Gadgets: A to-do list at a touch, color-coded

Clear, a to-do list app, came out just last week. Within a day, it was the No. 1 downloaded paid app in Apple's App Store.

What's the appeal? For starters, Clear's interface is elegant and clever. The app avoids any simulacra of physical controls -- there are no "buttons," no "switches" (except for a pop-up keyboard, but you kind of need that). Managing the list is entirely gesture-based: You swipe to complete or clear tasks, pinch to move up a level, pull down to create new items and tap and hold to reorder tasks on the list.

And that list! It's like looking at a wall of Benjamin Moore paint samples. Tasks are colored from what the paint store would call "Tomato Red" (highest priority) down to "Mardigras Gold." Moving items on the list adjusts their color accordingly.

You can maintain several different lists (work, personal, family) with Clear. The simple act of pinching the whole screen makes one list collapse into its heading and displays the other lists you have.

Clear is not a mega-powerful personal organizer that will appeal to hard-core time management aficionados. But it is a fine-looking app, and for people who want to maintain a simple list of things to do, it's well worth checking out.

Lenovo's Yoga PC might not be the fastest or thinnest portable computer to come out of this year's International Consumer Electronics Show. But as its name implies, it is certainly flexible.

The 17-millimeter-thick laptop is also a tablet. It achieves its duality from a tricky patented hinge that lets the keyboard flip flush to the back of its 13-inch screen. With the keyboard folded back, the screen is controlled through a touch screen, as with any tablet.

Also under the hood is an Intel Chief River processor, 8 gigabytes of RAM and a 256-gigabyte solid state drive, with a claimed battery life of eight hours.

One clever feature of the Yoga's hinge is that it can hold the gadget partway open, so it can be set on a table as a display for watching videos.

Like the famous "Saturday Night Live" dessert topping that was also a floor wax, it's hard to guess if the buying public will receive the Yoga as a clever double threat or just a confused mobile device.