Nano Watch

– Motorola has a new smart watch with enough features to keep a fitness buff humming. The “MotoACTV” is a GPS plus music player wrist watch that figures out which songs make you exercise harder and plays those more often. It does its figuring by monitoring your heart rate. It  tells you how many calories you burned and your average workout pace. It uses Bluetooth to talk to you through a headset. It can also broadcast FM radio. It’s $250 for the 8 gigabyte version.

– You can turn an Apple “Nano” music player into a wristwatch just by adding a strap. We saw some at Amazon for $23. They even had leather ones. If you use a leather strap and fix the Nano face to show the time, it looks like a regular wrist watch. To keep the clock face on top, go into the Nano’s settings, choose the clock app and choose the setting that puts the clock up front when the Nano wakes up from its sleep mode. Voila, it’s a wristwatch.  We just ordered one. See also the TikTok watchband at the Apple store.

– Another way to go is the “Striiv” pedometer, $99 from Striiv.com. Anyone who thought a pedometer was just for counting steps hasn’t seen this thing.  It has games to encourage you to walk past the 4900-step American daily average. You also earn points you can spend creating a virtual enchanted island on their web site. The more you walk, the more money the company donates to saving trees in the rain forest or polio vaccines.

The email messages coming in on the watch, however, are read-only. Answer them with your smart phone.The “I’m Watch” sells for $350 from an Italian company of the same name.

– Sony’s “SmartWatch,” appears to be a similar device, scheduled to come out in March; pricing not yet determined. It will communicate with an Android smartphone through the Bluetooth short range wireless system. It too lets you take calls, see email, or play music and games. Don’t dunk it in water, but it’s OK if it gets a little wet. The display is 1.3 inches and like the “I’m Watch,” it looks bulky on slender wrists.

That’s just one more thing you might worry about when traveling abroad, or shopping right here at home. Do you feel OK giving out your credit card number? To play it safe, you can install a free app on your smart phone that creates temporary virtual cards with payment limits and other controls. The app we liked is called “Global V Card,” but it works only with Mastercard accounts. (Visa card users can visit entropay.com, for a similar app.)

To set this up, you start by filling out a form and faxing it to MasterCard. They want a fax or scanned document so they have your signature. You can then create a short-term credit card for yourself or anyone else. The presumed use is for businesses to provide a limited credit card for employees, but it can be set up by and for individuals as well. You can limit the spending to any amount you wish: say, no more than $500.

After creating the virtual card, you can send the details by email or text message. What the email recipient will receive is a picture of a credit card with their name, the expiration date, card number and link to a three-digit “CVC” number. More info at GlobalVcard.com.

This is one of the most famous entertainment programs in computer history. In fact it was such a combination of sophisticated programming, animation and skill that it was typically kept running on autopilot, so to speak, in the show windows of Microsoft stores.

Back in those days – back when there were lots of companies making Microsoft compatible computers – some with wonderful names, like “Kentucky Fried Computers,” the true test of whether or not a system was compatible was whether it could run Flight Simulator.

Those early versions trained you how to land at airports like Chicago’s Meigs Field, which no longer exists (a nostalgia trip). This Spring you can download a light version for free. You can fly around Hawaii in an “ICON A5,” an amphibious plane with cockpit space for two, and designed by the same engineers who did the Voyager spacecraft, SpaceShipOne and SpaceShipTwo. If you want more aircraft and more locations it will cost you, though Microsoft hasn’t yet announced the price. Sign up for a free “Windows Live” account, and go to the games section to download it when it’s available in a few months.

This is the first new flight simulator from Microsoft since 2006, when Flight Simulator X came out. The whole flight simulator programming team was laid off in 2009. We like the new approach. It’s always better to let people try something out before asking them to buy something extra.

They have designed a keyboard that represents all 26 letters of the alphabet with only four keys. The letters are grouped by shape:  Letters that stand on one leg, like “I,” “F”  and “T,” are grouped on one key. Two-leg letters would include “A,” “H,” “W” and “M.” Those with a wide base, like “U,” “C” and “Z” on another key, and letters that are sort of circular, like “O,” “Q” and “R” on another.

Interestingly, this fits with past research on reading that found readers typically identify a word by its shape rather than mentally spelling it out. This approach is commonly used in speed-reading exercises. You will be able to download the app for this kind of four-button keyboard from the Android Market Placeor Apple App Store in coming weeks. More info at Snapkeys.com.

This thing fits in the palm of your hand and absolutely defines cute. With Mickey or Minnie Mouse on the case, it is definitely set to please. The camera packs a surprising number of features, such as adjustable picture resolution, and works with a free editing app. We found it at Walmart and online at B&H Photo.

Though the $60 price seems reasonable for a cute camera like this, there is a catch to it. Since it only connects to the iPad, which costs around $500, it’s really a $560 camera. One critic pointed out that you can get good digital cameras for $100, and you could give that to a child or young person and they would be able to plug it into almost any device to unload and view the photos. So to use the new Disney Camera you should already have an iPad, or at least be on the verge of buying one.

By the way, needing the right connector to plug into the iPad can be gotten around by buying a $30 “Camera Connection Kit” from the Apple store. This lets you transfer photos from almost any digital camera.

But back to the camera … The free Disney Pix editing software that you download at the iTunes app store lets you add Donald Duck and other Disney characters to your photos, as well as Disney photo frames and other fun stuff. Photo editing is easy but basic: you can flip the image or crop it. We loved it.  The app can be used with any photos.

• Contacts Plus is a $2 app that brings in birthday information from Facebook and other sites. It also lets you send files from your tablet to your computer, phone or other devices. Google “Barnes and Noble Contact Plus” for more info.
• The Facebook app (free) is a handy way to keep up to date on Facebook. “Friendcaster” does this as well and adds a few more features.
• Evernote has been around for many years and is a nice free note-taking app.