Brilliant ideas that made it

THE FLASH-DRIVE FUEL gauge

You gotta love those USB flash drives. They’re cheap, shiny and tiny, and they offer a practically perfect way to transport computer files. On the other hand, you gotta hate it when you plug in a flash drive to receive a file you need ¿ and discover that the darned thing doesn’t have enough free space.

That’s the beauty of Lexar’s Mercury flash drive, whose case has a “fuel gauge” — a bar graph that tells you, without even plugging the thing in, how full it is. Thanks to a technology called E-Ink, this graph is always on and stays visible indefinitely, without requiring any power whatsoever.

THE MAGNETIC POWER CORD

Somewhere there’s surely a support group for people who have dragged their $2,000 laptops to the floor by tripping on the power cord. That doesn’t happen with Apple’s 2006 laptops, whose power cords connect with a powerful magnet rather than a pin or a plug. If someone trips or yanks on the cord, the magnet detaches and drops harmlessly to the floor. The laptop switches seamlessly to battery power, saving your data, your money and months of therapy.

It may seem counter-intuitive that the more expensive the digital camera, the less likely it is to have a built-in flash. The manufacturers assume that if you’re that much of a professional, you certainly own an external flash unit. Panasonic’s Lumix DMC-L1 and LC1 cameras, though, offer the best of both worlds. If you push the open button for the built-in flash firmly, it pops up and faces forward. But if you push lightly, it pops up to a different position, angled 45 degrees upward ¿ yes, in bounce-off-the-ceiling position. Great idea, cleverly done.

A RECORD RADIO BUTTON

Samsung Helix is a regular music player, like an iPod (though smaller). But it’s also an XM satellite radio receiver. That’s already a good idea, but here’s the clincher: When you hear a song that you like on one of XM’s 70-themed, ad-free music channels, one button-press records that song from the beginning — even if you were a little late hitting record. In all, this gadget can hold about 25 hours’ worth of recorded radio. Long-suffering music fans could probably have predicted that XM would be sued over this glorious idea, and, well, sure enough. Maybe what’s so great about this idea isn’t so much its ingenuity as its bravery.

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