If you’ve ever been to an Apple store, you might have noticed there is no cash register and no check-out counter. Employees swipe your credit card on their iPod Touch and complete a transaction anywhere in the store.

Other businesses are learning how to do this too. The iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch/Android app getting a lot of buzz lately is called “Square.” It includes a card swiping accessory that plugs into the headset/microphone jack of the iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. The app is free, and each user who signs up gets a card reader; Square makes its money by charging 2.75 percent per transaction. The company is currently processing $3 million worth of transactions a day. More info at squareup.com.

“Swipe” is another app that turns an iPhone or iPod Touch into a credit card reader. Their app is 99 cents and they also toss in the card reader for free. They don’t put pricing info on their website, but we asked and they charge 1.74 percent per “qualified” card plus 24 cents per transaction and $25 a month for the service. The fee for a $100 purchase on a standard Visa, Mastercard or Discover card would be $1.98. More info at AppNinjas.com.

TheFind is an iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch app that provides 30 catalogs, encouraging you to opt out of the paper kind. Among those are Crate and Barrel, Williams-Sonoma, Sephora, eBags, Stella & Dot, Sundance, and Uggs. Currently, 5.6 million tons of catalogs and direct mail advertisements go into U.S. landfills annually.

The free Photoshop Express app has basic editing commands like red-eye removal. There’s also an optional $5 “Camera Pack” app.  It has features like speck removal, photo review (take a quick look at a photo so you can delete It if it’s no good), and a self-timer, which gives you three to ten seconds to get everyone in the picture – all together now — before the snap.

You can also use Photoshop Express on your computer. Go to photoshop.com/tools.

The thing has eight legs and you can bend the legs to grip, dock or display just about any one of the new portable devices. It holds cell phones, iPads, video cameras, MP3/4 players, gaming systems, GPS devices, portable projectors, compact cameras, eReaders and so on. While some of the legs hold the device, the others can hang onto a support.

The Spiderpodium, which comes in black or white and won a design and engineering award at the recent Computer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Find it at breffo.com.

The Orb sounds like something from a Harry Potter novel (and looks like it too) but it’s just a tiny radio transmitter. If your computer is connected to the Internet by wireless, the Orb can pick up music and speech and send it to a stereo in any other room. (We heard of some kids who thought it was funny to have their own music come on in their parent’s bedroom at 4 a.m.)

The Orb works with Windows or Mac and is controlled by an Android smartphone, iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch. An Orb user we talked to had teenagers who use it to share their music collections. There’s an Orb in every bedroom, attached to that room’s stereo. They can browse each other’s music collections and play what they want on their own stereo. The next version of the Orb software will have privacy controls in case you don’t want to share with everyone on your home network.

We had trouble connecting the Orb at first, but we complained and the company issued a software update that made it smooth sailing. We connected the egg-shaped Orb to our stereo and used an iPad to scroll through Internet radio stations and audio files stored on our PC.

Since what it’s doing is broadcasting audio files from your computer to a stereo system, you are not confined to music. We played free lectures from iTunes U, and as some shows from National Public Radio’s “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me.” Using an iPad or iPhone as a controller, we skipped around, choosing different items from our playlist.    For more info on the Orb, go to orb.com.

Like us, you may want to hear the music stored on your computer in your living room, or any other room outside your home office. We solved that problem a few years ago by drilling a hole in a wall and running a cable through it. You may not want to do that. An easier solution would be Creative’s new Sound Blaster. It will wirelessly transmit iTunes, MP3s, and online radio stations through speakers up to 100 feet away.

Setup is simple. The Sound Blaster Wireless is about the size of a thumb or flash drive and you plug it into the USB connection on a PC or Mac. Then connect a Creative Wireless Receiver to speakers or use the Creative GigaWorks T20W speakers which contain built-in wireless receivers.

The Sound Blaster Wireless avoids dropouts and static, which commonly plague Bluetooth and Wi-Fi systems. It doesn’t require a wireless network, so it’s easier to use and set up than Wi-Fi systems. Unfortunately, the whole setup costs $150 from Creative.com. (On second thought, maybe we’ll just drill a hole in another wall.)

 For any transfer problem, the “Move it” screen shows a list of devices on the left, and a duplicate list on the right. There are two arrows between the lists, one pointing to the right, the other to the left. Click on a device name in either list and then on the appropriate arrow to move the content to a destination name you click on the other list. You can search for particular items you want transferred, and then use the directional arrows to transfer that to the destination device.

 Setup was easy enough. You install “Move it” and then plug the devices you want to use into the computer. The program creates a profile for the ones you have. You can initiate a transfer of music, video or photos even if these devices are not plugged in. The next time they are plugged in, the stuff will come over automatically. This also works for friends who want a copy of your movie, photo or music.

 You can also transfer stuff to MySpace, YouTube and the “My Nero” community. Though you can’t download anything from YouTube without an extra program, which is technically illegal, you can later download stuff you’ve uploaded to My Nero or to My Space. Then if your friend wants a copy of your movie, they can get it there, as long as there is no “digital rights management” protection associated with that file. 

MiShare  quickly solves the sometimes balky task of transferring tunes from one iPod to another. It connects them head to head, so to speak, or brain to brain or shoulder to shoulder, or socket to socket. The device is slightly smaller than an iPod and has plugs on each end. These match the input sockets on the iPods and you just plug them together, sort of like an electronic tinker toy.

A typical song takes about 10 seconds to transfer; a short video takes about half a minute. You can connect the Apple Mini, Nano, Video and classic iPods together with the MiShare but it doesn’t work with the very oldest iPods or the Shuffle, because they have different docking sockets. MiShare is $100 from mishare.com.

Our past encounters with equipment from Genius has left us with the impression that “right around average” would be a better name, but this radio combo is a step up. In addition to the CD and iPod dock, the iTempo 800 has an alarm clock and an S-Video connection, so you can display photos and videos from your iPod on a big TV screen. A wireless remote lets you control all this from the couch. Sound quality was good and plenty strong. For some reason it seems to be selling well in India, but we found it at a-power.com, for the odd price of $153.47.