enlarge Jack Milton/Staff Photographer

High-tech hearing aids hold a directional device that allows the wearer to zero in on noise sources.

enlarge Jack Milton/Staff Photographer

Jim Rand runs a computer-consulting business out of his home in Scarborough. Technology, including his Oticon Delta hearing aids, improves many areas of his life.

ABOUT THIS SECTION

This special section was produced by the news department of the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram. For information about news content, contact: Tom Atwell at 791-6362. For information on advertising, call 791-6200.

As the boomer generation goes gray, all kinds of technological enhancements are making our lives more wonderful.

Companies are competing, for instance, to make the best hearing aids -- ones that with wireless reception can stream your iPod's music or the afternoon game into your ears.

In Finland, the National Technology Agency is working with Nokia and universities to develop a robotic mobility aid to help aging citizens move around their houses and their streets.

And the Japanese company Toshiba is developing "home life support robots." They will be able to go shopping with their owners and carry packages, something anyone can appreciate.

At the technology labs of the international consulting company, Accenture, folks are working on wiring homes to detect a fall and call for help if needed.

Accenture, in an online document called "Technology Comes Home" also mused about an interactive plant wired to sense moods and energy levels in the home's inhabitant, perhaps suggesting a walk or helping its human reminisce about the old days.

In that case, perhaps many of us would agree, the optimal technology might be an off switch.

But there is no question this field is burgeoning with new ideas and possibilities.

Southern Maine Agency on Aging is revamping its Web site, and can look forward to many more revampings, no doubt, as all of us learn how to make everything happen quickly and easily online. You'll be able to sign up to be considered for Meals On Wheels, the meal delivery service, according to Eileen Whynot, director of community relations at the agency on aging, www.smaaa.org.

Boomers seeking volunteer jobs will be able to find a list of possibilities online as well, or to register online for events like the Maine Senior Games.

Ready now for anyone with a hearing loss are hearing aids that replace only the lost frequency.

Old hearing aids blasted full spectrum amplification into the ear, causing many who invested in them -- typical prices range from $1,400 to $2,500 each -- to give up wearing them. But these new aids can be fine-tuned to an individual's own hearing loss.

The loss of high frequencies in particular is typical of boomers with age-related hearing loss. One in six boomers has hearing loss, according to Better Hearing Institute (www.betterhearing.org).

Jim Rand, 61, of Scarborough has the "statistical norm" hearing loss. Self-employed, Rand consults on behalf of his business, Rand and Associates, specializing in custom database applications.

"Listening is very important," he said.

When he occasionally failed to distinguish words, and his hearing loss seemed to worsen, he went to an audiologist at Northeast Hearing and Speech Center in Portland, a nonprofit founded in 1924.

"I decided to do something about it two years ago. Now I can go out and it's not an issue," he said.

Rand's hearing aids hold a directional device that allows him to zero in on par ticular noise sources.

"I was walking on Scarborough Beach, and I heard two women talking. High up, and quite a ways off, were two women. I wanted to turn to them and focus on them to hear clearly. I felt like James Bond."

According to Nancy Steeves, executive director of Northeast Hearing, hearing aids that fit in the back of the ear use a slender tube to pipe the missing frequency into your ear, making consonants suddenly crisp again.

Steeves said that those aids can be Blue Tooth-enabled, which means that you can use other Blue Tooth-enabled gadgets, from cell phones to MP3 players, with the hearing aids as your headphones.

Another readily available technology is the FM system -- with little broadcast units and receivers. It works for deeper general hearing loss perfectly, a more unusual condition but one that...