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A good travel bag has to meet a few key prerequisites: It must be light, but still be able to take abuse. It must large enough to hold your laptop, electronics and a few days worth of stuff, but not so large that you can’t carry it on the plane. It also needs to afford some level of security-friendliness.

Plenty of bags fit that bill, but few are as versatile or as comfortable to carry fully loaded as Timbuk2’s latest traveler, the Wingman.

I discovered those final points as I ran to the last gate at San Francisco International Airport (why does my flight always board at the last gate?) with the bag Timbuk2 loaned me. It has a messenger bag strap, but when you need to hoof it fast and hard, it has backpack straps that can be untucked from inside the bag and clipped into place. The Wingman conformed to my body as I cinched the shoulder straps down, making that dash to the last gate a sprint instead of a schlep.

The Wingman is further enhanced by handles on both the sides and on the top, making it easier to get the bag in and out of overhead storage bins. The handles also let you carry the bag in multiple suitcase-style configurations on public transit.

Timbuk2 already has a good rep for its hip-looking messenger and laptop bags. They’re colorful, comfortable and nearly indestructible. Unlike the Timbuk2 Command, the messenger-style travel bag we reviewed last year, the Wingman is technically a duffel, though it doesn’t wear like one. It’s also made from a lighter-weight weaved ballistic nylon, but it takes all the cramming and squishing of air travel as well as the rest.

On first surveillance of its main compartment, you might think the Wingman is only big enough to serve as a weekend bag. After all, it’s a travel bag, so it has to be small enough that you can use it as a carry-on. But appearances are deceiving. I crammed it with a sport coat and enough clothes for five days. Unpacking was like seeing the multiple circus clowns exiting the Volkswagen Bug. It also has a zippered pocket on the main flap that’s a convenient place to store things you need to retrieve quickly or remove for security checks: travel documents, phone charger, snacks, reading material.

When carrying the Wingman as a backpack, a capacious wet/dry compartment on the bottom gave me a place to stash my dirty clothes during my trip. It’s also good for extra shoes, bathing suits, bananas, or anything else you don’t mind getting squished.

Finally, there’s a pocket meant for toiletries located on the side to enable quick removal in case the TSA agent wanted to check out my shave kit.

Speaking of airport security, the Wingman’s padded exterior compartment can fit a laptop up to 17 inches. But because of its location on the rear, closest to your back, the padded compartment proved not-fully-TSA-compliant. I still had to take the laptop out of the bag to go through security. If you don’t want people scoping out your hardware, I’d recommend adding Timbuk2’s $25 computer Zip Sleeve. The padded TSA-approved sleeve slides easily in the rear compartment. I just pulled the sleeve from the Wingman (no need to open it) and then slid it back in after the trip through the X-ray box, an exercise equal to most other TSA-compliant laptop cases.

WIRED All those pockets are a traveler’s dream. Just over three pounds of ballistic nylon construction makes for a lightweight but durable bag. Holds a surprising amount of stuff. Trio of carry methods — messenger strap, backpack straps and multiple handles. Fits all but the largest laptops.

TIRED When carrying the bag as a backpack, a 17-inch laptop may be a tad uncomfortable since it’s pressed against your back. Laptop compartment is padded, but storing your computer anywhere else in the bag necessitates an extra padded sleeve. It’s not a rolly, so if you want wheels, this isn’t for you.

Photos by Jon Snyder/Wired

It’s becoming clear that in Google’s vision of the future, every human tool since the wheel is destined to be folded into the smartphone, that digital Swiss Army Knife around which our lives are increasingly centered.

Google’s newest offering replaces an accessory we’ve carried since man first stripped hide from beasts: Our wallet. Google Wallet is a service that eliminates the traditional notion of the leather carrying case, allowing you to store digital versions of your credit cards on your smartphone.

Basically, Wallet lets you use your phone to pay for purchases at physical point-of-sale machines. For example, when you’re standing at the grocery store checkout counter, instead of swiping a card or handing over cash, you open the Wallet app, enter a PIN, and wave your phone next to the reader in front of you. The amount you owe is instantly transferred from your bank account.

The app rests entirely on a special chip inside the phone called a Near-Field Communication chip. Essentially, any device with an embedded NFC chip can exchange data with a receiving terminal once they come within a few inches of each other. NFC technology is Google’s big hardware bet for the future, and it’s arguably the company’s most ambitious mobile project since Android was first launched.

True to the company’s form, Wallet upsets many vying for the lead in the mobile payments space. PayPal, Intuit, and ISIS (a wireless carrier-backed venture which initially aimed to take on the credit industry) are all companies with toes in the water, toting their own visions of phone-based payment systems. Even Apple is rumored to be working on its own version of NFC-based mobile payments for the iPhone.

Wallet is simple, stripped-down and straightforward, providing a low barrier of entry for those who may be intimidated at the thought of ditching their physical credit cards. Opening the app brings you to a four-digit PIN entry screen, which is required every time you want to access the card menu (though this can be adjusted). Making digital copies of your plastic is as simple as typing your card info into the prompts.

At the moment, unfortunately, Google’s Wallet is running a little light. At launch, Wallet only supports MasterCards issued by Citibank. To get around that limitation, Google stocks the Wallet with a prepaid card which can be loaded up with cash from your other non-Citibank credit cards. Think of it as a prepaid gift card that you add funds to periodically. Google says it has Visa, American Express and Discover partnerships on the horizon, though there’s no clear ETA on when they’ll be ready for customer use. Once new cards are added, they’ll show up in the app’s main interface, called the “card carousel,” where you can thumb through your cards and decide which one you want to use.

Despite not being able to use my Visa, Wallet entranced me. After stopping by the Whole Foods up the street for a quick bite, it only took thumbing in my PIN and gently tapping the back of my phone to the store’s electronic reader to pay for lunch. My phone notified me that my payment was sent, and the cashier gave me the thumbs up to say he received it. No loose change, no sweaty wads of cash to be handled — simple, painless and super fast.

I’m usually good at keeping an eye on my battery, but if your phone runs out of juice, consider it the end to your cash flow. Short of finding a nearby extension cord or a back-up $20 in your sock, you won’t be able to pay for much of anything.

Google says this is a feature of Wallet, not a drawback. One major part of the phone’s overall security involves having to keep the screen powered on while making a purchase. Therefore, if a would-be thief picks up your dead phone, they won’t be able to start jacking up your credit card bills. And after a set amount of time — anywhere from one minute to two hours — you’re required to re-enter your PIN number to use Wallet at all. So even if said thief charged your dead battery, he still couldn’t access your cards.

As I see it, security isn’t Wallet’s biggest hurdle — it’s convincing the entire world to catch up. Deploying the infrastructure required to accept NFC-enabled payments is a gargantuan task, even for Google. The technology currently works with MasterCard’s PayPass network — a system that launched in the early aughts but failed to reach critical mass — which is already deployed in over 140,000 locations. Still, that’s a drop in the global retail bucket, and like everyone else, I shop at a lot of that aren’t included in the PayPass domain (sorry, Petco).

And there’s another hump: training legions of unwitting employees how to accept the thing. Try explaining that you want to split the cost of your Slurpee — half on the phone, the other in cash — to the confused broseph at the 7-11. It is not, by any means, a frictionless exchange.

That’s to say nothing of the dearth of devices actually capable of utilizing the technology. The app will initially launch on exactly one phone: The Sprint-carried Samsung Nexus S 4G.

But this is Google’s modus operandi. Oddball, outlandish, far-fetched — these words are compliments to Google, a company long accustomed to leaving naysayers and hand-wringers in its wake. Products like Wallet are its forte, and will continue to push us towards Google’s fantastical idea of what the future should be.

Can they do something with my damn car keys next?

WIRED Layered security system on NFC devices cripples would-be thieves before they can do any damage. Ditching your leather wallet means no more bulging, lopsided ass-pocket. Eventual tie-in with loyalty cards means saying goodbye to myriad stamp cards.

TIRED Currently only works with one out of the 15 major banks that issue MasterCards. Try and use it, and cashiers will look at you like you’re crazy. Infrastructure in its infancy, and there’s no guarantee it won’t die on the vine.

Photo by Jon Snyder/Wired

There is a problem with reviewing guitar amplifiers, and that problem is this: Your mileage may vary. A properly built guitar amp is as much a living instrument as an old violin or the human voice, and a great deal of its character comes from outside variables — things like speaker choice, room acoustics, and playing style, to say nothing of the guitar you have slung around your neck.

Still, it’s possible to make objective calls. And right now, our objective call is this: The 3 Monkeys Orangutan 1×12 combo is one of the most versatile, most satisfying and flat-out coolest guitar amplifiers ever built.

It starts with the looks. First off, there’s a screen-printed, crushed-glass switchplate on top, but you barely notice that, because the screen-printed, crushed-glass nameplate on the front of the amp is much, much bigger. And it says “3 Monkeys” on it, in the kind of no-nonsense serif font that lets you know some serious rock-out weirdness lives in here, and it is going to get loud, and if you aren’t interested in that sort of thing, you are probably the kind of person who watches C-Span for fun and kicks puppies. (Seriously, kicking puppies? You suck. Also, your guitar solos are cliched and sound like what Kip Winger would play if he were a drunken Nazi zombie writing soap-opera theme songs. Get a life.)

Back to the amp. The cabinet is tightly wrapped in tolex — or, if you specify it, gorgeous suede — in any one of a number of colors. There are five chicken-head-shaped knobs on top, just like a vintage Fender tweed amp. Stick your head underneath the rear panel, you can see a handful of glass tubes.

About that: The 35-watt Orangutan is a vacuum-tube amplifier, which means its output is governed by a handful of old-school thermionic valves. Their design and performance limitations typically offer a warm, analog sound, with gentle clipping and a nice, funky vibe.

This is how amplifiers — and radios, TVs, and computers — were once built, before transistors made such technology obsolete. If you are a tone freak, you likely play or listen to musical equipment built around vacuum tubes. There are downsides (unlike transistors, vacuum tubes get hot, wear out and don’t like physical abuse), but in the right environment, they sound like God. Yelling.

The Orangutan is no different. The 3 Monkeys name refers to the three men who created it: technicians Greg Howard and Ossie Ahsen, and Aerosmith guitarist Brad Whitford. Ahsen and Howard have worked with bands like Green Day, Hall & Oates, and the Black Crowes; Whitford is Whitford.

These guys know a thing or two about tone. Their amps are used by players as diverse as Steely Dan’s Walter Becker, My Morning Jacket’s Jim James, Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, and Elvis Costello.

The Orangutan was launched as a head — a standalone amplifier meant to be paired with an external speaker cabinet — in 2008. The model we tested is the same amp fitted into a cabinet paired with a 12-inch speaker. The speaker is a 3 Monkeys piece rated at 8 ohms; our cabinet was trimmed out in seafoam vinyl and popped out of the box looking something like the Holy Grail. This is the kind of amp you take home to mom.

Like all 3 Monkeys products, the Orangutan is hand-wired and completely hand-built, with custom-wound transformers, a powder-coated aircraft aluminum chassis, military-spec components and a solid ply cabinet. Four 6V6 power tubes and three ECC83 preamps are mounted on the bottom of the chassis.

I tested the amp in a large, open, concrete-floored warehouse, with a couple of rugs on the floor to cut room glare. Guitars were a Fender ‘62 Vintage Reissue Stratocaster with Callaham single-coil pickups, a Paul Reed Smith double-cut with Seymour Duncan humbuckers, and a $400 Gretsch 5120 with dime-store humbuckers that barely worked.

Lordy. This sucker pounds. I’ve played a lot of amps in my day, but few were as fluid, dynamic or versatile, or looked as good doing it. You want big and throaty clean? The Orangutan will do it. You want popping, bouncing chicken pickin’? It can do that, too, as well as meaty, distorted 1970s thunder.

But the amp’s strength is how it achieves this stuff with any number of guitars. Each of the axes took a bit of tone tweaking to get the best out of them — the Gretsch in particular wanted lots of treble, mostly because its pickups are hugely muddy — but it was ferociously easy to land on a sound worth using, one you could stick with all night.

That’s the brilliance here. Amps typically have just one voice at which they really excel, one setting you stumble onto and from which you never stray. With the Orangutan, you get five, six, maybe seven for each guitar you use. It’s a Fender tweed amp with a bit of Silvertone tossed in one minute, a Marshall crunch with Vox sparkle the next.

This would be impressive if it came from a solid-state amp, one built of processors and programs, but the Orangutan is just a handful of capacitors and resistors and not much else. The circuit isn’t much more complicated than what lives inside a Tickle Me Elmo doll. Amazing.

So you marvel at this, you mess with the six-position rotary “voice” switch, the footswitchable “lift” control (6 decibels of boost, bypasses the bass knob while leaving the treble one active). And then you turn it up, and you play something that sounds like a cross between “Sleepwalk” and Buddy Holly and “Train Kept a Rollin’” and “November Rain” and the last Fleet Foxes album. And the roof falls on your head and your kidneys rattle to the tune of Rock. And you go home to your regular amp, the one you have loved for years, and it is suddenly less impressive.

In the end, the Orangutan does what all good amps and instruments do — it makes you believe that you cannot live without it. Grain of salt or no, that sounds awfully rock and roll to us.

WIRED Tone, tone, tone. Fashionista exterior. Star power. Ability to work with any guitar you throw at it. Makes the $2,500 price tag seem totally worth it.

TIRED Fancy trim and high cost might deter you from using it on the road. The best sound comes when you crank it through the roof, which will probably hack off your landlord. But really, who needs a roof when you’ve got tone?

Photos by Jon Snyder/Wired