Originally, you had to watch on your computer (Windows, and now Mac). But who wants to watch movies sitting at a desk? Bit by bit, Netflix has been bringing this feature to your TV by cleverly piggybacking on other companies’ set-top boxes. Netflix Instant Viewing is now a feature of the TiVo, XBox 360, and Blu-ray players from LG and Samsung. Or, you can get Roku’s $100 Netflix Player box, which does the job beautifully all by itself.
The 12,000 available movies generally aren’t recent ones. But there’s a lot to be said for instant gratification, especially when it’s free.
PHONE APP COASTERS
Not a gadget, and way too expensive ($60, meninos.us). But you can’t help loving the idea: a set of 16 coasters, each a perfect colourful giant replica of an icon on the iPhone’s home screen.
CONTENT-AWARE SCALING
Adobe’s Photoshop CS4 has plenty of snazzy new features hidden among its 500 (!) menu commands. But here’s one of the most magical: You can drag to make a photo wider or narrower (or taller or shorter) without squishing or fattening the subject. Somehow, only the background expands or shrinks, undetectably.
It doesn’t work well on every photo, but what a great idea.
ARRIVA.COM HEADPHONES
If you had invisible iPod headphones, you could endure almost anything — long ceremonies, boring meetings, dull dates—with the help of a little background music.
The closest thing you’ll find is the Arriva earbuds ($35, arriva.com), exclusively for the tiny iPod Shuffle. It’s a wavy, bendable headband that goes around the back of your head. The Shuffle snaps into the middle (against the back of your head), where you can easily control it by feel. The earbuds wind up precision-placed on your ears, and the thing doesn’t fall off when you exercise.
If you have long hair, the Arriva can be completely invisible; if not, it’s nearly so. Meanwhile, there are no cords to tangle, no chain of dangly components. It’s one piece that slips on and off in one motion.
MINI-USB CHARGING JACKS
Hail to every BlackBerry, cellphone, Bluetooth headset, Palm organizer, e-book reader, music player, cordless mouse and GPS receiver that recharges through a mini-USB jack! No more big black power transformers—recharge from your laptop. It’s the dawn of the universal, interchangeable power cord.
POWER STICK
Speaking of those hideous black wall warts: you don’t need them if you have a PowerStick ($65, powerstick.com). It’s a tiny universal gadget charger, the size of a stick of Wrigley’s, that draws its power from your laptop’s USB jack. It comes with nine short cables for the opposite end, made to fit the power jacks of common cellphone brands (LG, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, Nokia), the iPod or iPhone and anything that gets its power from a mini- or micro-USB jack (see above).
First, you travel very, very light. (I haven’t packed my cellphone adaptor in a year.) Second, the PowerStick does more than charge your gadget; It also stores a second charge, so that you’ll be able to do another recharge in the field, without the laptop. (A cool “fuel gauge” lets you know how full it is.) Finally, a processor shuts off the power when the charging is complete, which saves electricity and—according to the company—prolongs your gadget’s life.
THE SELF-SHOOTING PANORAMA