Gadgets

9 tonight TNT Hit police procedural returns for a sixth season with Brenda (Kyra Sedgwick, right) and her team moving into new, high-tech quarters, where they find the gadgets get in the way of their work.

1. Is it so much to ask for a big, stylish purse that lets you keep your cell phone safely stashed, but also visible - and maybe even usable? No problem, thanks to the clear plastic window built into the 14.5-inch-by-12-inch-by-4-inch-deep Nectar Cell Phone Purse. The cell phone slides into a roomy pocket on the inside of the zippered purse, and the heat-sensitive window lets you operate a touch screen or keypad without removing the phone. Or just unzip the purse and grab the phone.

When it comes to kitchen tools or other culinary gifts, the best ones to give are those you'd want yourself - if you didn't already have them. It's easy to figure out which fall into this category, especially if you are an accomplished home cook. Think about what you use most often, or which is most effective at its intended task. This could be a new-on-the-market high-tech knife that balances perfectly in your hand. Or it might be an old-fashioned lemon juicer, the type that grandmothers use and that still outperforms swankier and expensive mechanisms designed to coax citrus fruit into submission.

Maybe, says Harold Sweetman, there are no new ideas when it comes to garden tools. No good ones, anyway. Maybe the old standbys - spade, trowel, hoe, fork, pruner, saw - cannot be improved upon, though Lord knows, the marketplace keeps trying. "It's not the tool that makes the gardener. It's the craft, and you only need a minimum number of tools to be successful," says Sweetman, director of the 46-acre Jenkins Arboretum in Devon and a subscriber to the IBM - or It's Better Manually - school of garden chores.

Al Bagnoli says his Penn football team has faced just about every offense in the playbook so far this season. So it might have been fitting that the Quakers finished their nonleague schedule yesterday against Bucknell's triple option. Bagnoli had a few tricks up his sleeve, too, and Penn pulled away for a 21-3 victory over the Bison at Franklin Field. On the Quakers' first scoring drive, backup running back Matt Hamscher threw a 5-yard touchdown pass to fullback Luke DeLuca.

GLENDALE, Ariz. - Larry Fitzgerald tied an NFL conference championship game record with his three touchdown receptions, of 9, 62 and 1 yard, yesterday against the Eagles. The 62-yarder came on a gadget play, after quarterback Kurt Warner lateraled the ball to halfback J.J. Arrington on an apparent sweep around the right end before Arrington stopped and passed back to Warner, who had drifted deep to the left. Warner lofted a pass toward Fitzgerald, who made the catch after the Eagles' Quintin Demps fell down while trying to find the ball.

The economy may be lagging, but portable electronic gadgets keep surging ahead, with technological breakthroughs that make last year's models look practically archaic. Compact digital cameras can shoot faster, sharper, and with cooler-than-ever tricks - such as making facial blemishes and wrinkles vanish, or zipping between a huge range of focal lengths, from wide angle to super zoom. Wireless headsets provide stronger, more static-free reception, with fewer disconnects and easier pairing with cell phones and other devices.

THE 2009 ACURA TL sedan has so many electronic features, it makes some other luxury cars seem old-fashioned. The new TL can provide Doppler radar maps on an interior display to show where rain and snow showers are, so there's no need to check weather maps on television. No need to scour travel books to find popular scenic drives, unless you want the details. It can come with a list of scenic routes, by state, and will direct you there via an onboard navigation system. And if you want to drive in spirited fashion, the normally front-wheel drive TL offers all-wheel drive for the first time in 2009.

Uh-oh, the projectionist has put the wrong film on. Those two boys running playfully over the Afghan hills - it's The Kite Runner, right? Wrong. It's the opening scene of Eagle Eye, and those kids are toast. Analysts at the Pentagon back in Washington are tracking a suspected terrorist via satellite - a bin Laden-type who's emerged from his cave to (1) check out a weapons cache, or (2) attend a funeral. The guys at Command Center aren't sure which, but the president goes ahead and orders the smart bombs anyway.

CHICAGO - Best Buy Co. Inc. plans to add a dozen vending kiosks inside major airports across the country as part of a new pilot program called "Best Buy Express," company executives said. The nation's largest consumer electronics retailer is partnering with ZoomSystems, a San Francisco-based vending machine company, for the project that will install the small automated stores at eight airports. The machines will stock cell phone and computer accessories, along with digital cameras, portable data storage devices, headphones, travel adapters, electronic chargers and other gadgets.