A father to be? Find out at home

prototype

A new product may soon appear next to the pregnancy test kits and ovulation predictors at your local drugstore: a fertility test kit for the guys.

The kit, called Element and which is being developed by Pria Diagnostics (www.priadi.com), aims to make quick fluid tests possible outside clinical and laboratory settings. Element's design resembles that of some women's test kits to a degree. It has a receptacle that catches a man's ejaculate for analysis, and a simple readout (including ''positive" or ''negative" indicators) that tells whether your sperm meets the World Health Organization's standards for male fertility.

Element has an onboard microfluorimeter, a sensor device that -- in this case -- measures sperm count, motility, and forward progression. In other words, Element gauges how many you've got, and how many of those are capable of swimming upstream.

Element uses Pria Diagnostic's NanoFL platform, which can also be used detect the presence of infectious diseases in fluid samples deposited on disposable strips.

Pria Diagnostics last week received an Award for Technology Innovation of the Year from the business growth consultancy Frost and Sullivan. The Element and its underlyingNanoFL technology provide ''fairly rapid and accurate" test results in a device that can be used outside clinical settings, according to the consultancy. (Pria is not a Frost and Sullivan client, it should be noted.)

Element is reusable, which means you won't have to make multiple trips to the pharmacy as you keep tabs on your reproductive capabilities.

And if the thought of producing a sperm sample for Element makes you feel a littleuncomfortable, consider the alternative: providing the same to a technician at a fertility doctor's office. ''[Privacy] is one of the key issues why users would rather do the test at home," said Pria Diagnostics spokesman Ben Taylor.

Wearable computing

There may be more simmering under your teenager's hoodie than a hatred for society and its rules, man. There also could be an MP3 player, a cellphone, a portable game console, perhaps even a GPS navigator.

The Ultimate Hoodie is a stone-washed cotton sweatshirt with eight pockets for electronic gadgets, each with a magnetic enclosure to keep its contents from tumbling onto the unforgiving asphalt.

SCOTTEVEST (www.scottevest.com), which makes threads designed to accommodate cellphones and iPods, began shipping the Ultimate Hoodie at the beginning of the year.

The $69.99 Ultimate Hoodie, like SCOTTEVEST's sport coats, vests, cargo pants, and lounge pants, features a ''personal area network" system of conduits, so you can wire up your gadgets with headphones and other accessories. The sweatshirt also has hidden pen holders (don't want to be seen with those), as well as two drink bottle holders and a place to store your sunglasses. SCOTTEVEST is planning to release a line of athletic sportswear this summer, so you may be able to wear more than just your Nano onto the tennis court.

Personal navigation

Mio next week will release another GPS navigation system for those not lucky enough to have had one installed in their cars.

Mio is a master of all-in-one devices: The C310, which you mount inside your vehicle, also works as an MP3 player and can be synced to your PC to hold your Microsoft Outlook contacts.

But one reason most cars on the road lack navigation systems, of course, is that the option is so expensive. And the C310, with its $649 MSRP, is not quite tempting enough to convince this penny-pinching driver of a 2001 Volkswagen bug.

The C310 is due to come out next Monday. The release of its big brother, the C710, which includes a video player and Bluetooth connectivity, has not yet been scheduled.