Apple accessories If Mom and Dad are sending you back to school with an iPad, consider giving it a home that will show off its gleaming screen and let you share your music collection with your captive dorm room audiences.



Apple - IPad - Companies - Home - Apple II

Home robotics Before you plunk down $400 on Neato Robotics Inc.’s robotic vacuum cleaner — the company’s answer to most of iRobot Corp.’s less expensive Roomba models — you might consider sticking with your current manual housekeeping methods.



Roomba - iRobot - Robotics - Vacuum cleaner - Robot

Prototypes If you’re still struggling to appreciate electronic-paper gadgets like the Kindle or the Sony Reader, you are not alone.



E-book - Sony Reader - Electronic paper - Peripherals - Hardware

Hunting cameras My buddy Bob lives a life that many urban dwellers dream about. Several years ago, he uprooted himself from his San Francisco apartment to settle on eight acres in California’s Trinity Alps, where he is surrounded by forestry lands and is a 30-minute drive from a lake with good fishing.



San Francisco - California - Forestry - Trinity Alps - Fish

iPhone Apps The iPhone 4 is good for lots of things: checking e-mail, downloading and playing games, browsing the Web, and (if you hold the device carefully) making phone calls.



IPhone - app - Handhelds - Smartphones - Apple

If you know a cook, you know they are geeks, obsessed with their seasoned iron skillets and homemade salad dressings, their crème brûlée torches and cocktail recipes.



Salad - Food - Cookware and bakeware - Cook - Home

Nothing relieves the lonesomeness of a solo backpacking trip like seeing a few bars light up on your cellphone’s screen. Last month, from the top of Mount Greylock in Western Massachusetts, I was able to call my friends on an AT&T Aria and make plans for the evening in North Adams.



Western Massachusetts - Mount Greylock - North Adams Massachusetts - Laptop - Hiking

Prototypes If you ever suspected that the mind-control wizardry behind a toy like the Force Trainer was a bit of a gimmick, I can think of a few Northeastern University eggheads who might agree with you.



Mind control - NortheasternUniversity - Force Trainer - Brain - United States

Online games When I wrote in February about Star Trek Online, the massive multiplayer online game set somewhere near the time period of the “Next Generation’’ series, one reader groused that it was merely another “themed’’ MMO, with play indistinguishable from other games in the same category.



Star Trek Online - Game - Massively multiplayer online game - Online game - Video game

Prototypes The Boy Scouts are working to stem America’s science and engineering brain drain. Last week, 38 Scouts, most of them from Eastern Massachusetts, were among the first to receive the Inventing badge, the first merit badge introduced by the Boy Scouts of America since 1992.



Boy Scouts of America - Scouting - Merit badge - United States - Recreation

MONITORS I spend much of each day looking at computer screens, trolling Twitter and Facebook, digging through e-mails, and writing. And at night, it’s back to the computer for marathon viewing sessions of Rod Serling’s “Night Gallery’’ on Hulu.



Twitter - Facebook - Rod Serling - Hulu - Online Communities

If you aspire to citizen journalism or Yes Men-style activism, it’s never been easier to equip yourself with high-definition and high-fidelity hardware.



Citizen journalism - Yes Men - Media - Journalism - Participatory

ELECTRONIC TOYS Are you still hoping to compose an ode to Dio, but have no talent, no money, and no instruments?



Plastic - Paper - Business - Consumer Goods and Services - Shopping

Physical fitness I am a sucker for exercise gadgets. If you ever see a station wagon rolling through Milton with Tony Little’s Gazelle hanging out the back, that’s probably me, hauling the thing home from the tree lawn in front of someone else’s house.



Tony Little - Physical fitness - Gazelle - Fitness - Shopping

Energy No wonder renewable energy is such a tough sell: The folks behind the proposed Cape Wind turbines in Nantucket Sound are now telling us the project will raise our electric bills, not lower them.



Cape Wind - Nantucket Sound - Renewable energy - Energy - Business