Touch-screen interfaces have an inherent problem—you can't see through your fingertips to see the spot you're trying to touch. After abandoning its controversial efforts to breed humans with transparent fingers, Microsoft came up with another novel solution, a system that lets you touch the back of a device and see an overlay of virtual fingertips on the front display.

Dedicated portable navigation systems are fantastic, but they've been hamstrung by the process of plugging in addresses using a scroll pad. GPS granddaddy Garmin has leapfrogged the cumbersome data-entry issue by adding a touchscreen to its new 2650 ($1,400).