Unless you’ve been on Mars since the release of the iPhone 4, you surely know that they’ve had problems with the phone’s signal. The difficulty has been blamed on user error (“Dude, you’re holding it wrong!”), the AT&T network, a software error (they claimed that the signal was lost because it was actually weaker than what they were displaying in the first place), and the antenna design, but it’s clear that the first three are smoke screens.

Here’s another cute gadget, shown to us in the NY Times Gadgetwise blog: Size AA rechargeable batteries with built-in USB plugs, so you can plug the batteries directly into your computer to charge them. And here they are on Amazon.

Here’s an amusing little device that Eric Taub writes about in the New York Times:

All of this is why a new product from Zomm may wind up hitting a nerve. A small electronic disc that fits on a key ring, the product, also called the Zomm, connects to a phone via Bluetooth. Separate the two devices by more than 30 feet, and the Zomm first vibrates, then flashes and then screams.

The New York Times recently published an editorial opining that the Federal Communications Commission should reclassify broadband Internet service, from a U.S. regulatory point of view, as a communications service (rather than an information service, as it’s classified now). That will give the FCC more authority to regulate broadband providers.

Yesterday, Eric Taub reviewed an interesting device in the Gadgetwise blog in the New York Times. It’s a pair of transceivers that help you locate your car even if you’re a half mile from it. You leave one transceiver in the car, take the other with you, and then use it to find your car as you’d use a Geiger counter to find a source of radiation.

It seems, from the review, that it’s pretty slick — Mr Taub says it works as advertised. But the real point, I think, is how he ends his review: