function. TVs have long been in more rooms than just the den, but they're now in the bathroom, too. And of course, there's the multifunction remote, which has gone from simply controlling a TV and VCR to being the central command center of one's entire house.

Do people really want these things? I mean, is there really someone out there saying, "Gee, if only I had a combination flashlight/toothbrush/garlic press"? Of course not. A lot of these "innovative" devices are the answer to questions never asked. Who needs a TV on their refrigerator? 

But some of this gadget convergence is really cool. Take, for instance, SanDisk's new Secure Digital flash memory cards that have a built-in USB connector. No more searching for your digital camera's cable, or fumbling with a card reader! Or, how 'bout Kidde's combination smoke and carbon monoxide detector? Brilliant! Better still, DuPont's new smoke detector that integrates with a common light socket, so you never have to replace the batteries.

Innovations like these provide convenience and convergence that people can really use. Here's hoping there are more combo gadgets out there like them, and fewer like these.

Your alarm goes off in the morning.  You roll over, hit the snooze button on the alarm clock, and go back to sleep. 

It goes off again a few minutes later.  Snooze button again. 

And again. 

And again.

It's a problem familiar to many of us.  But what if the next time you rolled over to hit the snooze button, what if the alarm clock wasn't there, but instead had wandered to the other side of the room?

That's the idea that Gauri Nanda, a grad student at MIT, had.  Her solution is Clocky, a robotic alarm clock on wheels. 

While the shag-carpeted, thickly-padded Clocky starts on the bedside table, after the snooze button is hit, it rolls onto the floor and around the room, randomly finding someplace to settle.  Thus, when the alarm goes off the next time, the sleeper will have to get up and find it.

Naturally, the act of finding Clocky is just as waking, if not more so, than the alarm itself.  That's the whole point.  Nanda writes on her Clocky web page:

I've known people who put the alarm clock in the living room, but then forget to set it before going to sleep. Others say they are trying to wean themselves off of snoozing, as if it was a bad habit like smoking or drinking. In the foggy logic of our drowsiness, we disable the very device that is meant to wake us up. Having the alarm clock hide from me was just the most obvious way I could think of to get out of bed.

Nanda mentions that she was inspired in part by her kittens waking her in the morning by biting her toes.  Having myself been woken by a surly, nose-biting cat, I can vouch that a small, furry entity yowling from a hidden location makes one alert quickly.  And Clocky doesn't need to be fed, an advantage that many furry entities lack.

Clocky "is supposed to remind you of a troubled pet that you love anyway," Nanda told the Boston Globe.  And her troubled pet is drawing a lot of interest: Clocky is "one of the most-talked about Media Lab inventions in years," according to the Globe, and Nanda's scheduled to appear on "Good Morning America" next week to demonstrate it.

She's got even bigger plans for the next version of Clocky: tag-team alarm clocks.

Let's say there are two people with different sleep schedules sharing a room. Maybe one person's Clocky can tell the other to hush up if it has sounded off one too many times. Or, maybe they can form an alliance and simultaneously target the offending over-sleeper. I have adopted the philosophy that when two devices communicate, they can solve more problems—that is, two Clockies are better than one.

You won't be buying a Clocky any time soon though.  As her page notes, Clocky "is not commercially available at this time."  While she's planning to market Clocky in the future, she told the Globe that Christmas may be too soon for it to hit the shelves.  "I'd project maybe in a year," she said.

So it looks like some of us will be tapping snooze buttons until then. 

I love wi-fi. I spend many the morning padding around the house in my pyjamas, laptop clutched in hand, surfing the Web. All thanks to my dsl connection and a Linksys wireless router. Ah heaven.

But now I'll be able to recreate that Wi-Fi experience at 30,000 feet, although I won't be in my pyjamas. That's because New Scientist reports that Lufthansa, the German airline, started a new service Monday that allows passengers to Web surf or send e-mails from their own Wi-Fi-enabled laptop or handheld computers instead of using the more "limited services" (to put it politely) some airlines offer through their seatback displays.

The system, called FlyNet, has already been installed on five of Lufthansa's fleet, with plans to extend this to all 80 of the German airline's long-haul planes by the end of 2006. Passengers will share a download capability of five megabits per second, while uploading traffic, such as sending emails, will run at one Mbps. This speed of connection is comparable with that used in a small office.

The cost is actually pretty decent. Ten bucks for half and hour, or $30 for the entire flight. (The New Scientist article reminds us that some seatback services charge $16 to send one e-mail.) And when your flying, say from Munich to Los Angeles, you've got some time to burn.

This is possible thanks to the Boeing company Connexion and to ten geostationary satellites circling the Earth at 36,00 kilometers (about 22, 300 miles). Several other airlines have already indicated they are interested in setting up similar services.

But what about all that interference with flight equipment? Will we be endangering the lives of fellow passengers if we check our e-mail, or look for a stock quote? Lufthansa has already considered that, and the service will only be offered at "cruising altitude."

"Meine Damen und Herren, the captain has switch off the seat belt sign. You are now free to find out the latest score in the Red Sox game...."

Ah, life, liberty and the pursuit of ... a notebook computer battery that last more than a couple of hours, if that.

Oh, there have been promises made in the past, but most of them have proven to be little more than wishful thinking. But there may be hope, dear friends, and in the near future, thanks to methanol.

The IDG News Service reports that Samsung, the South Korean electronics giant, has successfully developed a direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC). These cells mix methanol with air and water to create power. Samsung wants to use the technology to develop "long-lasting" batteries for electronic devices like notebook computers and mobile telephones. Samsung says these new batteries could last up to ten hours without a charge.

So when will this brave new battery world be upon us?

DMFCs for smaller devices like mobile telephones or PDAs are being developed now and are expected sometime within the next one to three years, according to estimates from companies developing the technology.

Meanwhile in Redmond....

TechWeb reports that Microsoft pulled a bit of a shocker this week: it posted source code under the Open Source Initiative's Common Public License. (For my mom, et al., this means Microsoft freely shared 'some' of its proprietary code, which is equivalent to Scrooge McDuck sharing one of his nickels.)

The source code posted to the Internet was for a tool set, dubbed WiX for Windows Installer XML, that targets developers building Windows installation packages from XML source code. These are the same tools that Microsoft uses internally to create installers for its products, including Office, SQLServer, and BizTalk Server. Code for the tool set, which consists of a compiler, linker, a library tool, and a decompiler, has been posted to SourceForge.net, a hosting site for open source projects and code.

A Microsoft employee, Rob Mensching, explained on the SourceForge site that several years ago most people inside Microsoft didn't understand "what the Open Source community was really about," so he "wanted to improve that understanding by providing an example."

Hmm. I think the European Commission's recent decision to fine Microsoft $613 million dollars for breaking EU competition law, and the numerous other lawsuits that the Redmond company still faces in the US (and Japan, and elsewhere), provided a much clearer example to Mr. Gates and Mr. Ballmer of the benefits of embracing the Open Source movement, even in this relatively mild way. (by Tom Regan)

Okay, this is cool. CNN/Money is reporting that Google is going to offer a free e-mail product that "should be far superior to Yahoo! and Hotmail." Google announced Thursday it had begun testing the new service, called Gmail.

Google said Gmail would allow users to search through their e-mail in a fashion similar to the way that they would use the Google search engine. What's more, Gmail subscribers will have an e-mail box that can store up to 1,000 megabytes of information...that's 500,000 Web pages worth of e-mail.

Motley Fool thinks it might be an April Fool's joke, but admits it's a pretty cool idea.

While Yahoo!'s service and Microsoft's Hotmail offer four and two megabytes of storage each, with additional charges for extra storage, Google said in its very amusing press announcement that its grandiose plan includes a gigabyte (read: massive amount) of storage space, which it supposedly plans to fund with advertising. It will also add stepped-up search capabilities and targeted advertising to Gmail users.

CNN/Money notes that Google has pulled April Fool's jokes on the tech community before, including jokes about pigeons being the driving force behind Google's search technology and that Google was looking to start a new research center on the moon.

But Google says it is NOT, I repeat NOT, an April Fool's prank.

A gigabyte of storage space ... wow. (by Tom Regan)

by Tom Regan

Normally, I'm not a person who minds change. Most of the time I quite welcome it. But I'm not so sure about one of the latest changes in my life - the new look of Google.

I live on Google. I use it for work (it helps me write Daily Update two or three times a week), for personal research (which branch of the Milton, MA Fire Department I should take my cats to for their free rabies shots this weekend) ) and for fun (camping sites in National Parks in New Hampshire). I had grown comfortable with its friendly, simple interface. It was like seeing an old friend everyday.

But yesterday that old friend looked different. Lost some weight? New shoes? A hair piece?

No, it was new clothes. A new look.

I'm not sure I like it yet. Sort of like getting used to someone wearing tweed and then they switch to paisleys.

EContent writes about the new changes, and the techonology behind them which is actually pretty cool:

Google Inc. has released three new features: a search engine that uses user preferences to match search results to their interests, a service that delivers search results via email, and an enhanced interface for Google Web sites worldwide. Google Personalized Web Search and Google Web Alerts, both debuting on Google Labs, are designed to enable searchers to specify what interests them and to receive customized results based on those interests.

Google also wants to do more to feature its personalized shopping feature, Froogle.

Yet, as CNR notes, it's all about staying number one in the market. (The BBC says Google owns 70 percent of the search market) Because you'll never guess who is trying to take over search? That's right, Mr. Bill and those happy folks at Microsoft want to rule this world as well.

Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer recently acknowledged that the company was slow in getting into the search market, but indicated the company plans to invest heavily in developing new technology for the lucrative market.

Many tech watchers think Microsoft wants to incorporate search into its next desktop operating system, code-named Longhorn. (Note to EU Commission and US Attorneys General: Might as well start your litigious engines now.) But AP says it's not time to start counting the end of Google's days yet.

"Google very much wants to let everyone know that it's still doing some exciting things in search and it's too soon to start making the (company's) tombstone yet," said Danny Sullivan, editor of Search Engine Watch, an industry newsletter.