TOP TECHNOLOGY NEWS

Fossil and Sony Ericsson have partnered to develop Bluetooth-enabled watches, several of which have been unveiled. Three Fossil watches — the FX6001 boasting the Fossil brand and the AU6001 and AU6002 under the Abacus moniker — can connect with your Sony Ericsson cell phone to provide caller ID and alert you to voice and text messages via the small LCD at the bottom of the watch face.

LG unveiled its line of “Time Machine” TVs this week, including both LCD and plasma models. The plasma models come in 42-inch and 50-inch versions, while the LCD TVs come in 37-inch and 42-inch models and hold the distinction of being the first TVs to feature integrated digital-video recorders. The 80GB drive can hold up to 40 hours of standard-definition programming, and the unit offers continuous automatic recording in one-hour intervals. The TVs also eliminate multiple-cable tangles thanks to HDMI connectivity. No word on pricing yet.

One of the latest is companies to jump on the Skype bandwagon is Miglia Technology, which has launched the Dialog Phone. This cordless handset works with Skype and iChat AV and is compatible with both PC and Mac. The design is as no-nonsense as it gets: there’s no number pad or LED, just a call button and a volume control key that also lets you scroll through contacts. The phone has a 20-foot range — you just plug the wireless USB adapter into your computer and start calling.

Plug your 3.5-inch hard drive or your memory cards into this unassuming box and you can view your videos, pictures and music on your TV. The GigaView HDD AV Media Player comes with a remote control and is compatible with all the major formats including VCD, (VOB) DVD, MPEG1/2/4, DIVX3.X, DIVX4.X, DIVX5.X MP3 and JPEG. It’s available for £39.99.

Logitech’s Wireless DJ Music System lets you control your Internet radio stations, music files, music subscription services and podcasts from a Bluetooth-enabled remote control. You hook the system’s transmitter up to your PC via USB and its receiver to your stereo. The remote’s onscreen display let you browse through your music and stream it wirelessly within 150 feet. The system will be available in October for $250 and add-on receivers for multiple-stereo households will be available at the same time for an additional $80 each.

We've probably all had our parked car dinged or dented only to have the offending party leave the scene without leaving a note. The TruScene catches these miscreants red-handed. You mount it to your rearview mirror and it acts as your sentry, recording what it sees into a 30 second buffer. Should your car get banged on the TruScene's watch, it saves those 30 seconds into internal memory so you can witness the culprit in action when you return.

Got a nosy roommate? Need to keep your teenage contraband from mom's prying eyes? Then you need the Room Defender. Just place this $45 sentry near the door to your room. Any unauthorized "guests" will be greeted with a hail of 16 foam discs — a harmless but effective deterrent. The Defender has four security settings:  Target, Ambush, Warning and Assault.

We’ve seen a lot of devices to assist the blind — from electronic Braille readers to synthetic “eyes” — but this is one of the most intriguing. The National Federation of the Blind has unveiled the Kurzweil-National

Federation of the Blind Reader, which combines a state-of-the-art digital camera and character-recognition software with text-to-speech conversion technology to make a groundbreaking alternative to Braille. The user holds the device over printed material such as a menu or airline ticket and the device takes a picture of the text and plays back the content in synthetic speech.

If you don’t mind the $210 price tag, Philips 7-inch Digital Picture Frame is a pretty cool way to display your favorite photo. You just place your digital camera’s memory card in one of the frame’s two slots and the image of your choice is displayed in 720×480 resolution. The frame features adjustable brightness and 14MB of memory and is powered by a rechargeable battery or AC power.

We’ll admit there’s something alluring about being able to watch TV on a large screen at the beach, tailgate parties and other remote places. We’ll also admit Sima’s inflatable 96-inch projector screen is an interesting way to make that happen. The screen apparently takes about five-minutes to pump up and comes with speakers (weatherized to endure the elements), tiedowns (to keep the screen stable in the wind) and a pump. But the $1,000 tag is pretty steep, especially considering you still have to buy a projector to use the thing.