On a chilly day, most folks find it tough to open the front door to retrieve the newspaper — much less climb a 15,000-foot mountain. But plenty of people court danger by rappelling down canyons and camping in remote woodlands. This week, I tested a device that will give thrill seekers a little extra insurance: It lets the folks back home track their progress, and learn when they’re OK or when they’re in trouble.

When activated, the $170 SPOT Satellite Messenger from SPOT Inc., the Milpitas, Calif., unit of Globalstar Inc., emits a signal to GPS satellites, which notify SPOT’s messaging service. The service then sends a message to friends, family or emergency rescue teams about your current status. Because it uses GPS technology, the SPOT will work even when you’re far from cellphone signal range and anywhere in the world.

I tested SPOT in my Washington, D.C., neighborhood (city parks still count as outdoorsy) and on a trip across the California desert and mountains on the way to a conference — though I was scaling mountains in an air-conditioned SUV rather than in a rock-climbing harness.

In my tests, SPOT worked without a problem. Notifications from the device were delivered to my friends via email and text message and included my current latitude and longitude. The service also sent along canned messages that I set up in advance on the company’s Web site at www.findmespot.com and hyperlinks to Google Maps that showed my location.

SPOT charges a $100 annual service fee, which includes an unlimited number of messages that can be sent out from your device using three buttons: OK/Check, Help and 911. An additional $50 per year tracking service called SPOTcasting follows and marks your exact location every 10 minutes for 24 hours each time it’s initiated.

This simple and straightforward device could really help in a dangerous situation. And the company takes its job seriously: A steely message on the SPOT packaging reads, “Opening this box is the first step in making sure you don’t come home in one.” But SPOT could also save the day in less-adventurous situations, such as when your car dies and you’re out of cellphone range.

However, SPOT isn’t perfect. While its three message-sending buttons make it easy to use, they also limit the types of messages it can send. There’s no keyboard, so messages must be brief and set up in advance on the Web site. And the device only sends messages and can’t receive them. Your friends and family have no way of getting back in touch with you on SPOT should you send a Help message from beyond cellphone range.

SPOT is a bright orange device with roughly the same surface measurement as a BlackBerry, though it’s considerably thicker. Its durable casing makes it waterproof and floatable, along with working in extremes like -40 degrees Fahrenheit and up to 21,000 feet above sea level. It runs on two AA lithium batteries, which last for different amounts of time according to the type of message being sent.

Setting up SPOT took only a few minutes on the Web site. A default or personalized message can be set up to go out with OK/Check and Help notifications, and email addresses and cellphone numbers (for SMS text messages) can be entered online as the destinations for these messages. Every message includes the user’s current location in terms of latitude and longitude, along with a hyperlink to access that location via Google Maps.

SPOT sends messages and location information via satellite, including points that can be tracked on a map.

The OK/Check button can be used most casually by owners of this gadget, as it merely serves to assure others that you’re fine. A good example might be two people on a three-month sailing trip who use this button as a means of checking in with family every Sunday night.

If OK/Check is held down for five seconds, it initiates the SPOTcasting tracking service (provided you’ve signed up for it) and locates your device every 10 minutes for a 24-hour period. These tracked points show up on SPOT’s Web site and are displayed as numbered points on Google Maps.

SPOT worked for me while driving through a regional park with a campsite, where cellphone range was faint, and up into boulder-crusted mountains. Just minutes after pressing Help or OK/Check or initiating tracking, friends received word of my location via emails and text messages.

You can’t set SPOT to track a trip for longer than 24 hours or at different intervals, such as every hour for a week. And the only way for others to view your tracked points is if they sign in using your online account’s username and password.

The Help button is used in more urgent situations and uses messages such as “Urgent help needed. Pick me up at campsite.” (The default for Help is “This is a HELP message. Please send for help ASAP.”) But preset messages shouldn’t be made too specific during the online setup because they can’t be changed from the device later.

The 911 and Help automatic notifications will always override less urgent messages like OK/Check or SPOTcasting. In the case of the 911 and Help buttons, one can be pressed after the other and the messages for both will still go out at the same time. The 911 button will send a message every five minutes until power runs out (the company says this will last for up to seven days) or until the message is canceled; Help sends a message every five minutes for an hour or until canceled.

The 911 button is more serious. When pressed, SPOT Inc. automatically notifies a certified 911 company called the GEOS International Emergency Response Center, which contacts your specified emergency contacts first to see if they know anything about your situation before dispatching a rescue squad using your coordinates.

If you can adjust to SPOT’s three-button approach, the device could be helpful for you or someone you know during outdoor adventures. Many people will buy SPOT simply for its 911 button, as an insurance policy on fluky cellphone service.

• Email mossbergsolution@wsj.com

Corrections & Amplifications:

The SPOT Satellite Messenger uses a global positioning system to determine a user’s location and a second satellite network to send notifications to friends, family and emergency services. This column erroneously stated that GPS satellites send notifications.

Next time you get comfortable on the couch, remember that you’re relaxing in the consumer electronics battleground: the living room. Major tech companies are pouring resources into products they hope you’ll use to remotely receive your computer’s content — namely videos, music and photos — in a more comfortable place.

But while some of these complex solutions are still struggling to catch on, digital music marched steadily into the land of recliners long ago. IPods naturally plug into home stereos, multiplying music collections and bringing playlists to parties. And an industry of devices sprouted up specifically for playing iPods and other music players to a crowd.

This week, I tested a new version of one of these dock systems that specializes in wirelessly distributing music via small, cube-shaped speakers that can be spread throughout your house: the $300 Evolve speaker system from Griffin Technology Inc. (http://evolvespeakers.com). This setup offers a straightforward and stylish solution, delivering what I consider good quality sound.

Griffin Technology’s $299.99 Evolve is an affordable wireless speaker system.

Griffin’s attempt at claiming valuable real estate in the living room pits it against Sonos Inc., a high-end competitor that is already well-established in the wireless-music arena. Sonos sends digital tunes from your computers to up to 32 rooms using an attractive remote with a full-color screen. But this system starts at $1,000, not including speakers, and its computer-related set-up might intimidate potential buyers.

Closer competitors to Griffin’s Evolve can be found in Brookstone and Hammacher Schlemmer catalogs, where similar wireless speaker systems for the iPod are sold for $150 (on sale) and $400, respectively. Brookstone’s set-up includes small, spherical wireless speakers and Hammacher’s uses bulkier, rectangular-shaped wireless speakers with visible antenna.

I tested the Evolve system using my iPod touch and a first generation iPod nano bought in 2005. Both devices worked with the system, and the Evolve speakers connected wirelessly to the base station from up to 150 feet away on the digital 900MHz spectrum, which doesn’t interfere with Wi-Fi and works through walls and floors. Two speakers come with the system, each carrying a charge of 10 hours according to Griffin, though I got 11 in my tests.

Evolve has some downsides. While it’s great to know that its speakers work 150 feet away from the base station and iPod, they can only be controlled by the base station or by a remote control in view of the base station. So, if you and the speakers are in a room without the base station, you can’t see any information about the song that’s playing, nor can you adjust the volume. Each speaker does have its own power button.

And when I switched from my iPod touch to the iPod nano, the Evolve remote stopped working, and I couldn’t get the remote to work with my iPod touch again. Griffin acknowledged a bug that occurs with speaker systems when an iPod isn’t up to date with the latest firmware, which it wasn’t, and assured me that updating the device, unplugging and re-plugging the Evolve would fix the issue. These fixes didn’t help, nor did repairing the remote, and there wasn’t time for Griffin to send a new remote. I continued to use Evolve without the remote, but hope that other units won’t operate like mine.

Griffin’s Evolve base station seems to hover just inches off the ground and is made of a brushed aluminum. Left to right, it measures about 16 inches, and an iPod dock and three buttons mark the center of the base station. Two squat antenna stand behind this dock, and square wells on the left and right give the speakers a place to rest while charging. These wire-free charging wells are designed with overcharge/undercharge protection, so each speaker’s battery isn’t harmed by resting on the base station for a long period of time.

When the remote was working with my iPod touch, I navigated through songs from across the room, pausing and adjusting volume. I easily carried the speakers into my kitchen using handles built into the back of these cubes, and my roommate enjoyed listening to Amy Winehouse in stereo while she made dinner. But during the actual dinner, when we wanted to turn the volume down, we had to walk back to the living room where the base station was located while calling down the hall to one another to find out if the sound was low enough.

Hidden indicator lights in each speaker tell whether they’re charged or not; orange signifies a charge is needed, while green means you’re in the clear. A switch on the base station changes the speaker sound from mono (useful when listening to audio books) to stereo. Each speaker contains built-in technology that assigns it to automatically know if it’s right or left. To conserve battery, a speaker that’s turned on but isn’t playing music will turn off after 60 minutes.

I kept my speakers on for 11 hours straight before they pooped out, moving them to different floors and as far from the base station as possible — the signal stayed strong. In just two hours, the pair was recharged. I kept the volume pretty low for at least half the time my speakers were on, and Griffin says lower volumes conserve battery, and vice versa. I listened to all sorts of music, including hip-hop, jazz, country, rock and classical. I’m no audiophile, but to my ear, the Evolve handled each genre with aplomb.

All iPods (even the iPhone) work with Griffin’s Evolve, and this gadget will also work when connected to other MP3 players, stereos, TVs, and CD players, which could come in handy. In early March, Griffin will sell add-on speakers for $99 each with separate charging plates for $30 apiece; $200 bundles will include two speakers and two charging plates. There’s no limit to the number of speakers that you can add to a system.

Though Griffin’s Evolve lacks some of the luxuries that high-end systems have, it solves a problem with minimal effort on the user’s part, and looks good while doing it. If you don’t mind returning to the base station to make adjustments, and if your remote doesn’t stop working, you’ll enjoy this sleek and functional device.

• Email mossbergsolution@wsj.com

Corrections & Amplifications:

Griffin Technology Inc.’s Evolve wireless sound system uses a remote that can control certain functions of the iPod, even when it is out of sight of the base station. This column erroneously implies that the remote must be in view of the system to work.

Most users know how to upload photos, but don’t want to hassle with USB cords and slow upload speeds when transferring images onto a computer or photo-sharing site. Camera docks and memory-card readers built into PCs have attempted to alleviate these transferring problems, but these so-called shortcuts still require a certain amount of dedication to the process.

In the past couple of years, a handful of companies have gone a step farther by introducing Wi-Fi enabled digital cameras, notably Nikon Inc. and Eastman Kodak Co. But this capability works only in certain cameras and even then requires users to walk through a number of steps to send the photos through a service created by the company instead of sending them to a computer or Web site.

Little Effort Needed

This week, I tested a refreshingly simple gadget that solves this problem and does what most technology products don’t: It works in existing devices and requires next to no effort. The $100 Eye-Fi Card by Eye-Fi Inc. (www.eye.fi) is a two-gigabyte SecureDigital memory card with a built-in wireless chip. It slips into any camera with an SD-card slot, and whenever the camera is turned on, looks for a familiar Wi-Fi network and uploads your photos to your Mac or PC and one of 17 photo-sharing sites. After a quick, one-time setup, the user does nothing more than turning on the digital camera.

I thought this thing was too good to be true and set out to find its flaws. But after using it with two digital cameras (one brand new and the other over three years old), three different computers (each with different operating systems) and five photo-sharing sites, I’m convinced that the Eye-Fi is a terrific little tool. It works quickly and is a no-brainer to get going. The only people who won’t like it are those who enjoy razzing their lazy friends for forgetting to share digital photos.

Minor Inconveniences

The Eye-Fi’s flaws are minor enough to dismiss. For one thing, it doesn’t work on Wi-Fi networks that use log-in pages like those in Starbucks; instead, it’s meant to work on home networks or other “open” networks. Secondly, there’s no way to know when Eye-Fi finishes transferring photos unless you check your computer. Finally, your digital camera must stay on for the duration of the wireless transfer, which slightly taxes battery power, and slower networks and/or transferring numerous higher-resolution photos will require a bit more juice. Likewise, Eye-Fi looks for Wi-Fi networks whenever the camera is on, though the company says this only uses a minimal amount of the camera’s battery power.

The Eye-Fi Card comes in a small, colorful box that reminded me of a pop-up book: Pull one side and a quick-start guide appears on the right while the left swings out a piece holding the Eye-Fi card reader and SD card. This reader is only needed for the initial setup on each computer, which only took a few minutes per system.

I tried my Eye-Fi first on a Windows XP machine, plugging the card reader and card into a USB port. The software setup walks users through clear, quick steps like testing the computer’s firewall to be sure it can work through it and asking which folder should be designated to receive wirelessly transferred images. Here, I also typed in my account information for sharing images on Kodak Gallery; later I added Shutterfly, Snapfish, Picasa and Flickr. Other online destinations included blogs like Vox and TypePad, along with social-networking giant Facebook. The last step instructed me to insert the Eye-Fi SD card into my camera to snap the first test photo of myself, making sure it was working properly.

Managing Your Photos

Transferred photos are all reflected in the Eye-Fi Manager, a Web-based, password-protected site that tells which images were uploaded to photo-sharing sites and the computer. Users can opt to only upload from the Eye-Fi to one or the other or both, but only one photo-sharing site and one Mac or PC can be selected at a time. Account information for any of the 17 sharing sites can be saved within Eye-Fi, making it a cinch to switch where you want to send photos.

Around the office, within my registered Wi-Fi network, I took photos that showed up seconds later on my computer screen. At home, I entered my password-protected network’s information one time and watched as captured photos transferred wirelessly from my camera to either my Mac or Windows Vista laptop.

Quick Transfers

On average, it took about 40 seconds to upload each image to a Web site and about 40 seconds more after that for a photo to transfer onto my hard drive. I got home from a friend’s cocktail party and set my camera on a table with its power on. Ten minutes later, I turned on my computer to check the transfer and 12 photos from the party were uploaded to my Kodak Gallery account and my iMac’s hard drive.

Images upload in JPEG formats using their original, full resolutions. Some sharing sites change the formats for photos, but this varies between sites and isn’t related to Eye-Fi.

Eye-Fi won’t do absolutely everything for you, so for certain photo-sharing sites, you’ll still need to log on to send out emails for sharing albums with friends. But double clicking on any of the images in the Eye-Fi Manager takes you directly to wherever that image lives — whether on Picasa, Flickr, or your own hard drive.

I swapped the Eye-Fi SD card from one camera, an older Konica-Minolta Dimage X50 that still works well, to a new Kodak EasyShare V1253, which ironically has built-in photo emailing capability that isn’t nearly as easy to use as Eye-Fi. The Eye-Fi didn’t miss a beat and operated the same way in both cameras.

The Eye-Fi Card is as simple as it sounds and works with most cameras that use SD cards (for a complete list of compatible cameras, see http://support.eye.fi/compatibility/). If someone you know is constantly taking pictures that are never seen again by anyone else and they use a Wi-Fi network, Eye-Fi will serve as a carefree solution that takes the aggravation out of transferring photos to share with others.

Edited By Walter S. Mossberg

• Email mossbergsolution@wsj.com

But how much is too much when it comes to shelling out a little more for convenience, and are you really getting what you pay for? This week, I tested what could be thought of as the ultimate convenience: a box that plugs into your television and Internet connection, letting you download movies whenever you want to watch them. The box costs $399 and doesn’t include the price of movies, which must be rented or purchased for fees as high as $4 or $20 each, respectively.

This box, called Vudu, comes from a Silicon Valley company of the same name (www.vudu.com). Vudu’s biggest strengths are its easy setup, good picture quality and simple user interface, easily navigated using a scroll-wheel remote control.

Vudu costs $399 plus prices to rent or own each movie title.

If the director yelled “Cut!” right here, Vudu would be a box-office smash. But actually using this device is just one problem after another. For starters, though Vudu says it has relationships with the major Hollywood studios, many of the 5,000 titles it offers don’t seem to be popular by mainstream standards. Lots of them are old or obscure. For instance, you won’t find any of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies, but how about a 1984 sci-fi/fantasy movie called “The Ice Pirates,” instead?

If you do find a movie that you’d like to watch, you must have a bandwidth speed of at least two megabits per second to download it instantly; millions of broadband homes have slower connections than that. Vudu offers to measure your bandwidth on its home page before you buy it. I tested Vudu for a week on a typical home-type DSL line, and my connection only clocks about 1.5 Mbps, so it took me about 45 minutes to download each movie.

While Vudu’s $399 price tag might take some getting used to, its fees for buying or renting each movie could be harder to swallow after a month’s worth of use: as much as $80 if you bought one top-tier movie a week. Worse, you have to pay in advance. Rather than charging your credit card on a pay-as-you-go basis, Vudu customers must choose a $20, $50 or $100 amount at setup from which movie fees are deducted. When your account hits $0, the amount selected at setup is charged and the debit process begins again.

On top of all this, Vudu relies on a peer-to-peer network system for faster downloading. So, essentially, this company is using your bandwidth to help it save money it would have otherwise spent on its own servers and bandwidth.

I set up Vudu in a snap, plugging it into three things: a wall outlet, the back of a high-definition Sony Bravia television and an Ethernet cord. Wireless connections won’t work with Vudu without a special “bridge” or a power-line adapter. Once Vudu turned on, a friendly voice guided me through setting it up, and I got started in minutes.

Vudu’s home screen is broken down into five menus: Find Movies, New Releases, My Movies, My Wish List and Info & Settings. I used the tiny remote, which fits perfectly in a hand, and rolled through menus using its scroll wheel. This wheel can be pressed down to select something, saving me from glancing down at the buttons. Also, Vudu uses an RF (radio frequency) antenna so you don’t have to point the remote at it.

In Find Movies, I looked through 18 genres, including biography, romance, family and historical. A sorting feature can filter movies by release date, MPAA rating, critics’ rating, studio, availability to rent and availability to own. An on-screen alphabet can be used to type in names of actors, directors or movie titles; the scroll wheel speeds up this process.

Parental controls, which are only accessible with a special code, can be set to block a child from buying or renting movies with certain ratings.

Vudu likes to think of itself as the instant-gratification alternative to running to the video store. But not many people I know still go to Blockbuster for a DVD; instead, they use mail-delivery services like Netflix. Compared with the 85,000 titles offered by Netflix, the selection at Vudu is pretty slim. A more similar comparison might be Amazon’s Unbox for TiVo, which has slightly less than 5,000 movies.

Though I couldn’t find numerous titles, I did discover plenty of movies I’d never heard of. A search for last year’s “Casino Royale” returned Robert DeNiro’s “Casino” from 1995, as well as two Asian films, “Casino Tycoon” and “Casino Tycoon II.” Since I never saw Helen Mirren’s “The Queen,” I tried to find her Oscar-winning performance on Vudu. But the closest I came to royalty were “Barbarella: Queen of the Galaxy,” an alternative name for the cheesy 1968 Jane Fonda sci-fi flick, and “Prom Queen,” which fell under the Gay and Lesbian category. I tried to laugh this off by watching Steve Carell’s “Evan Almighty.” But typing “E-V-A…” into a title search only returned “Deliver Us From Eva,” an R-rated 2003 comedy starring LL Cool J.

I searched and found the same three titles on Netflix, though Amazon Unbox only had “Evan Almighty.”

I downloaded two romantic comedies: “Music and Lyrics,” starring Hugh Grant, a $4 rental, and a Diane Keaton movie called “Because I Said So,” which I bought for $20. I also rented “Zodiac,” a suspense movie starring Jake Gyllenhaal, for $4. Movies that you own never expire, but rented flicks must be watched within 30 days and expire 24 hours after you start watching.

In the case of each movie, the original estimates for time to download were daunting; two started out by estimating “Available in a few hours” and one movie’s estimate read “Available in a few days.” But all three finished downloading in about 45 to 50 minutes. Only one movie can download at a time.

While watching movies, the remote’s scroll wheel can be used to fast forward or rewind scenes. Scrolling faster moves you farther ahead or back (the fastest jump moves you 30 minutes); the slowest scroll moves you ahead or back five seconds.

Vudu might cast a spell on users who don’t mind its poor selection and high-bandwidth requirement to deliver instant downloads. But for me, the convenience of Vudu is no convenience at all. As is, its lackluster selection, high prices and slow downloads make it more of a letdown than anything else.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

Email mossbergsolution@wsj.com