DEMO: There goes the other half

Maybe losing half of my hearing on the plane was just the start. DEMO's opening moment features an ear-splitting rendition of "Ballroom Blitz" (by Sweet - I had to look it up).

"There's tremendous noise in the market," DEMO Executive Producer Chris Shipley tells us moments later.

Bring on da noise. Bring on da funk. (I have no idea where that came from.)

Presto Services and the HP Printing Mailbox have solved perhaps the most daunting problem facing my family: what to get Dad for Christmas. A third of American adults -- including my Dad -- are not online. Presto and HP have teamed to overcome this obstacle and bring people like Pops into the digital age. In essence, the service allows those with e-mail to send messages and photos to those who have neither access to e-mail nor a computer. There are clever bells and whistles that Dad need not concern himself with because all he has to do is watch one of us plug the thing into the phone and a wall. The printer goes for $150 and the service costs $10 a month. Sold.

Dash Navigation has a GPS device that looks really cool, but I'm not using the one I have already. They say it's about the cost of a satellite radio subscription.

Tribeca Labs says its Photobot will let me take "amazing digital pictures without lifting a finger." More interesting is the Swiss Picture Bank that for about $5 a month stores your digital pictures "for generations to come" in the same secure environment -- in Switzerland -- where criminals have been keeping their illicit loot safe for generations. Just think: Your wedding pics side by side with Tony Soprano's rainy-day fund.

HearHere from Pluggd let's you search an audio clip to find keywords and topics. They're going to do it for video, too. Could be useful if you're staring a 20-minute clip and know you only care about 30 seconds that are in there somewhere. But someone ought to tell them they've misspelled plugged.

I think my hearing is coming back.

• demofall2006