I always wear a wristwatch. But I notice that wristwatches are far less common today now that cell phones are everywhere.

Wired ran an article reviewing four atomic watches. The “atomic” part of the name means that the watches set their time using the atomic clock at the WWVB time station in Colorado. Some of them can also use time stations in England, Germany, Japan, and China. The watches are filled with unusual features, but with prices to match.

Of the watches they featured in the article, I liked the Casio Pathfinder, which perhaps not coincidentally is the only one I have ever seen in person. According to the Casio Pathfinder site, the watch has these features:

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I have heard of virtual keyboards, but I had never seen one in action before. This virtual keyboard is the i-Tech Virtual Bluetooth Wireless Laser Keyboard for PDA/Smartphone. It uses light to create an image of a keyboard on any flat surface. The unit is quite small (about the size of a matchbook), much smaller than the picture makes it seem. To me, it also looked much stranger in person than the picture indicates.

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I ran across this intriguing article about a passive TV repeater. The construction is extremely simple: connect two ordinary television antennas (pointed in opposite directions) with a length of coaxial cable. (I once saw a fairly complex installation just like this, although I didn’t realize what it was at the time.) The idea behind it is equally simple: the signal enters one antenna, travels along the coaxial cable, and then is retransmitted through the second antenna. The purpose of a passive repeater is to extend the reach of a signal beyond a line of sight obstruction. Unlike a powered repeater, the signal is rebroadcast on the same frequency.

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