"The Single Best Tech Idea of 2009"

The New York Times' ebullient tech columnist David Pogue handed out his awards for the best tech ideas of the year. Some of them I've covered already -- like Bing's pop-up previews, Droid and the Verizon MiFi wireless card -- and some of them are very cameras that I just don't care much about. But here are two very cool ideas that passed under my radar.

1) iType2Go
I don't have an iPhone, but if I did I'd buy this app pronto. When you're texting, iType2Go superimposes your words over a live camera view of where you're walking. So rather than looking like a half-klutz/half-jerk running into trees, cars, families with strollers and so on, you can see exactly where you're going as you text your friend. For Droid phones, a similar function is called the Text'n'Walk.

2) Readability
Pogue calls Readability -- a free button for your browser that renders any online article as an ad-free, novel-esque page -- "the single best tech idea of 2009." That was enough for me! So I downloaded the function by visiting the Readability site here, selecting my reading preferences (Novel-style text; Medium sized print; Wide margins) and dragging the Readability button to my bookmark Toolbar. Voila. Every article I read can now be rendered as a ad-free, clutter-free page of crystal clear text on a sepia background. I urge you to try it out.