POINT WITHOUT POINTING

The speech-recognition software in Windows Vista offers anyone who can’t type — or doesn’t like to — a slick, efficient alternative. Wearing a headset, you can dictate text into any program and “click” any button or tab by saying its name.

But what if you don’t know its name? What you can say, though, is “show numbers”. The program immediately overlays every clickable thing on the screen with colourful numbers. You can just say call out the number appearing on the corresponding function and the computer works out the command.

THE UNCOMPLICATED CELL PHONE

Plenty of people have, while grousing to their spouses, imagined a cellphone that does nothing but make phone calls — no Internet, camera, music, text messaging, or any other complicated gimmickry. In other words, it’s not such a new idea. GreatCall, however, has actually gone and built one. Its Jitterbug phone is a big finger-friendly flip phone with huge light-up number buttons, no nested menus at all, and — get this — a simulated dial tone.

New York Times / DAVID POGUE