The garage door opener in my house works perfectly well. It's a craftsman chain drive and it's a bit noisy but every time I push the button on the remote in my car, the door slowly moves upward and I can pull my car into the driveway. No worries, right?

One evening I pulled onto my street, however, and my garage door was sitting open for all to see, with bicycles, tools and an unlocked interior door that offered easy access into my house. It'd been that way for over six hours. Not good. But how do you know if you remembered to close your garage door every single morning? It only takes one forgetful departure to lose hundreds or even thousands of dollars worth of household goods.

Enter the Sears Craftsman AssureLink communications system. It's a three piece solution that lets Craftsman sell Internet-aware garage door openers that can not only be accessed via the Web to confirm the door is properly closed, but that have a handy iPhone (or Android) app that lets you control the door too. Fabulous.

[This article is written by Contributing Editor Gary Moskoff]

A lot of companies are realizing that they can advertise and promote their brands through utilities, games and other applications for the Apple iPhone, including Walmart, Starbucks, REI, Sears, Audi, Target, Nikon, Toyota, Honda, Ikea and Nike, to name just a few.

Most of these, however, come across as me-too applications that aren't particularly creative, games that aren't very fun or as applications that just don't have much cool factor or completely miss their target audience of iPhone users anyway.

So who do I think is doing it best? You might be surprised...