1.   Digital wallets, providing portable identification and currency for online shoppers, were often touted during the dot-com bubble as the next big thing.

2.   Frequent travelers must store it on laptops to use a digital wallet on the road.

3.   Hoping to reverse the short, sad history of digital wallets, a group of credit card issuers and software makers now hope to make it easy for consumers.

4.   Internet appliances of the future will likely include set-top boxes, handheld devices, digital wallets, cell phones and many others.