Best Tech Ideas of 2009

The year's "single best tech idea" is a simple trick that makes reading web pages a lot easier, writes David Pogue in the New York Times. Called Readability, "it's a free button for your web browser's toolbar." Click it, and it "eliminates everything from the web page you’re reading except the text and photos. No ads, blinking, links, banners, promos, or anything else." Get it here. Some of Pogue's other honorees:

• MiFi: This Novatel gadget, available from Verizon or Sprint, allows you to carry around your own personal hotspot.
• Droid docks: The Motorola Droid is a fine phone, but its docks get the glory here. In the car, the dock turns the phone into a GPS system. At home, a "handsome" alarm clock and weather display.
• ITYPE2GO: This $1 iPhone app is both funny and useful. Text and walk at the same time, safely: The app "superimposes what you’re typing over a live camera view, so you can see where you’re going even while you’re focused on the screen."

Read about the other Pogies here.
(More MiFi stories.)