Two-way radio communications might seem obsolete in the world of Twitter, email, and WiFi hot spots. But in an emergency, you'll find volunteer ham-radio operators often provide equipment and non-commercial communications that save lives. The ham-radio community has grown since the FCC eliminated a Morse-code requirement and the amateur-radio service welcomes new members who have a variety of interests, from emergency preparedness and communications, to designing and building equipment. When all else fails, radio can get through.

Get a handle on Texas Instruments' MSP430 MCUs with the $4.30 Value Line kit. The small MCU--2 kbytes or flash and 128 bytes of RAM--will work well in alarms, game controls, sensors, small consumer devices, electronic locks, light control, and similar applications that don't require a lot of code.

The "community-supported" BeagleBoard project includes a new member, BeagleBoard-xM that uses a new Sitara ARM Cortex-A8 processor from Texas Instruments. TI also offers its own boards and kits, but at about 10 times the cost. The Cortex-A8 processor looks like a good one for high-end applications, so I dare not call it a microcontroller. Find out more about TI's latest Sitara chips and the new BeagleBoard-xM.

The TinyLogic family of single-element logic devices gives engineers and designers a way around the need for that elusive "extra" gate, inverter, or flip flop they must have to cram a low-power design on a board. Instead of using a quad NAND-gate of hex-inverter package, they can add one inverter, gate, or other common logic function.

Most people involved with personal computers realize Microsoft has a new operating system (OS), called Windows 7 that replaces Windows Vista and Windows XP.  System developers might not know Microsoft now has Windows-7-based operating systems for embedded products, thus the development of Windows Embedded Standard 7 (WES 7). But things get a bit confusing because it's difficult to keep track of everything Microsoft does.