David Pogue, who writes the “State of the Art” column in the New York Times, is the wise and witty voice of technology, and you can always count on him to articulate what are the best, worst and dumbest features of everyday products. For several years he has been handing out his personal honors – “Pogies” – to the best gadgets, features or refinements of the year. This year he’s done something just a little different, celebrating the best ideas of the year, “great, clever features that somehow made it past the obstacles of cost, engineering and lawyers.”

Here’s a summary of some of the outstanding ones:

• “Docks” for your Droid, Motorola’s popular answer to the iPhone. Pogue cites a docking station for use in your home. “When you insert the Droid, the screen becomes a handsome, horizontal-layout alarm-clock/weather display, complete with buttons that let you access your music or even dim the screen for sleepy time. You have to charge your phone overnight anyway, so why shouldn’t it be doing something useful in the meantime?”
• iType2Go, a phone app that allows those of you who absolutely have to text while you are walking to see where you are going even as you text. Sheesh – don’t you people ever give it up for a few minutes?
• MiFi, Novatel’s portable power source, giving you “a Wi-Fi hot spot in your pocket, purse or laptop bag.”
• Nikon Projector Cam. A pocket camera with a built-in projector. “Now, with a single button press on the top of the camera, you can turn on the projector. The image is beamed straight from the front of the camera onto a wall, a ceiling or a friend’s T-shirt.”
• Bing Pop-Up Previews. Using Microsoft’s Bing search service – the answer to Google’s – you can “point to any search result in the list without clicking. A popup balloon shows you the first few paragraphs of text on it.”

Pogue’s favorite? “The single best tech idea of 2009,” Pogue gushes, “the real life-changer, has got to be Readability…When you click it, Readability eliminates everything from the Web page you’re reading except the text and photos. No ads, blinking, links, banners, promos or anything else.” Makes us want to gush too. It sounds like the Web’s answer to Tivo. Bring it on! (You can access Readability here.)

You can read Pogue’s article in full here.

Happy New Year, everybody.

Richard Curtis

Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by the New York Times.