STOPzilla is an interesting new take on pop-up blockers, those programs that remove pesky ads while you browse the Net. Instead of just making the ads disappear, STOPzilla goes after them where so much obnoxious advertising originates, in the spyware and adware programs that marketers use to target their audience.

The $30 program, available for trial use at www.stopzilla.com, worked impressively in my tests, shunting popups into oblivion and tracking them on an optional display. Any blocked ad can be retrieved and viewed with a click.

STOPzilla also includes one-button cookie deletion and a browser history eraser, making it handy for quick clean-ups.

The downside: STOPzilla works only with Internet Explorer. And it's expensive considering that free popup blockers such as the Google toolbar are out there (toolbar.google.com), while the free AdAware (www.lavasoftusa.com) does a good job on spyware programs. But if your goal is a single program to handle both without further intervention, STOPzilla may be just the ticket.

There's nothing worse than dropping an expensive cell phone or PDA: That broken screen means you need a new device. But a company called Flexible Innovations now offers a solution that can save you money and aggravation. Made of tenacious rubber and backed with a removable adhesive, eGrips for almost any model of hand-held or cell phone are available at the site www.egrips.com.

At $10 a pop, a set of eGrips for your mobile device is small change -- consider it an insurance policy, especially if you own one of those slippery Tungsten T3s that Palm makes, which seem designed to pop right out of your hands. The grips are easy to apply, and make it possible for you to put the device down on almost any surface without worry, even the dashboard of a moving car.

HP built a set of rubber grips into my iPaq, but they're poorly designed and have been known to pop out. It's crazy to market a $400 PDA without adequate protection against simple mishandling, but as phones and hand-helds get more versatile, their form factor seems stuck in the Stone Age.

Be sure to try some of the new locator services now coming online from companies like Google and Yahoo. Particularly appreciated around here is Yahoo's SmartView product, which is now built into Yahoo Maps. You plug in your address to generate a map, and then click on what you're looking for -- a body shop, maybe, or a Thai restaurant. Up pops a map keyed to your location, with the nearest businesses that meet your criteria clearly marked.

It's great to see the Internet being fine-tuned for local use. These are Netwide services that target specific areas. Although CitySearch (www.citysearch.com) has continued to grow, the entry of the big search engine companies make local information that much easier to find.

To use the still-evolving Google Local feature, try this: on the main Google page (www.google.com) enter something you're looking for and your ZIP code. You should get a set of local results at the top of your page of "hits" -- click on it to see all businesses near you.

These services (and related ones, such as Verizon's Superpages (www.superpages.com) are new, and they're still working out the kinks. Each will have its strengths and weaknesses, but being able to find neighborhood information quickly makes search sites more valuable than ever, and offers a real plus to businesses in need of visibility.