Anne B. McDonald

Droid Razr MaxxVerizon today announced another addition to the Droid family of smartphones, the Droid Razr Maxx.

The company says the phone is aimed at heavy multitaskers with its long battery life, which Verizon says is more than 21 hours on a single charge. The Razr Maxx is just 8.99 mm thick, which makes it a bit thicker than the original Droid Razr at 7.1 mm.

HP said today that the company would produce one last run of its discontinued TouchPad tablets to meet "unfulfilled demand."

The news came from HP's Mark Budgell, PR manager, social media strategy, on HP's The Next Bench blog.

OK, America, time to put away your copy of "Royal Weddings For Dummies," and get busy watching the real thing.

The arrival of the guests at Westminster Abbey is just the culmination of royal wedding frenzy. We've stocked up on Royal Wedding beer and are all set to order some Royal Wedding Pizzas with the lucky couple's faces outlined in pepperoni and peppers. As for dessert: We just wish it could be the $900 jellybean with Kate Middleton's face on it.

Do you know who you're buying from when you are on one of the Internet's large shopping sites?

Rita Perenson of Long Island, New York, wasn't sure. Last fall, she and her husband thought they had purchased a 32-inch LG HDTV from Amazon.com. But the seller on Amazon's site turned out to be the online arm of a store in Nashville, Tennessee. When the HDTV arrived, its packaging was already opened, leading the Perensons to suspect that the item had been used by someone else.

When I moved into my current house, I inherited a 15-foot-tall apple tree. Having free fruit was nice, but I needed a tall ladder to pick the crop. So I bought one--and a year later, the tree died.

Today, before buying a ladder, I'd check Zilok.com, a site that matches people who need an item with people or businesses that offer it for rent. Zilok lists the items by area, along with price, conditions, and availability. A map indicates how close the owner is to you.

As I was spring-cleaning my home office recently, I came across a cardboard box labeled "Cell Phones of the Last Decade." As an experiment, I punched the model numbers of those ancient phones into several of the online sites that buy used gadgets to see whether I could make any money off them.

But I had waited too long. The Motorola Razr V3 that was my pride and joy in 2004 is worthless today, as is the HTC Tilt smartphone with the broken cover. All three sites I tried--BuyMyTronics.com, Gazelle.com, and NextWorth.com--told me the old phones were fit only for recycling.

Illustration by Gordon StuderBack in 2006 I was fascinated (and a little jealous) when I read that shoppers in Japan could pay for a soda by waving their cell phone at a vending machine. Since then I've been impatiently waiting for this handy pay method to spread to the United States. So when the technology that makes it possible--Near Field Communication--started being discussed again recently, I got hopeful.

If you work in a building that requires you to wave a card to gain entry, you have an idea of how NFC works. That card has an embedded circuit with your permissions encoded. Similarly, NFC--a high-frequency wireless communications technology--allows the exchange of data between devices at a maximum distance of about 4 inches. Users wave or tap their mobile phone against a reader and then enter a PIN on the handset to verify a purchase.

Do you salivate over a rebate offer like a dog does over a bacon treat? I do.There's something irresistible about the idea of getting money back for something you'd buy anyway. But face facts: Do you file your rebate paperwork?

For the most part, rebates are a win for the manufacturer or store that offers them. First, rebate offers help bring in business. Second, there is always a percentage of buyers who just don't get around to mailing in the documentation. (See yourself here?) Those people are money in the bank for the seller.

This year, if you wait until Black Friday--traditionally one of the most frenzied shopping days of the year--to score some spectacular savings on holiday electronics and tech buys, you may have waited too long.

Several retailers, notably Best Buy, Newegg, and Sears, already have started their Black Friday specials. Many retailers are placing more emphasis on daily deals well ahead of November 26, the great traditional shopping day after Thanksgiving.