Gadgets

1 THE UP BAND: This is your life, as tracked on a sleek little bracelet from JawBone. Exercise, steps per day, sleep patterns, meals, even mood swings. How healthy can you be? Find out for $129.99, with supporting app. 2 HAPIFORK: Electronic utensil vibrates and lights up, reminding you to eat more slowly. Upload your stats via USB; track progress on phone or computer. Waterproof, comes in colors. Preorder for $99 at hapilabs.com. 3 FITBIT: Activity-tracking wristband, wireless motion detector, scale - this family of products, plus website and mobile app, offer multiple options to help meet your health and fitness goals.

You have a choice to make, beachcombers. You could be that guy who wanders the sands with the knee-high socks and metal detector looking for nickels, or you could strive to be the hip son of a beach sporting gear that keeps you cool regardless of the temperature. Try some of these beach gadgets on your surf and sun getaway - we've even found some things on the Internet to make it easier for you. Those big umbrellas are old-school; try a beach cabana instead. Starting around $30 (and going up to $100 for a family-size enclosure)

The mystery of the nightclub slobs may have been solved. It was a Saturday night at New York's fabled Algonquin Hotel. People were entering the Oak Room for a cabaret performance in the intimate space where smart cosmopolitans had gathered over the decades. When Cole Porter walked the Earth, the assemblage would have sparkled in evening wear. We don't expect that level of formality anymore. There was one stunning creature - an 80ish woman, whose neck was wrapped in pearls or a good facsimile.

The salesman told me a snowblower would change my life, but so far it hasn't. What a snow job. Because it only snowed once thus far, for two whole inches. I'm not complaining, but that snowfall cost me $300 an inch. I didn't even use the damn thing, because I'm still not walking after bunion surgery, so I had to pay someone to shovel, and he didn't think there was enough snow to use the snowblower. Make that $350 an inch. You may recall, I thought about buying a snowblower after six impossible winters, then finally broke down and bought one a few months ago, and have evidently saved all of us from another impossible winter.

1. AB WHEEL Nothing beats a good old-fashioned $7.99 ab wheel for toning the abs, core, arms, shoulders and back. 2. JUMP TO IT I have always extolled the virtues of the jump rope. Done properly, jumping rope is a low-impact cardiovascular exercise that simultaneously works every muscle in the body. A jump rope is simple, efficient, travels well and can be used anywhere. Six minutes of jumping (at 120-1,140 rpm) equals 20 minutes of jogging. Jump rope for 15 to 20 minutes for an unparalleled total body workout.

Edward L. Cohen, 89, of Voorhees, the founder of Edwards Creative Products, who invented more than a hundred gadgets, including the Magic Wand stick spot cleaner, died of heart failure Tuesday at home. Mr. Cohen took everyday problems and turned them into ideas for inventions he created in his Cherry Hill basement. For him, the residue on the bottom of a wet bar of soap was more than just a nuisance. It was inspiration. The result: Mr. Cohen's No Goo Soap Dish. In more than 50 years, Mr. Cohen developed products to handle drooping bow ties, stains, yellowing dentures and belt storage.

It's hard to decide whether to laud some of the new kitchen products or to laugh at them. Some are designed almost strictly for laughs. Take the battery-powered Lazy Bones coaster ($18). Please. This is a gadget that literally "hand"-delivers drinks in its "palm," scooting across a counter or down a bar and automatically stopping when it reaches the edge. Some of the current crop of new kitchen gadgets serve a purpose while striking a silly chord, like the bell-bottomed steamer basket ($10)

At Ford, the people who design auto interiors are playing with something called a "heads up display" - an electronic gadget that presents a digital readout of car speed and engine functions as a holographic image that literally appears right in front of the driver's eyes. "The idea," says Ford design executive Allen Ornes, "is to allow the driver to read this data without having to refocus, without having to take his eyes off the road. " At Chrysler, interior designers are experimenting with the use of electronic road maps and a pushbutton "memory" that will return the rear view mirrors and steering column to programmed positions, and tune in the radio to a pre-selected station and volume level.

What: Kernel Kutter Manufacturer: Kernel Kutter Inc. Where: Kitchen & Co., Christiana, Del. Price: $5.99 What: Corn Stripper Manufacturer: Made in China for Fox Run Craftsmen Price: $3.49 These tools both have a sharp, circular, sawtooth cutter at their center, designed to strip kernels from a corncob. The test. Both tools were awkward to use. They got stuck on thick ears, cooked or raw. They could cut all the way through if two hands were used to push down hard on the long handles.

Taking the family video camera on vacation is all part of the fun - until the spray from Niagara Falls or Old Faithful blows your way. Then comes that moment of uneasy curiosity about how much wetness the family investment can take before suffering permanent damage. Enter the Video Cape, a high-tech raincoat for your camera that lets you manipulate the controls through a transparent, moistureproof covering, complete with a scratch-resistant glass port for the lens. The cape folds up for packing or storage.

LOOKING FOR the means to easily share and store the photos, videos, music files and documents on your smartphone, tablet or PC? Sony's Portable Wireless Server WG-C10, coming soon at $89.99, is the ticket. Its Wi-Fi link allows users to transfer content to and through the device with up to eight simultaneously connected mobile gadgets. The Sony Server writes/reads on SD memory cards and also functions as a backup power source.

These inexpensive gadgets will help you maximize summer fitness goals. They travel easily, too. 1. ePulse2 The first strapless, continuous heart-rate monitor, pedometer and calorimeter. No more chest strap, no more complicated watch, no more periodic heart-rate measurements. Strap this baby on your arm and watch it go to work. Three for one, under $100. 2. WEIGHTED JUMP ROPE Takes personal fitness into the stratosphere - if you are up for a challenge. Torches calories, significantly increases strength and improves coordination, agility and endurance.

NO ROOM in the house is safe from a gadget invasion - not even the bathroom. Back in their hipster days, the horn-rock band Chicago introduced a song suite called "An Hour in the Shower," implying conduct "under the influence. " Today, all it takes to keep you stalling is the entertaining Moxie, a single-function showerhead from Kohler ($199) with a magnetically center-mounted Sound Capsule humming your happiest tunes. Waterproof shower radios have been available for decades, but this updated device is different, neater in form and function.

I RECENTLY DELIVERED a speech to two classes at a Pennsylvania high school (the name being immaterial). Going in, I was under the impression that these students had a serious interest (or at least had some interest) in going to law school and that that was the reason for my appearance (i.e., to provide advice or insight that would make their path to "the law" a little bit easier). I took time away from my job and literally spent hours on my presentation and preparing a handout for distribution.

WHO SAYS American ingenuity is dead? While it's true we still don't have jet packs and flying cars, we do have the Bierstick, a giant plastic syringe that can pump 24 ounces of beer into your mouth in less than two seconds. That's two full cans of suds down the gullet in less time than it takes to flush a toilet. And get this: It's made with "high-quality FDA-approved materials," so you know it's gotta be safe. Ah yes, the spirit of invention lives, especially when it comes to beer.

1. AB WHEEL Nothing beats a good old-fashioned $7.99 ab wheel for toning the abs, core, arms, shoulders and back. 2. JUMP TO IT I have always extolled the virtues of the jump rope. Done properly, jumping rope is a low-impact cardiovascular exercise that simultaneously works every muscle in the body. A jump rope is simple, efficient, travels well and can be used anywhere. Six minutes of jumping (at 120-1,140 rpm) equals 20 minutes of jogging. Jump rope for 15 to 20 minutes for an unparalleled total body workout.

Modernist cooking - call it "molecular gastronomy" only if you're willing to suffer the wrath of its pricklier practitioners - is gaining favor with more and more chefs who see value in the cuisine's vacuum sealers, water baths, and dehydrators. Home cooks, by contrast, happily cling to the classic techniques. Several factors play into the modernist movement's low impact with us house-bound hash slingers, costs and degree of difficulty prime among them. But as scientist-turned-cookbook-author Nathan Myhrvold recently noted, home cooks have long been at a disadvantage, too. They haven't had many resources to explain, in the necessary depth and detail, all the tools, gels, powders, and processes behind modernist cooking.

We're not among that group of tech-savvy travelers who have to have every new gewgaw that comes along. In fact, we tend to wait until some gadget screams "everyone else has one" or "we need it" before we buy anything with a learning curve steeper than a speed bump. Which is why we finally bought Rhonda a few months ago. Rhonda - as in the Beach Boys' 1965 hit, "Help Me, Rhonda" - is the name we gave to the GPS we bought for a recent car trip to visit friends who have a cabin in the mountains.

In people years, the World Wide Web is barely 21. In technology time, it sometimes seems like eons since the first website went online in 1991, as the personal computer has morphed into increasingly powerful desktops, laptops, smartphones and tablets. Innovations, companies and devices have come and gone in the years since - which makes it all the more remarkable that we're focused this week on announcements by Apple and Microsoft, two players there at the start thanks to their pre-Web origins.