Welcome to life in the digital age — where your appliances can communicate with each other just as well as you communicate with them.

Microprocessors and wireless communications let us share information with each another more easily than ever. Increasingly, gadgets — from home appliances to cars — can communicate with each other, too.

This is a story about Jack, and how some new high-tech gadgets improved his life. Although it is a work of fiction, it could be true: All the technology mentioned here either is available if not today, then within a few months. Although you might not choose to surround yourself with as much information, communication, and entertainment gadgetry as Jack does, one or two of these items could change your life for the better.

Good morning gadgets

Jack’s day begins like any other, when his alarm goes off. He reaches to silence the clock radio, then takes his digital watch from the nightstand. As he dons the watch, it shows him the day’s weather forecast — cold and cloudy — and the local traffic report. The watch uses Microsoft's Smart Personal Objects Technology, which fetches information over FM radio frequencies.

Jack walks foggily into the kitchen, where a hot pot of coffee waits for him. Ten minutes before Jack woke up, his alarm clock communicated over the house’s electrical wires and activated the coffeemaker.

Jack gets ready for work, but when he’s about to walk out the door, he notices the carpet looks dirty. So he takes out his Roomba (http://www.roombavac.com), a robotic vacuum cleaner, presses its start button, and leaves for work. The Roomba vacuums the floor, navigating around objects and under the couch by itself. When it’s done, it shuts itself off.

During the drive to work, Jack turns on his satellite radio receiver, and from the 100 channels available, he chooses smooth jazz for his commute. Unlike FM radio, satellite radio stations offer great sound and uninterrupted music even when Jack is driving over a mountain pass or in the middle of nowhere, miles from the reach of traditional radio stations. There currently are two satellite radio providers: Sirius (http://www.sirius.com) and XM Radio (http://www.xmradio.com). The services cost $7 to $13 a month, respectively, delivering music, news, and sports channels with no commercials.

Once at work, it’s meetings all morning. Jack pulls a tablet PC — a computer shaped more like a pad of paper — from his briefcase. Jack isn’t much of a typist, but that’s all right — this PC doesn’t have a keyboard. Jack takes notes in his own handwriting using the PC’s stylus, and the PC converts what he writes into text that can be e-mailed or edited in a word processor. When another meeting is scheduled for later that week, Jack writes “Meeting with Carl Friday 2 p.m.” He circles that sentence, and the appointment is added to his calendar so that his tablet PC can remind him of the meeting when Friday arrives. (Tablet PCs are available from Fujitsu, Motion Computing, and Toshiba, among other manufacturers.)

A lot of paper is distributed during the morning’s meetings, with only a fraction relevant to Jack. Rather than retyping or handwriting the important parts to get them into his computer, Jack uses a pen scanner. It looks a lot like a highlighter pen, but instead of highlighting, it “reads” and remembers typewritten text. Jack runs the pen over important paragraphs, and later send the text to his PC or PDA via a wireless infrared link. (The C-Pen 800C and WizCom QuickLink are two pen scanners available today.)

Working lunch

At lunchtime, Jack goes to his favorite bistro. While waiting for his order, he takes out his PDA from his pocket and, thanks to its wireless Internet connection, takes care of some personal business. He checks his stock portfolio, finds out what movies are playing nearby, and orders an out-of-print book from an online book store as a gift for a friend.

Next, Jack has to attend a conference across town. He’s not familiar with the location, but he doesn’t have time to get lost. Luckily, Jack’s car is equipped with voice GPS navigation. Before he hits the road, he enters his destination’s address using a small color screen mounted on his dashboard. As he drives, a voice tells him when to turn, merge, and stop. The car’s location is displayed on the screen’s moving map: According to the display, he’ll arrive in 18 minutes — just in time. (Navman 3400 Voice GPS, http://www.navman.com)

At the conference, Jack pulls out a digital voice recorder — a little gadget that makes an audio recording of the two-hour meeting. When the meeting is over, he can transfer the digital audio file to his PC, where speech-to-text software will transcribe the entire meeting. (Sony’s ICD-MS1VTP with Dragon NaturallySpeaking software.)

After the conference, Jack gets back in the car for the drive home. He needs to check in with his boss, so he puts on a headset and says “call work.” The headset places a call with the car’s mobile phone, using a wireless protocol called Bluetooth, so Jack can keep both hands on the wheel while he talks. The boss says to expect an important e-mail from a client, so Jack asks the car to read his e-mail. Again, Bluetooth can retrieve e-mail from the computer in Jack’s briefcase and read his e-mail messages aloud. (The Saab 9-3 was the first car to include Bluetooth for wireless communication with other devices in the car. Others have followed, including the Toyota Prius.)

High-tech dinner and a movie

Home again. When he walks in the door, Jack puts down his PDA, headset, and whatever other gadgetry he happens to be carrying on a SplashPad (http://www.splashpower.com), a flat platform that recharges whatever electronic gizmos Jack puts on top of it, without any fussing over wire plugs or wires.

It’s getting late, and our hero has to prepare dinner for two tonight. The refrigerator holds an unremarkable assemblage of food — nothing that seems to shout, “Here’s your dinner!” So Jack closes the fridge and taps his finger on the color screen embedded in the door. On screen appears a list of the food the fridge contains, sorted by expiration date. The cream is perilously close to its expiration date, and the cheese is starting to show a little too much age. Jack presses another button and a cookbook appears on the refrigerator’s screen. He searches for recipes that require a cup of cream and a few ounces of Parmesan, finally selecting an easy pasta alfredo recipe. While he cooks, he watches the nightly news on the fridge’s screen. (Multi-Media Refrigerator from LG Appliances, http://www.lgappliances.com.)

There’s a knock at the door. Jack’s upstairs neighbor Jill has arrived for dinner.
While he is distracted with dinner and conversation, Jack misses the first half of his favorite television show. No problem — his ReplayTV (http://www.replaytv.com) personal video recorder automatically recorded it. Jack and Jill sit on the couch to watch. Because the personal video recorder can record one thing while it’s playing something else, they can watch the program from the beginning while the recorder is still taping the conclusion. Even better, the recorder automatically skips commercials.

The episode is so good Jack wants to send it to his brother. That used to mean copying it to a videotape, packaging it, and taking it to the post office — a time-consuming process. Because his brother also owns a ReplayTV, Jack can deliver a copy of the show, via Internet, to his brother’s personal video recorder, more than 3,000 miles away. There’s no need to dub a tape and take it to the post office — he just has to press a few buttons.

Jill wants to show Jack the pictures she took on her recent trip to Seattle. She turns on her digital camera, which “finds” Jack’s TV, creating an ad-hoc wireless network, so she can show the pictures on the TV screen as she narrats the slide show. One image of the Space Needle at sunset particularly captivates Jack, so Jill has her camera look for other gadgets it can talk to. It finds Jack’s color printer, and Jenny sends the photo to the printer, which produces a copy for Jack — without wires, without even turning on the computer. (In Jill’s apartment, the same WiMedia technology hooks her DVD player, television, and stereo together without a messy tangle of wires. It’s much easier to add a new component to the stereo system, and it looks less cluttered.)

A few minutes after Jill leaves, Jack’s watch beeps and a message appears on its screen: “Tomorrow dinner’s on me. – Jill.”

Jack’s digital future is looking better and better.

Choosing Your Technology

So you’ve decided to buy a consumer electronics gizmo or perhaps a new PC. Now the question is: Which one should you choose? Too often, consumers are faced with two or more competing standards. Picking the right one can mean the difference between enjoying a product for years and ending up with a dead-end gizmo that isn’t compatible with anyone else’s.

Sometimes, there is no wrong answer. You can choose a Macintosh or a Windows PC — the two have co-existed for 20 years, and neither is likely to disappear. Other times, the right choice becomes painfully clear too late. Earlier this year a wireless networking standard called HomeRF gave up the ghost, because another wireless networking standard proved more popular with consumers and manufacturers. If you bought HomeRF equipment last year, you’re out of luck if you need to add another computer to the network this year.

How can you ensure that you will pick the right technology, the one that will stand the test of time? You can’t. However, you can tilt the scales in your favor by being an informed consumer.

• Find out which option your friends and associates prefer. Many electronic devices can share information with similar devices — for instance, Palm PDAs can “beam” information to each other over an infrared link. Get a device that is compatible with the ones used by people you want to communicate with.

• If a product is tied to one company, it lives and dies with that company. If there’s another option that uses an open standard, it might be the better choice.

• Consider the technical trade-offs between the options and how you plan to use the device. For instance, one tablet PC might have great battery life, but another boasts more computing power. If you’re going to leave the notebook on for hours to jot notes, a slower machine with a superior battery is the better option. If you’re going to do hard-core number crunching, the speedy PC might be preferable.

• Consider each gizmo’s future expandability. The amount of RAM or storage space it offers might seem like more than you’ll ever need, but you don’t know what your needs will be in a year or two.

• Is backwards compatibility important? In other words, does it matter whether this year’s gizmo works with older versions? For instance, two new wireless networking standards with similar names — 802.11a and 802.11g — are gaining popularity. The “A” standard is faster, but the “G” standard is backwards compatible with an older wireless standard still used in homes and businesses around the world. If you want to access the Internet on your laptop from airports and the local coffee shop, 802.11g is the better choice.

There’s no guarantee that you won’t get stuck with a dead-end technology, but a bit of research could prevent you from ending up with a BetaMax in a VHS world.