"It's thin, light, mobile," Barry explained. But the device can speak for itself, literally, letting the user know: "You have reached your destination."

• The Sanyo Xacti ($800) is a high-definition camcorder that's also a 5.1-megapixel still camera. Easily fitting in the palm, the Xacti sports a fold-out screen, the ability to record directly onto an SD storage card, a 10X zoom (100X digital zoom) and connectivity to a TV, VCR, PC or DVD recorder.

• The LG Chocolate ($130) is a telephone, music player and camera designed to look a little like an iPod and a lot like — duh — chocolate. Less than 4 inches high and 2 inches wide, the Chocolate has a 1.3-megapixel picture resolution, a memory slot and Bluetooth capability.

Barry said the Chocolate has "the electronic Swiss Army knife effect," meaning it can handle phone and text traffic, music and several other tasks.

But enough about what it does. The Chocolate is all about looks.

"It's what Apple did with the iPod. It looks like an iPod," Barry said. "When you think about what Apple did to the MP3 market when they introduced the iPod, and it was essentially marketing fashion plus the simple and inexpensive software with iTunes.

"We're in a stage now where wireless phones — most of us call them cell phones — they're doing fashion and other functions to sell them. Most of us still use them primarily to talk to one another, unless you're under 21 and then you text one another."

• The RCA Small Wonder ($129) is a "tapeless" camcorder that uses flash memory. But it looks more like a digital camera than a camcorder, and it has very few buttons — on, off, play, delete, record — that allow the user to capture up to 30 minutes of video at a time.

"It's not for stills, and it's very simple," Barry said. "It comes with no software or anything — you just plug it into your computer. You take 30 minutes, then download it and delete it (from the camera) and then do another one."

Another option is to take it to a drug store or camera store, which can quickly burn a DVD.

The camcorder runs on a pair of AA batteries and has a 2X zoom. It automatically compresses video to make it easy to e-mail.

"This illustrates the point of being simple, inexpensive, easy to use," Barry said. "The whole idea is for it to be light enough and small enough so people will actually carry it around with them and take pictures of kids down in the park on the swings and that kind of stuff."