I admit it. I’m a slob around my desk. If I’m not chowing down on a bagel and steamed cocoa, I’m sucking back a Diet Coke or slurping my beloved travel mug of green tea. And, yes, I realize that sesame seeds in between the keys of my keyboard aren’t an attractive addition to my personal workspace. (But it does keep others from borrowing my system when I’m not using it…)

So maybe it’s time to clean up my act and stop consuming food items and libations above my notebook. Or better yet, so that I don’t have to change one cell of my being, perhaps I could simply apply technology to the problem

Here’s a new device that hasn’t yet hit the market, but will any day now! The Belkin Washable Mouse. Retail price: $29.99. Belkin knows mice. These are the folks who sell a slew of mice: wireless mice, mice with retractable cords, Bluetooth mice, mini mice, mice with five buttons. And now they’re about to start selling a mouse that you can spill on, get wet, and wipe clean. That’s a smart application of technology — one that any mother of a kindergartner will appreciate.

Of course, I’m already so in love with my Microsoft wireless notebook optical mouse that it’ll have to be truly trashed for me give it up. But, given my current state of consumption at the workstation, how far off can that day really be?

Yesterday, I told you I’d let you know about a device that I’m hoping all touchpads will soon offer as standard equipment.

That would be the Synaptics SecurePad, a hardware module that integrates the Synaptics TouchPad with the Validity fingerprint sensor into the design of your notebook computer. No, you won’t find this anywhere in PriceGrabber, because it’s something the vendors that make your laptop will need to design their machines around.

According to Synaptics, here’s how it works:

“SecurePad uses a high frequency Pulsed RF technology that looks beyond the skin surface, past dirt and other contaminates and images the subsurface live layer to capture a fingerprint. By sending radio waves through the finger, and measuring how the signal is changed as it travels to the sensing array, SecurePad synthesizes an image of the fingerprint structure. SecurePad works in conjunction with leading software solutions, which provides a simple way for people to use their fingerprint to secure their hardware and software assets, as well as conveniently provide password replacement.”

The company doesn’t say how much it hurts when those little radio waves pierce the skin surface to get to that subsurface live layer.

At any rate, imagine a day when you no longer have to remember a single login name or password. (I dedicate fully a fifth of my current brain mass to that activity.)

Of course, nothing’s as easy as you think it will be. Once the hardware vendors have bought into the idea of biometrics, the application vendors — including online services — will need to build in the capability to recognize this form of security. And I suppose the most nefarious among us could steal thumbs, like that Tom Cruise character did in Minority Report a few years back.

But other than that, this one’s brilliant. I give it a thumb’s up — I mean, thumb’s down.

Here’s a gizmo I’d like to try: the Yoggie Pico, a USB key-sized computer with 12 security applications. The device just received a Best of Innovations - Computer Accessories award from the Consumer Electronics Show.

The Pico connects to your PC or notebook, blocking Internet threats outside the host computer. Here’s the gimmick: Even though it’s the size of your thumb, it’s a full-fledged computer with its own processor, memory and operating system (based on Linux).

According to the company, people running the Pico no longer need to run software-based security suites, which supposedly increases performance for the computer because you’ve offloaded those bottleneck applications. Plus, it isolates your PC from public networks.

If you’re looking for a way to impose parental control over where online your kids can surf, you can configure the device such that if it’s yanked by somebody wanting access to off-limit websites, Internet access will be totally denied.

The security functions provided by the Pico include:

• Anti-virus
• Anti-spyware
• Anti-phishing
• Anti-spam
• Intrusion detection
• Firewall
• Web filtering
• Transparent email proxies
• Transparent web proxies

There’s more, but you get the idea.

 Devices run between $100 and $160 through PriceGrabber, though it lists for $179 from Yoggie itself. Plus, you’ll need to add in the cost of subscriptions for those security applications, which seems to run about $30 a year (first year free!).

If easy security is what you’re looking for, tomorrow, I’ll share the details of a new product that I hope to start seeing become standard issue for touchpads.

Yesterday, I promised I’d share the lowdown on my favorite Dell notebook — the one that makes me feel like a true road warrior. That’s the Latitude D430, a beautiful little machine with a starting weight that comes in at 3.0 pounds. Why, that’s no heavier than my autographed copy of The Gary Snyder Reader!

I had one of these at my last job, and I loved it. Because it was so light, I carried it with me everywhere. Because it was so small, I could tuck it into my knapsack safely ensconced between mouse pads, t-shirts, whatever was soft. I never sat through a meeting, conference, workshop, seminar or keynote without pulling it out and keeping my notes on it. That meant I never had to write another word in my reporter notebook again. (Since I can’t read my own writing, this was a real boon to productivity!)

Here’s the standard rundown: an Intel Core 2 Duo Processor, XP Home Edition, a 12.1-inch wide screen, 1GB of memory, a 40GB of storage, a CDRW/DVD, and an 802.11g wireless card.

Now here’s the caveat: If you have big fingers, you may find the keyboard unusable. There’s little space between the core set of keys and the extraneous ones such as the num pad or the arrow keys. You’ll constantly find yourself squinching up your shoulders to the detriment of your neck. Fortunately, I don’t have big fingers.

Also, you’ll want a desktop monitor to plug into if this is your main machine. Likewise, you’ll need to haul an extra battery with you. The standard one would give me a little more than a couple of hours, not nearly enough to cover a day at a conference.

Now that I think about it, you’ll want to upgrade almost everything — hard drive, memory, operating system. But once you do, you’ll never want to give up your D430.

If you’ve ever dropped your notebook computer, raise your hand! (Yikes, not while you still have a grip on your computer!) If employers ever found out just how hard I can be on their equipment, they’d never hire me. Of course, there’s always the off-chance that I could get a job in the Dell testing labs, where I could be put in charge of seeing just how sturdy its new line of Latitude “Road Warrior” machines are.

The ATG D630, in particular, garnered Popular Science’s attention. (In fact, the video they have on this is rather hilarious, if you like to see machines flop to the floor and keep on running…)

This rugged notebook runs from $2,000 to $3,000 depending on just how durable you need your machine. But the standard features include these: And Intel Core 2 Duo T7100 processor, Windows XP Home Edition, a 14.1-inch screen, a feeble 512MB of memory, an 80GB of storage, a RW/DVD drive and an 802.11g wireless card. The cost goes up as you add a shock-mounted hard drive, more memory and a fingerprint reader for security.

But you know what? All that sturdiness adds pounds. The starting weight for the ATG D630 is a whopping 6.3 pounds. And that would simply force me to heave my equipment around in ways that are bound to hurt it. Tomorrow, I’ll share my dream Dell machine with you — which takes a different approach to durability.

NVIDIA is a company name you may not recognize (unless you’re a gamer), but it’s managing to do some of the most interesting graphics chipset work out there for motherboards and video cards. Some of the brands include GeForce, GoForce, Quadro and nForce. Now, you should add supercomputing to the work that NVIDIA is putting its imprint on. Popular Science just recognized its CUDA with a “best of what’s new” award.

The Cuda is a C language software development kit that can help a programmer transform a “graphics processing unit” (GPU) into a supercomputer. These are the devices that scientists and researchers rely on for computing jobs that require massive amounts of calculations. Frequently, they involve parallel processing — where a number of CPUs are applied in tandem to the work.

With CUDA you can turn your notebook to that kind of computing work because it can get threads on NVIDIA GPUs to work together in solving a problem. The programming kit includes examples for performing matrix multiplication, image convolution, Monte-Carlo option pricing and plenty of other samples on topics about which I have no clue.

I don’t know how this computing power will manifest, but no doubt somebody will create an application that will enable ordinary mortals to restart hearts with a cell phone and remove calories from Thanksgiving dinner via the family room Wii.

Next on the list of winning products from Popular Science is the meraki mini. (What is it with lower case letter for proper names? First, midomi.com, now this… Didn’t any of these start-up people make it through the capitalization lesson in their 3rd grade English classes?)

meraki, which in Greek means “doing something with soul, creativity or love,” has a nifty idea. Take an ordinary wired connection to the Internet and expand it with wireless routers. The first router creates a wi-fi network in the immediate area of the Internet connection. The second one, if added within 150 feet of the first, amplifies the signal. Keep adding minis and the network grows.

Want proof? meraki has been building up a wi-fi community in San Francisco. In fact, it’s making routers available for free to people who can place their mini in a location that expands the network. (In other words, they can see the “Free the Net” signal when they check available wireless access points in their operating system.) When I checked today, 26,286 users were connected in neighborhoods all over the city. There’s no charge for people who use the San Francisco network, and the company said it plans to keep it that way.

Right now, the only place to buy the mini is directly from meraki, but no doubt that’ll change with time. A standard mini costs $49, and the outdoor standard is $99. Pro editions that offer advanced user management and support for paid networks are slightly more.

This week Popular Science announced its annual list of what’s best in the world of science, and over the next few days I’m going to share some of the products and services that earned recognition in the computing category.

First up, midomi.com, from Melodis Corp., a Silicon Valley company focused on sound recognition and search technologies.

midomi is a web-based service that mixes online karaoke with social networking and what is purported to be a remarkable search capability.

Ever tried to remember that song playing through your head and couldn’t quite place the performer? Here’s how midomi can help out. Using a microphone plugged into or built into your computer, you simply record a few bars of the song — whether by singing, humming or whistling. Then you push a button to submit it. The site instantly compares that recording to other tunes already in the database to help identify what the song is titled, who the performers are, and what other fan recordings it has of that same tune in its collection.

Registered members can create profiles, share recordings with friends, rate each other’s performances, send messages and buy original music. Fans with high scores can become a midomi “star” and have their vocal act featured on the site.

The site’s goal is to build “the most comprehensive database of searchable music.” But I have to tell you, it’ll never get my vocal offerings. Why not? The system didn’t recognize a single one of my test submissions. Now, as a writer, I believe I’ve developed a fairly thick skin through the years. But I have to take exception with any Web 2.0 offering that can’t appreciate my personal rendition of Thing Called Love. I was reduced to using the site’s text search function to track down other Bonnie Raitt fans. What’s with that?! (Check out PSnavely’s rendition of another Raitt tune. Now that’s something to talk about…)

With memory so cheap, I’ve decided that it’s goofy for a two-person household to share a single backup drive. So I’ve been pondering a couple of options, both comparably priced and with similar feature sets.

The Western Digital Passport and Seagate FreeAgent Go external drives both offer 160 gigabytes of storage and sell for under $150 apiece. The WD model is about $20 less expensive. They run off of a USB 2.0 port, have rotational speeds of 5400 RPM and weigh less than seven ounces (the WD model is lighter). Both have fairly tiny footprints — 15 to 16 square inches.

According to several user reviews, the WD model has a fairly flimsy casing, and at least one person suggested that he or she would be buying a case for it. One reviewer said he couldn’t get it to work off of a single USB port (from which it draws its power), so he’d suggested a Y-cable that lets the user plug the device into two ports at once. (Sometimes, USB port availability can be a real challenge for me.)

The Seagate model also requires both two ports according to one reviewer, but at least the package includes a dual-connection cable. No mentions of a cheapie container. (I can’t wait for Pricegrabber to add that “virtual feel” function!) And since I tend to be hard on my components (by virtue of my relative clumsiness), I guess Seagate’s going to get my business this time around — even though it’s a bit pricier than Western Digital.

In my last post, I promised to share a solution to my iPod speaker challenge that I wished I’d followed.

Thanks to my friend Neal, who introduced to me to the Accurian Wireless FM Transmitter (and bought me one too!).

He found it at Radio Shack (the same place I picked up my iSymphony speaker), and the sale price was exactly the same: $19.99. But the Accurian model, which looks like a computer mouse, uses your car speakers to broadcast the audio. Just plug in the jack (which hides inside the device when you’re not using it) to whatever you’re playing from — iPod, CD player, laptop, or satellite radio receiver. Then choose one of the eight available frequencies not already in use where you are, set your car tuner to the same frequency and rock out! (Or, in my case, listen to Annie Proulx’s Bad Dirt.)

The Accurian runs on two AAA batteries — or you can use the car power adapter and eliminate the waste.

I wasn’t familiar with this little gizmo before, but, of course, now I’ve found a slew of alternatives, the cutest of which is probably the Mito AudioBUG 350.

Can’t wait for my next road trip.