Motorola's latest stab at making the land line more relevant is this set of home phones that actually hook up to a cable modem, to provide phone service through your cable company.

The neat feature here is that the cable box can push Internet information onto the phones, including e-mails,IMs, text messages, visual voicemail and weather information. On each phone, several users can store password-protected profiles, so only Dad can get at Dad's e-mail, for instance. It's possible to reply using the same sort of predictive text that you use on your cell phone.

Consumers won't be able to buy these directly. Rather, cable companies will offer them as an incentive for switching to their phone service. The final versions of the phones will go on the market by October, Motorolans said.