Personal Tech Today

Ready for CES in Las Vegas Jan. 6? It's THE annual religious festival for diehard gadget freaks. Whether you go or don't go, the event is sure to bring the coming year's coolest electronic toys out of the wordwork. I'll be making a pilgrimage myself, and will be reporting from the show floor. Though most technology trade shows are withering away, the CES people are predicting a record crowd of 120,000. If you'll be attending the show, you'll be happy to note that the city's monorail, which had been closed because massive chunks of razor sharp metal occasionally rained down on tourists, should be repair, tested and opened again to the public.

Wow! It looks like Apple is planning an iPod for the rest of us (those of us who beat up our gadgets from heavy use and clumsiness). Applelinks is reporting that Apple has applied for a patent on a method for protecting data if a gadget is dropped. The idea is a novel one: If the iPod feels itself accelerating (say, toward the floor...), it would quickly go into a self-protection mode and stop writing to the drive.

Most of us listen to music in our cars, either on the radio or CDs. But now you can do more. i4U reports that Estone Digital Inc is now selling a $645 in-dash MP3 Car Stereo that rips songs from CDs and writes them to a built-in hard drive.

On the smart phone front, Phone Scoop discovered documents on the FCC web site that appear to show that Samsung's upcoming SCH-i730 PDA phone will support both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth (as well as CDMA EV-DO).