Over the last few years I have gained a new love of small digital devices that make my life simpler. For example, using an ATM card at the grocery instead of cash may not seem like a life- simplifying bit of technology, but to me it meant one less trip to the bank. Same thing with email--I am apparently genetically incapable of getting to the post office to send letters. Lazy? Maybe. Easier? You bet.

Little bits of coolness are creeping into all aspects of life. At the Atlanta Olympics, visitors bought rechargeable smartcards to pay for all sorts of things instead of using cash. When I visited Paris recently, you more or less HAD to use smartcards to make calls from payphones... no more hunting for quarters (or francs). Not surprisingly, in this country, a lot of these new gadgets are built around cars... usually in the form of Global Positioning Systems... or GPS.

There are numerous variations... if the airbag in your General Motors car goes off, a signal goes out to GM's customer service folks who locate you using the car's GPS system, call you on your cell phone and send help if you don't respond. Lose you car at the Mall this holiday season? BMW will locate your car using GPS, flash the lights and honk the horn -- even unlock the doors for you.

A few years before GPS became part of our cars, we were introduced to pay at the pump...you take this for granted now, but back then, man, this was bleeding edge stuff. I loved it--no more dealing with people in glassed-in cages, no waiting in line--a transaction without human interaction. So you can imagine my excitement when as even cooler gas pump technology came around a few months ago.

Its called the SpeedPass, and while Mobil gas stations are the only ones using this technology today, I think its going to revolutionize the way you pay for gas. There are 2 different SpeedPasses -- one is a little black cylinder about an inch and a half long that attaches to your car key ring. Pull up to the new kind of pump, wave your pass in front of it, and start pumping. That's it. No credit card to put in no wallet or purse to dig through--the speedpass knows what credit card to charge and even whether you want a receipt.

There's another kind of speedpass -- its a black box about 2 inches square that attaches to your car's rear window. Drive up & the pump turns on before you even open your door.

My only criticisms of the Speedpass is that I had to re-position the window version several times before the pump could see it and that required pulling the Velcro strip off the window each time. Once I got it in the right placed it worked flawlessly. The other criticism is true of most new technologies--it was sometimes hard to find a place to use it. On a recent drive to Atlanta, I couldn't find any of the speedpass pumps.In New England, on the other hand, they're everywhere. I was addicted -- here in the Boston area, I drove my girlfriend crazy seeking out Mobil stations that took my little speedpass.

The idea of attaching digital information to your car isn't that new -- toll booths have sported equipment to scan your car and charge you the toll automatically for a few years now. Its great for commuters I suppose, but while driving along the I-95 over the holidays, I wished it was available nationwide, not just in specific locations.

The toll-takers and the speedpass are, I think, a few years ahead of current thinking and I'm not sure how many people are like me and find inserting a credit card or stopping to pay a toll a pain, and there are some security risks. If your car is stolen, the thief may fill up the tank and speed down the Jersey Turnpike for free... on the other hand, with all these little devices attached to the car, he'd be real easy to track.