For years, the phrase â€PDAâ€phone combo†brought to mind clunky bricks that appealed to only the most connectivity-crazed early adopters. But the latest incarnations of these devices, now known by the more marketing-friendly tag â€smartphone,†are finally fit for the rest of us. So why do you want one?Beyond the obvious calling capabilities, smartphones keep your calendar and address book close at hand (and ever more easily synced with your PC), provide access to e-mail and the Web,

Kristine LaManna, Photo Editor

My Pick: K&L 5 Seat Paddle Boat

Why: With a paddle boat and my own free docking station in the river near the FDR Drive, it would have been a cinch to make it home. Best, I could've taken four other Brooklynites with me.

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MORE EDITORS' BLACKOUT WISH LIST PICKS

The love child of two-way Family Radio Service (FRS) and Global Positioning System technology, the Rino 110 ($169) from Garmin does more than simply keep track of your location: It beams your position to others in your group who are using the same radio, and plots everyone's whereabouts on its LCD. It's also completely waterproof,
a first
for FRS radios.

A higher-end Rino 120 model ($249) is also available. It has the same features, but adds 8MB of internal memory
and additional mapping capabilities.

>Edited by Suzanne Kantra Kirschner with Jenny Everett

If you have a pacemaker monitoring your heart, you'd better hope nothing goes wrong with your mind. That's because MRIsthe most effective way to image the brainand pacemakers don't mix. The former heats the device's implanted metal wires so much they could scar the heart or trigger a rapid heartbeat. Now, Wilson Greatbatch, inventor of the pacemaker, has teamed with Biophan Technologies to create a fiber-optic cable impervious to the MRI's magnetic waves. Instead of using electricity directly, it jolts the heart with laser energy converted to an electric charge.