THE SMART PHONE (not to be confused with the smartphone in your pocket).
Ooma, an Internet-based phone service, now works with Google's Nest smart thermostat and smoke alarm. If the smoke alarm goes off, Ooma will dial your cellphone to ask whether you want to call 911. It would be more useful, of course, if it simply called 911 for you. Your house could have burned down by the time you see the missed call.
Another feature will call you if there's no motion detected by a certain time - such as when your kids should have come home.
The Ooma device costs $130 plus a $10-a-month Premier service.
Of course, many products sound good, but don't perform as desired in real life. I got demos, but didn't get to use these products in real home settings yet.
I can give you an example from a Lenovo tablet I checked out, however. Its AnyPen technology promises to let you use a regular pen or pencil to write or tap on its tablet. But it didn't work with four pens I tried. I was told the pens' tips might not be wide enough. AnyPen worked for me with a pencil and (gently!) using a fork's prong.
But then shouldn't the feature be called AnyFork? Really.
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