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Seagate has pulled off a remarkable feat: The company has integrated remote access to files stored on its new GoFlex Home Network Storage System so thoroughly and intelligently that it requires no setup.

In fact, when testing the GoFlex Home network-attached storage (N.A.S.) drive, I called Seagate for technical support because I couldn’t figure out how to set up remote access. I was never prompted to set up a dynamic DNS account, as other NAS drives do, and figured something was amiss.

Seagate’s new NAS drive is designed for networking novices.

Turns out, I didn’t need to call. Remote access is built into the interface. When you’re not operating on your home network, the software seamlessly connects to your shared folders and files from within the application. In other words, you don’t have to navigate to a Web site and enter your user name and password to access files. It’s all automatic.

The GoFlex Home is available in two storage capacities: 1 terabyte ($140) and 2 terabytes ($200).

Seagate says it invested a lot of time designing a NAS drive for networking novices—and it shows. The interface is much friendlier and more intuitive than previous Seagate products. The company claims the average user should be able to set up the drive in 10 minutes or less. (I timed my install at 8 minutes, including software setup.)

But that’s not so say that you won’t have to occasionally seek help from the user manual. You’ll want to put some time into adding users, tweaking access rights, and setting up backup and printer sharing. Like any N.A.S. drive, the more time you invest in exploring the preferences and administration features, the more you’ll get out of it.

Seagate includes Memeo software for automatic backup of three computers (you can buy a $50 license for additional computers). You’ll need to install the backup software on each computer, then define what data you want to back up. The software enables continuous backup to computers, meaning that every time you change a file, it’s automatically updated on the N.A.S. drive.

The GoFlex Home also supports wireless Time Machine backups for Mac users. Be warned that the initial Time Machine backup can require a very long time. It took more than 24 hours to perform a 192-gigabyte backup for my Mac notebook. Wireless file transfers to N.A.S. drives are notoriously slow, and the GoFlex is no exception.

Another downside: Because the GoFlex Home is designed for consumer use, it will break the network connection if you use a VPN to access your corporate network.

According to Seagate, printer sharing is one of the highest-ranked uses among consumers, yet it’s not as simple as it sounds. I have a mixed network (Windows and Mac computers) and have had a lot of trouble in the past wirelessly connecting my Macs to my printer. After a couple of tries, I successfully networked my printer by connecting it via USB to the N.A.S. device. The connection has been reliable so far.

The GoFlex also lets you share files and photos with friends and family in a pretty intuitive way. First create a shared folder, then drag and drop the content you want to share. Next, create an account for each person you want to share files with. The account-creation is pretty painless: Just add user name and e-mail address. The software lets you click a button to send contacts an invite via e-mail with a URL to view and download the content.

All things considered, the GoFlex Home is a great choice for networking newbies. It’s a well-rounded, well-designed N.A.S. that should serve average home users quite well.

You don’t need to have a separate piece of hardware to read e-books from the major online bookstores like Amazon and Barnes & Noble. The e-reader software works on phones and computers. But e-readers like the Kindle and Nook do have an advantage over PCs, tablets and smartphones: a grayish screen that’s easy on the eyes.

Thankfully, most major e-book apps include a setting that lets you change the background of an e-book on your smartphone or tablet from the standard bright white to a more subdued tone. In Amazon’s Kindle app, for example, you can choose between a white, black or sepia background by tapping the View Options icon at the bottom of the screen. Barnes & Noble’s Nook app offers a choice of colors in its own settings area, and Apple’s iBooks app lets you toggle a sepia background off and on. In most apps, this same settings area is also where you can change the point size of the screen text as well.

In the not too distant technological past, a computer’s storage drives filled a space not much smaller than my living room. The new 64-gigabyte solid-state drive from SanDisk is the size of a postage stamp.

Miniaturization, except when it comes to S.U.V.’s and flat-panel televisions, is a key and crucial formula these days in gadgets, and the SanDisk “iSSD”—for integrated solid state drive—will end up in tablet PCs, netbooks, smartphones and other mobile products.

One of the major advantages here is that the iSSD has no mechanical or moving parts, as do most internal hard drives, and the new drive could likely be attached directly to the computer’s motherboard, freeing up valuable interior space inside the machine.

The result: smaller gadgets with more power and greater power efficiency.

The size of the new chip is only 18 by 20 millimeters, less than two mm thick, and weighing less than a gram. The iSSD products have been made available to manufacturing clients for evaluation, SanDisk said. Storage capacities, while limited now to 64 gigs—not nearly enough for fully functional laptops—will increase in time.

SanDisk is among the chief makers worldwide of flash memory modules. It has not set a price as yet on the new gear.

To celebrate its 100th birthday—truly a milestone event in the history of any company—the folks from Denon invited a group of gadget writers to their New Jersey headquarters recently to see and hear a new range of limited-edition products, most of them priced at $2,500. Each.

Among them: the $2,500 turntable.

“Where’s the $2,500 iPod speaker dock?” I asked, figuring that that also must be something fabulous to see and hear.

“No iPod dock,” said Denon executive Jeff Talmadge, and pointed me toward the $2,500 S.A.C.D. player. (S.A.C.D. is a data storage system usually referred to as Super Audio Compact Discs.)

Well, sometimes you’ve got to look back to look ahead, and that’s particularly true of audiophiles, the community that Denon is most actively courting with its limited-edition Anniversary Product Collection. Never mind that vinyl records and S.A.C.D. have largely evaporated from the mass market. Both sources still sound terrific, especially on Denon’s new equipment (and the borrowed Bowers & Wilkins loudspeakers).

And the company hasn’t completely ignored the 21st century: there’s a handsome universal disc player (universal disc players have long been a strong suit of the company) that does Blu-ray video as well as conventional DVDs and CDs. It weighs a ton (well, O.K., 25 pounds).

Interestingly, Denon was started by an American, Frederick Horn, as the Japanese Recorders Corporation, and developed professional recording devices before World War II. Denon also introduced LP records and stereo equipment (remember stereo?) to the Japanese market in the 1950s, and was the first company to commercially market a CD player to consumers, in 1982.

The turntable is a beauty, even when static. The aluminum platter rests on a base that weighs 30-odd pounds. Its technology, or much of it, is 40 years old, and it incorporates direct motor drive, rather than the more common rubber-belt drive system.

All of the products, which also include a two-channel integrated amplifier and a high-end audio-video receiver, go on sale in November at select Denon dealers. Details are here.

And no iPod docks.

Tyler Stableford A series of small adjustments in Photoshop Lightroom can result in big improvements to images.

I was tweaking a photo for a friend’s antiques store Web site the other day, experimenting with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom to adjust the color and add a subtle vignette. I like Lightroom because it doesn’t have the arduous learning curve that Photoshop does, and it’s designed specifically for photographers and photographs.

But I don’t have many tricks in my Lightroom photo-doctoring bag. In fact, everything I was doing I had learned from a brief demonstration by Tyler Stableford, an outdoor sports and adventure photographer who uses Lightroom to make his photos just a bit more dazzling.

So I called Mr. Stableford and asked him for his best (and easiest) tips to make small adjustments that result in big improvements to images. He gave me the following 10 tips that photographers of every skill level will appreciate. (Note that these adjustments are described for RAW images; settings for JPEGs will vary somewhat.)

1. Boost blacks to +5 points or so (in the Basics panel, under Color). Deepening blacks will add richness to the image.

2. Add a vignette to the image (in the Effects panel, Post-Crop Vignetting). Take the vignetting down to -15 to darken the corners of the photo and guide the viewer’s eye to the center (assuming that’s where you want the eye to land). Alternately, you can apply a +15 vignette to lighten the corners in a fall foliage shot or a wedding photo. This technique will add a bright, airy feeling.

3. Use a graduated filter to add weight to the lower portion of a photo. Select the Graduated Filter tool, and set the exposure to, say, -33, then click on the bottom of your photo and drag the tool up through the bottom half. This will subtly add a natural foundation and ground the image with a bit of density.

4. Adjust the shadows in the Tone Curve panel. Set shadows to -10 and the darks to +10. This will boost richness, as well as add subtle contrast to the overall image.

5. You can tone down a too-bright blue sky by adjusting luminance. Click the HSL panel, then luminance. Next, click the Adjust tool at the left of the panel (it looks like a bulls-eye) and position it at the top of the sky and drag downward. This will give you a natural-looking, rich blue sky.

6. Black-and-white images have lost a bit of character in the digital age. While Lightroom has a one-click button to transform color images to monochrome, you can get a subtle and more interesting effect by adjusting vibrance and saturation. In the Basic panel, set vibrance and saturation to -75. The resulting image will look like it’s monochrome but will retain just a hint of color, which adds an unexpected wink of life. Black-and-white images often benefit from additional contrast, so try boosting clarity to 50 or 75.

7. Use clarity (in the Basic panel) to adjust skin tones in portraits. To add a bit of masculine roughness, increase clarity. To soften skin tones, decrease clarity.

8. You can add grain to give your image, a pre-digital texture that counters the “plastic” look that many digital cameras create. Under the Effects panel, bump the grain slider to 5 or 10 points.

9. If you want a very rich image but don’t want your children in the photo to have sunburned pumpkin skin, remember that it’s effective to increase vibrance more than saturation. That’s because vibrance, in general, works with cooler tones like blues and greens, while saturation is more effective with warmer tones like reds and yellows. If you increase saturation too much it will wreak havoc on skin tones. So crank up the vibrance two or three times more than saturation. For instance, you might push vibrance to 20 or 30, while boosting saturation to 10.

10. For portraits, use the Spot Removal tool (in the top panel, second tool from the left) to soften blemishes. Set the brush to the Healing Tool (rather than Clone) for a speedier, cleaner result. And consider using 80 percent opacity (rather than 100 percent) to leave a suggestion of the blemish for a more realistic effect.

The Bluetooth accessories maker BlueAnt has released a new earpiece that can do some remarkable things if your phone is up to it.

The problem is, few phones are up to it.

The BlueAnt Q2, as it’s called, it is billed as the “best-sounding, easiest-to-use headphone on the market.” The claim is based on new voice control technology, wind-blocking software and the Q2’s ability to read the names of incoming callers right from your phone’s personal phone book.

And all of that is true if it is used under the best circumstances, but that is a big if.

I was initially frustrated with the accuracy of the voice controls when the headphone was connected to a couple of different Android phones. The company said the effectiveness of the earpiece was really dependent on the quality of the voice command is that is native to the phone. BlueAnt said to try it with the iPhone, which worked.

The earpiece was also stymied by the size of my phone book. Its ability to read names from your contacts requires that you have 2,000 or fewer. (I have more than 5,000 contacts.)

To command it to dial anyone from your phone book, you must say the name exactly as it is entered, so you have to recall, for instance, if you have filed someone as Robert or Bob and if you have entered a middle initial. The company said that coming software will work using partial names.

BlueAnt has partnered with Vlingo so that the Q2 will work with its SafeReader app for hearing text and e-mail messages on BlackBerry and Android phones.

The company said that its new technology would reduce wind noise from gusts up to 22 m.p.h. I couldn’t arrange for a 22 m.p.h. gust, but people I called said the sound was clear, although it still sounded like a mobile phone.

The Q2 is available through AT&T stores at a list price of $130.

Q.

I recently bought a netbook that, of course, does not have a CD drive. So how can I make a Windows repair disc without a disc drive?

A.

One way to make a Windows repair disc for the netbook is to invest $50 or so into an external CD/DVD drive that reads and records. It connects to one of the netbook’s USB ports. While this method does involve dropping another $50 into a computer that may have only cost $250 or $300 to begin with, it does give you the ability to do other things with it. For instance, you can install programs from a disc that aren’t available as software downloads or back up your netbook’s files to a recordable disc.

If you don’t want to buy an external drive, another option is to make a bootable USB recovery drive for Windows 7. Check first with your netbook’s manufacturer to see if the company offers the files and instructions specific to your netbook model. Hewlett-Packard, for example, has instructions for creating a recovery disc on a flash drive on its site.

If your netbook’s manufacturer doesn’t offer a USB recovery option, you may be able to make one yourself. Several Windows-focused Web sites and blogs have posted their own instructions; the second part of this article on the Into Windows site has a guide to making a USB recovery drive.

For people with netbooks running Windows XP or Linux — and who want to upgrade systems — Microsoft has made it possible to install Windows 7 on a netbook in ways that don’t require discs. For instance, you can download the system as an .iso file (a disc image of the original installation DVD) that can be copied onto a USB flash drive with the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool and used to install Windows 7 without a disc drive.

Netflix has been streaming movies for instant viewing of movies for some time on PCs and game machines. As of Thursday, Netflix is on the iPhone as well.

A Netflix app for the iPhone puts movies instantly on the phones of anyone with a least a minimum $8.99 a month Netflix subscription. (That minimum plan also gets you delivery of one DVD at a time.)

The app, however is free. From within it you can browse for films to watch by genre, or do a search for a specific title.

The Instant Queue tab takes you to films you have placed in in your personal queue on the Netflix Web site.

The app works via 3G or Wi-Fi on an iPhone or Wi-Fi on an iPod touch running iOS 3.13 or later. In a test videos played clearly and smoothly even on 3G. (An Android app is rumored to be coming soon.)

If you stop the film midstream, the app recalls where you were and lets you resume from that point. Or, you can also begin from that point on any other device that streams Netflix.

One glaring oversight, while the app lets you watch movies, it doesn’t let you manage your Netflix account. I look forward to the update. Or is that the sequel?

Kodak has expanded its pocket camcorder line with the new PlayTouch Video Camera, a slim, snazzy update to its very capable (but plain-Jane) Zi8 model. It’s more compact than its predecessor and the waterproof PlaySport, and has a bigger 3-inch LCD screen with touch navigation.

Kodak’s PlayTouch Video Camera

The $230 PlayTouch is just 0.6-inch thick and weighs 3.5 ounces. The screen lets you view video in horizontal widescreen mode, although shooting is done vertically.

I had a quick look at the PlayTouch at a Kodak event a month ago, and the touch interface and menu controls are very intuitive and add a lot of appeal to the camera. The larger screen, which has a glare-shield feature that lets you apply two filters to the LCD for better viewing in bright sunlight, is also a great addition.

The PlayTouch has the same 1080p high-definition video capture as its predecessors and employs a 1/3.2 CMOS sensor that’s one stop more sensitive than that of the Zi8, according to Kodak. The mini-camcorder can also capture 720p video at 30 frames per second and 60 frames per second (the latter for slow-motion playback). It includes a jack for an optional stereo microphone.

As with other Kodak models, the PlayTouch has the familiar swing-out USB connector for shuttling video to a computer (it’s compatible with the Windows and Mac operating systems), and the included video-editing software lets you grab still images from video clips.

Of course, there is a Share button that lets you upload videos to popular social networking sites and send them to as many as 32 e-mail addresses.

The PlayTouch uses SD/SDHC cards for memory. It has an HDMI output for connecting to your HDTV, and Kodak even throws in an HDMI cable.

Look for it this fall in five colors: black, magenta, orange, teal and silver.

Google Google Voice inside Gmail

Internet-based phone service is nothing new. Skype, which lets Americans talk to each other free and charges a couple of pennies per minute for long distance, began seven years ago. But on Wednesday, Google began introducing Internet phone service built into the interface of its Gmail service. (For now it is available only in the United States.)

Google promotes it as a fallback feature for Gmail’s video chat system, in case the other party isn’t sitting in front of a computer waiting to have a video chat with you. But it’s not just for your video chat partners, if you even have any. It’s for anytime a phone call is the best way to communicate with someone else. Some people who would never accept a video chat request might take a phone call instead.

Here’s how it works: A new button on Gmail’s interface, Call Phones, opens a small window with a telephone-style keypad. There’s also a box into which you can type people’s names, to see if their phone number is in your Gmail address book. To use the phone feature, you first need to install a plug-in for your browser from Google. It works with Internet Explorer, Firefox, the Chrome browser from Google and Safari from Apple on Macs.

Google will use your computer’s built-in microphone and speakers, or a U.S.B. headset, to pick up your voice and to play the other party’s voice. (The headset works better than a computer’s built-in microphone, which makes a call sound as though it’s coming from a speakerphone.)

Once you’ve installed the plug-in and configured your computer to use the correct audio gear, making the calls is as easy as dialing an old Princess phone. I’m glad Google didn’t clutter the keypad with all sorts of extra buttons and distractions.

The person you’re calling will see on his or her phone the caller ID 760-705-8888, which Google uses for all outbound calls unless you’re also using its Google Voice service and have a Google Voice number.

If you want to receive calls within Gmail, you’ll need to sign up with Google Voice, which is free. That gives you a Google-assigned number you can give out to others, so Google can handle your incoming calls. This may be an additional complexity you don’t want.

Like for Skype, Google’s prices are hard to beat. Calls within the United States and Canada are free. Calls to other countries average around 2 cents a minute. Google has posted its rates for each country. (It’s 77 cents a minute for calls to North Korea.)

Sure, you could reach for your cellphone instead of dialing your browser. But my extensive use of Skype and smartphones has shown that most of the time an Internet phone call has better voice quality. People don’t ask me to repeat myself. There are sometimes annoying delays of up to four seconds between the time someone says something at one end and the time it pops out at the other end. These delays come from the Internet itself, which will make them hard for even Google to fix. And every now and then, Internet calls get dropped just as with a cellphone.

What’s in it for you? If you already use Skype and Gmail, you can move to having only one Web page and one address book that combines e-mail, IM-style chat and phone. It would be even more useful if Google would add a button in Gmail that would appear alongside every message: “Call Joe Smith now.” After all, it should be easy for Google, which already scans the text of your inbound messages to deliver more appropriate ads, to fish Joe’s phone number out of his e-mail signature.

Got a questions about Gmail, Facebook, or any other social technology? Post it in the comments and I’ll get an answer.