The Boom, a pricey, hands-free headset for cellphones and some home telephones, is an example of how hard it is to be great.

Its foundation is the fabulous noise-canceling voice-recognition technology developed for use in brokerage houses and proven on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, one of the noisiest places you'll ever want to call home from.

The technology was adapted for consumers with help from Frog Design, which has designed everything from cruise ships and motorcycles to faucets and the first Apple computer.

Even though it should be obvious, the secret weapon of a home entertainment system is its speakers. Many buyers focus on what they can see, either in the quality of the TV picture or, worse, in how a flat screen or other component blends in with the divan.

You can test this question of component supremacy for yourself, however: Pop, say, "Jurassic Park" into your DVD player and watch for a few minutes without sound. Then add sound and hide the screen and see which one gets your juices flowing.

One of the recurring minor questions of the technological age is, "Should we?"

Should we have, say, an electric blanket that can be turned on from the car 10 minutes before arriving home? Or a remote control that will pop corn while it's shuttering the windows for the 1:43 p.m. home-theater showing of "Rocky VI"? Should there be a "Rocky VI"? (Oh, wait. That's the subject of a different column. But no, there shouldn't.)

Do-it-yourself home designers used to have only graph paper and a ruler for tools, but you can find better tools these days on the Internet. The bad sites aren't that bad, and the best ones are getting better. jordansfurniture.com

A new software package by Hookumu Inc., a Salem, N.H., developer, could turn out to be one of the very best. It is due to debut by the end of this month on the Jordan's Furniture website. I got to test the package last week at home, and found it to be pretty snazzy: easy, efficient, and eminently customizable.

If you want to know the magnitude of the problem, look in your
closet. Or maybe the basement, or the garage, or wherever you've put
your old TV, computer, or any other piece of technology that has since
been upgraded.

Someday you're going to want to get rid of that stuff, and so is
everyone else. Last year, 56 million PCs were scrapped, more than were
sold, according to Jim Gardner of Metech International, a Rhode Island
company that's making money by taking in all those castoffs and
returning their parts to productive uses.

Whenever I hear a cut from "Cosmo's Factory," the 1970 classic by
Creedence Clearwater Revival, I think Venezuela. That's because when my
family carted me there on vacation that year, I carted that cassette
among a shoebox full of others, along with a player that rivaled the
shoebox in size.

When I stepped onto the plane for the New Orleans Jazz Festival on
Thursday, I carried seven or eight times the amount of music on my
iPod, slipped into my shirt pocket.

Not because I ever expect to make one, but motivated by the same
interest that's led to viewing "This Old House" for 20 years, I asked
the Google search engine "how to build a deck." I found lots of
information among the 651,000 sites that came back, but the most
interesting tale among them was labeled, "How NOT to build a deck."

Airlines have long tried to mask the undeniable fact that to travel,
you have to leave home. Back in the '30s, for example, when Pan Am's
China Clipper began overseas service, it offered dining on fine china
and had beds.

Analogues of those amenities - hot food, blankets, and pillows for
all - eventually made it into coach. Other amenities were examples of
trying to make flying even better than home: movies, magazines, and
service at your seat.

LAS VEGAS - The hot items at the 37th Consumer Electronics Show,
which officially opened here yesterday, are not any particular gizmos
but "convergence" and "interconnectivity."

Spurred by the advance of broadband and ever-cheaper digital
storage, consumer electronics companies are actively pursuing ways of
linking the tools and toys that populate the contemporary home.

If even one commercial music station were better than warm spit, I might have been in the position to hear the Eels and Vertical Horizon, two of my new favorite bands, when they started out in the '90s.

But because radio stations all play the same 10 songs or are as
stuck in the past as my music collection used to be, I never listen to
them. For a long time, that meant if a pal didn't turn me on to new
music, my collection stood still.

But now I have Audioscrobbler.com, and I am loving it.