Tech for the Young (at Heart)

I've been looking at a lot of head-scratching technology over this past weekend. The stuff all looks tremendously cool, but I'm not sure that it wouldn't be the high tech equivalent of me parading around town in a mini skirt and bare midriff. Is there such a thing as age-appropriate technology? Do you get too old to use (or appreciate) certain technology?

Here are three signs of youth that caught my eye. Could you, would you, use them on the street?

Twitter for Every Move You Make: Bad enough that I've learned to use social networks to track down friends from former lives, but Twitter takes social networking to a new immediacy. Twitter is a cross between instant messaging and social networking. The idea is to create an online record of what you're doing, right now, minute by minute, and send it to your friends' mobile phones. Updates like "listening to podcasts" or "humus wrap with veggies for lunch" dominate. Sure, there are probably reasons to keep an up to the minute tab on something or someone, but I haven't found it on Twitter.

GestureTek Turns Your Cell Phone Into a Motion Machine: The Nintendo Wii, with its ability to let you use your body as an input device, has changed the tech landscape. Now you can turn your cell phone into a Wii-like device with GestureTek Mobile. GestureTek-enabled phones will sense body movements and, depending on the application, they'll react accordingly. Imagine. You can play video games by shaking, rolling, and rocking your phone. Shuffle your music by shaking your phone, browse a map or look through photos by rocking your phone from side to side, and more. The software was introduced on Japanese phones from DoCoMo and is available through Verizon as a downloadable application.

Text Message Like There's No Tomorrow: Morgan Pozgar, age 13, took home the national title for text messaging and $25,000 in cash at a recent competition. After watching it appear on a screen before her, Pozgar typed the word "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" into her phone in just 15 seconds. (It takes me that long to find my reading glasses and just read the word off my phone.) In a newspaper interview, Pozgar said she sent and received 8,000 messages a month. The contest was sponsored by LG Systems and contestants used LG phones with full QWERTY keyboards.

I grabbed at the chance to beat Pozgar's record with my new T-Mobile Sidekick iD—the most versatile and personalized Sidekick yet (I'm now working on reviewing it in more detail). After practicing for a few minutes, I managed to text message the same word in 21 seconds, with only one mistake. Morgan, watch out!

If you're over 40 and you're broadcasting your whereabouts via your cell phone, dreaming about shaking your phone to get a reaction, or texting at lightning pace, then you are really aging well.