iPhone garage-door opener

Now you can buy a garage door opener that communicates with a gadget which you can buy and plug into your internet modem by Ethernet, so that you can open your garage door from your iPhone. The way it works is you launch an app on your phone which connects to the internet and sends a message to your home network and is picked up by the plug-in gadget which then sends a radio signal to the garage-door opener.

Thus saving you from having to press the button on your old-fashioned garage door remote on your sun visor, or on your car's homelink device.

Just one more way for technology to make life more complicated, and less reliable, since it depends on internet access with both your phone and your home network. If either one is down, your garage door stays closed. But who cares about that if you get to own another gadget.

Caveat: I'm a gadget freak. But only when the gadget is actually useful.