Word: gadget
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From the day he first handled one in college in 1948, Robert Noyce knew the new gadget meant the end of balky, bulky vacuum tubes. But he also realized you couldn't do much with transistors until you could link them together, like fibers in an Oriental rug. To everyone's astonishment, the gifted young man from Grinnell, Iowa--a minister's son--achieved that goal in a decade. His integrated circuit, or microchip, not only helped rename an orchard-filled California valley but also led to a seemingly endless harvest of silicon devices, from PCs to coffeemakers...
...that managed nonetheless to do the job: heat food by electromagnetically stimulating the water, fat and sugar molecules within it. It was 20 years before Amana introduced a household model, and even then consumers--fearing everything from sterility to brain damage from the unfortunately named "Radarange"--gave the gadget a pass...
...Another gadget my car won't get is Clarion's Auto PC ($1,200). It's a dash-mounted computer that's designed to accept simple voice commands, and will do everything from tune the radio or CD player to retrieve and read aloud e-mail or dial your cell phone from a contacts list. Sounds cool, but wait for the kinks to shake out; the person who demonstrated it for me couldn't get it to work properly...
...route, you will probably also need a sound card and microphone. Others prefer to make computer-to-telephone calls using Web services like IDT's Net2Phone that patch them through to any phone in the world for about 10[cents] a minute. I've been holding out for a gadget that will let me make long-distance Internet calls without using my PC at all. That's where the Aplio (pronounced ah-plee-oh) fits...
Even if you're a gadget freak with deep pockets, you may think twice about buying for another reason: there may not be much HD on your TV. The FCC has mandated that the major network affiliates in the 10 largest U.S. markets (ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC) must be ready for digital broadcasts by May 1, 1999. The top 30 must be geared up six months after that. Meanwhile, about three dozen stations will voluntarily begin digital broadcasts this November...