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Tech Gifts for the Holidays
MrCopilot pointed out that every year there are a slew of gadgets geeks desire for Christmas, and approximately 7 million web pages dedicated to compiling lists of them.
So why shouldn't we join in the fun. Here are stories from
Dallas News,
CBS News,
Seattle Times,
E Media Wire,
Detroit News and
MSNBC. So lets take a crack at your own list. There's still another day or two where things could conceivably be shipped on time for the holidays. I highly recommend Rock Band, although my aching hands might disagree.
.... you insensitive clod :)
I read over a few of the lists... they seem more like lists for tech enthusiasts rather than actual.. geeks per se. Where the hell is Hubo? No segways? Motor scooters? Play pen balls? Although personally, I'm aiming for ice skates this winter.
If you gave me a 10k gift certificate for ThinkGeek, I bet I could spend it.
Well, it has never been successfully tested.
...and I have the frostbite to prove it, if you catch my drift
Has to be the Bookeen Cybook Gen3.
http://www.bookeen.com/ebook/ebook-reading-device.aspx
The only thing that could make this thing cooler is a wifi connection.
... would be my death.
My kid is a genetic gamer, with Controller Thumb to prove it. I wanted to give him a gift which would allow him to use his hand-skills and yet challenge his brain.
I gave him a slide rule.
Why does it always have to be joes about masturbation on this site?
Damnit!
Ohh...wait....nevermind.
ThinkGeek's Annoy-a-Tron.
It's should be right up there in whatever pantheon includes the Joy Buzzer, the Dribble Glass, and the Whoopee Cushion. As Mad Magazine once said: "Fool your friends! Be popular!"
(And just imagine the big laffs you could have bringing one of these to an airport and surreptitiously slipping it into your pal's carry-on luggage... that should get either your pal or you onto the No-Fly list quicker than you can say "Jack Gilmore!")
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
What I want for christmas: /. into digg. /. into digg. /. into digg. /. into digg. /. into digg. /. into digg. /. into digg. /. into digg. /. into digg. /. into digg.
Please don't turn
Please don't turn
Please don't turn
Please don't turn
Please don't turn
Please don't turn
Please don't turn
Please don't turn
Please don't turn
Please don't turn
What the hell is with these top-* lists?
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
The 58 Song Set List you get to play after you have enough stars from the other venues is brutal. "Timmy - Lord of the underworld" and "I get by" are just brutal on hard. Took my friends and I a dozen tries before we were finally able to get through them. Great game but that set list is not for the faint of heart.
I keep telling myself I'm not the desperate type.
Super-small laptop, with a 7-inch screen.
The thing is hardly bigger than a DS. It can fit in women's handbags. Glove compartments.
And yes it runs linux, it comes runs linux out of the box.
Mine will double as a casual laptop and as a remote for my TV which will be using my computer as a source(via logmein).
I can see both women and men loving this thing. $400 bucks or so.
If I want an e-book reader that does just that - displays the text - without web browser, wireless purchases, touchscreen, accelerometers, WiFi, EVDO, DRM, DMCA, PATRIOT, WMD and all this crap that does little to user experience and lots to the price. Not every country considers 2 salaries worth of money a good price for a device to just read books.
It would be good if it was pocket-sized too.
What would you recommend?
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
I've always wanted a huge multiscreen display from here!
If you are a gamer and own any handheld systems, you've got two perfect gifts if you're any kind of gamer: look into Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles for PSP, or Contra 4 for DS. They're both infinitely more awesome than Rock Band, in my opinion.
Let's stop dilly-dallying and just change "-1: Overrated" to "-1: Disagree" or "-1: Doesn't Subscribe to Groupthink".
I see Apple products, add-ons for Apple products, Wii, TiVo, PSP...
:P
Where are Vista, Zune 2 ? XBox360 ? (admittedly, more of a fit for past year lists)
Tech-gifts lists confirm it : MS is dying
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
Every year, I see these lists and I wonder, do most people really spend that much on a single Christmas gift? I'm sorry, but I'm not buying anyone a $2500 self-tuning electric guitar (CBS list), or a new $2299 Apple iMac (MSNBC list) or even a $400 iPhone this holiday season. I swear these lists must be created by retailers or someone trying to convince you that you have to go all out and spend all your savings every Christmas, just so your friends and family will love you.
At least some of these lists are surprisingly decent - the Dallas and Detroit ones are actually pretty reasonable - accessories for your friends and family that already bought their gadgets. Now those make good gift items.
I don't know, but instead of playing Rock Band, maybe people could learn to play real instruments.
Get off my lawn.
You know what? There's no gadgets on my wish list. I guess it's because either I buy them, or they're too expensive to make the list. I know my wife won't go into a shop a layout thousands on anything powered by electricity, she would find it too intimidating and claims I'm too picky. My list has some Warhammer stuff on it. That's pretty damn geeky I know, but other than that I've asked for cloths because I seem incapable of buying any. Mostly because I blow all my cash on gadgets.
I have the perfect system you see.
Although I followed a link above this to Bookeen, and now the whole systems is threatening to collapse. No system is prefect, which is ideal.
Hydrodynamic building set
Chaos tower
to the hardworking Chinese factory workers putting together your toys for pennies.
And remember to give thanks for being alive in (what is likely for you) the most affluent country on the planet in the most period in human history.
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
Gift guides for most of the family.
I think they're still working on one or two more. Not sure.
Here is another tech list, but this one is also merging some of the lists mentioned so you can see what is making the top overall. Gifts for Geeks from Seekler
Dan Mayer: my blog, essays, art, etc
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
0. Nokia N810 ...
1. Eeeeee pc
2. ?
9. ?
1. Buy gadget
2. Replace batteries
3. Watch it break down
4. Attempt to fix
5. ???
6. Profit (for the person who sold it)
7. Massive unrecycled waste (your gift to planet earth)
Good ideas: plants, books, tools, Slashdot membership, backrubs, fruit, nuts, candy wrapped in paper.
This holiday is about loving your family, go be with them, instead of working extra hours to buy them plastic crap you won't even remember in two years!
technical writing / development
Alternative choices after the jump.
--
# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
Panasonic FZ8 digital camera: for $220, this thing takes amazingly good pictures: quite sharp 12x zoom (36-432mm equivalent, f/2.8-3.3), very effective optical image stabilization, 7MP (which is about all you need), full manual control, RAW, and lots of features.
Or, if someone already has a decent camera:
Raynox DCR-150 4.8-diopter closeup adapter: for $30, and combined with the above camera or many others (anything with a long optical zoom), you can count the hairs on a bee's little toe. I got one of these recently, and the colored phosphor strips on my (old) television are literally hundreds of pixels wide on the image.
Just saw a report on CNBC at 11:15 EST that showed 79% of prospective game system buyers want to buy a Wii, some 16% for Playstation, and a measly 5% for Xbox. And something like 90% of women buyers are interested in the Wii. It is interesting to note that while shopping for the Wii version of Guitar Hero III in Toronto, there are stacks of the Activision version, and the PC version, but no Wii versions to be had, and the clerk at the local Wal-Mart told me that they get cases of the other versions, but only six copies of the Wii system. She doubts they will get any more before Christmas.
What was once true, is no longer so
. . . is a video of Larry Ellison being eaten alive by a killer whale.
What?
Last friday I wraped up the Megazoka from thinkgeek and gave it in the pile of gifts at the office party. People were allowed to do limited trading of gifts if they didn't like what they opened so that thing changed hands, shot people's hair as they unwrapped gifts upfront and everything.
I myself got something cool that I wasn't expecting at all. I ended up with a hand crank flashlight/radio hand held that looks like a phaser right out of Star Trek almost except it has an anolog radio dial on the one side. Crank that thing for 90 seconds and I get 15 minutes of juice. The only down side is it's made in china so I'm wondering what toxic substances are lurking inside it.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
I always get those two confused. Anyway...
Anything you can reccomend for the average /. reader? (I keed.)
Anyway, geekish items on my wish list include the retro bluetooth handset from ThinkGeek, a Power Squid, "The Four Pillars of Geometry", and the Gojira 2-DVD set with the original Japan release. And of course the 2008 Despair calendar for my cube.
Awesome device for eBook reading and more.
Well...this solution is only inexpensive if you already own it - a phone with a high resolution screen.
I have read literally dozens of eBooks on my two Treos (formerly a 650 and now a 700p). The palm OS versions of the Treo have 320x320 screens, which makes the text crisp and clear. The responsive color screen is bright with adjustable backlighting...and the SD card slot allows you to store hundreds of books easily. Whether I am at home in bed with the wife or in the bunkroom at the fire station, the folks trying to sleep in the same room really appreciate that I can read without needing to use a lamp. BTW, all of my content is unprotected...through one means or another.
Personally, I love using the phone-based solution...since I only need to carry (and charge) one extremely portable device. Well, yes, it's larger than a razr...but it's a hell of a lot smaller than a Kindle or Sony Reader. For this reason, I also use the same phone as my MP3 player, streaming internet radio, and video player. Of course, it's also a PDA, email client, browser client, and, of course, a phone.
If you don't have such a phone, how about a new Palm Centro? It has a 320x320 display (albeit somewhat smaller than a standard Treo screen), is very portable, and is available from a range of carriers with prices ranging from $99 to free...depending on contract.
cheers,
Scuba
That's why the #1 geek tech gift is the Fleshlight! No more aching hands.
Oh wait, you didn't mean green as in cash?
But seriously, cash is king. I won't have to pretend to like your gift and you won't have to guess whether or not I really like your gift (hint: I don't). It's win-freakin'-win, baby. But don't be a cheapskate!
Don't forget the non tech gift guides from Dave Barry
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Guitar Hero 3 is loads easier, Minus the super-tard "boss battles", which are about as fun as "desert bus", and the last 5 songs which are the "lets make these so hard just because we can." GH3 generally throws in more notes, but the accuracy is about 10x as forgiving, and the only hard parts are when they throw a bunch of crap notes together haphazardly. Rock band is definately the better game, and I wish someone would have told me that before I bought GH3. I'm quite pissed at GH3, even if the guitar is better, but that's my opinion.
Whether or not there is some sort of god, I'm not supposed to say/god is a word and the argument ends there-Smog
This post is to retract previous positive comments I made concerning the Nokia N810, which is on some gift lists these holidays, in the role of a Web browser and eReader. After using one for a few days, I found the Web browsing experience too slow, the resolution high, but the screen too small to read text comfortably at that resolution (zooming in essentially makes your logical viewport tiny so that text is legible, but very little of it is on screen), and had considerable difficulty in finding and installing applications on it. No multi-touch really hurts in terms of ergonomics on a screen this small.
Expectations should be more of a Linux general purpose PDA (with all the head aches that entails), not a general purpose computer, despite the marketing that makes it sound like a full PC, at least for the browsing experience. Note that it does not come with PDA software on it.
Essentially, it is not an ergonomomic or capable Web tablet, but it is an interesting "Web PDA gadget". If you are really looking for a Web tablet for around the house browsing and reading, you should probably consider a UMPC with specs matching that of at least low end general purpose notebooks and with a physical screen size in the seven to eight inch range, minimum resolution of 800x600.
Nokia N810
and/or
ASUS Eee PC
and/or
OLPC Give One Get One
Pleo
Arduino
iPod Touch 16GB (jailbroken)
Apple Tablet (will have to wait for January. Or when hell freezes over.)
First point - if you're reading a geek gift list and it suggests a simple GPS unit, then they don't know what they're talking about. Any real geek is on his thrid GPS by now or else doesn't see the point because he never goes outside.
Second point - none of the geek gift guides I've seen are hardcore geek enough. I'd love to hear other similar ideas (because I've got these two already), but...
Item #1: a Symbol CS1504 handheld barcode scanner (around $100). No significant instructions included or software beyond drivers, and it comes in a plain brown box. It's the size of keyfob car remotes and has memory so you scan stuff then hook it up to your computer later and download what it scanned - once you write the software to do that of course. Kept me entertained for months and now I've written Java code to support it and lookup UPS and ISBN codes.
Item #2: The Pickit2 starter kit from Microchip ($50 direct). Nothing says geek more than programming little extremely cheap microprocessors in assembly language to flash LEDs in sequence. This kit gives you everything you need to get you started in doing just that, and is a gateway gift for future geek paraphernalia like breadboards and electronic parts - nobody else will have a clue what all that stuff is, but at least it's all pretty cheap. Throw in a subscription to "Nuts and Volts" magazine and he'll have geek pr0n all year long. If you play your cards right next year you'll have all sorts of blinky geek ornaments to hang on the tree.
Both of these gift ideas have an extremely high geek fun to price ratio. What I'm looking for is other ideas like this.
I know in our family the holidays are the time to get the big gifts for the family.
We've gotten each other TiVo, camcorders, digital cameras, XBox 360, new PC's, iPods, etc. for Christmas in the past. I would imagine a fair number of slashdotters went out an bought these items whenever they need to. Now if you look back through last year's purchases, a few grand in December is probably not all that much.
In other words, not really clearing the accounts out, but timing the gifts as a nice "big" surprise around the holidays. Bonus: you get (assuming you take time off around Christmas/new years) time to play with your new gadgets while relaxing with some egg nog around a fire.
I love the sound of distortion in the morning -- webcommando
GH3 "easier"? Not sure about that. It's certainly more forgiving on the timing of hitting the notes, but Rock Band actually has you hit notes that "feel" like you're playing the song.. whereas GH3 throws as much shit in there as possible to make things as difficult as they can be. GH3 hard = GH2 expert. Rock Band hard = GH2 Medium. Regardless of what's more difficult, I agree that Rock Band is definitely the better game, and a lot more fun to play as well.
Have Bart writing "I will not turn /. into Digg" 100 times.
I do too -- and appreciate your nod toward inclusiveness at the end there -- but it's a little late for the Jewish /. tech geeks: the last night of Hanukkah was just under a week ago.
:D
(But I finally got my Roomba, so I can't complain.)
- c'mon folks! this article should have run a couple weeks ago...
:-)
- now i have to pay for overnight shipping!
Or is it for Airing of Grievances?
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I think that half the problem is getting books to put on them. Thanks to DRM and other crap, there's hardly anything to read.
I mean, if I could convert my entire library to some nice, searchable ebook format...
I'm also surprised that they don't have some real cameras on the lists,... point-and-shoots are nice and all, and I do like the fact that most of them do video, too. But real photography geeks use dSLRs,...
I do wonder how much money was paid to the media writers for these lists, because the bulk of the products listed are not really true "geek" gadgets, and more majorly overhyped and overadvertised "hot" items, like the Wii, iPhone, and others. Not that they're bad products or anything, but just overadvertised just a tad,...
i found these LED candles that you blow on/off. they flicker like real candles. i guess its not really a super geeky gift, as i'm giving one to my grandmother and using one for a 'white elephant gift', but as a geek i'm excited by this cheapo little gadget :) the larger ones take AAA, so i bought a few of those instead of the smaller ones that take those stupid button batteries: http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/lights/94ce/
HTML is the right kind of markup language - it describes the objects you want to display, and provides some hints about the author's preferences in fonts, etc., but leaves it up to the browser to display the document using whatever display technology it has and whatever layout capabilities it has, and uses the reader's preferences in fonts, etc. when appropriate.
It's not a new problem - I was on standards committees 20 years ago where some people got the reader-driven format issue (at that time we were using SGML rather than HTML) and some wanted to impose an author-driven marks-on-dead-trees model, which works fine if you're trying to print your airplane documents in replaceable-page A-sized paper manuals, and is fairly useless if the reader has a handheld monospace display that they're using while trying to fix an airplane.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Donald Norman observed it takes about 6 attempts for new technologies to materialize in a form that the market accepts ("The Design of Every Day Things" ). This is simply because good design is hard.
As for the many versions of ebook-readers running around the market lately, I would suggest that 1) the LCD version's don't count (non-starter as a paper replacement), and 2) there have only been two or three iterations of eInk models (e.g. numerous models from various companies, but few generations overall).
Once e-ink resolution has about doubled, I'll be moving my reading from paper to bits. The other posts about reading entire series (aka Diskworld), or textbooks, or technical books are valid and sound. Just lately, I was intrigued by a title in another article ("The Killing Star" as mentioned here in Does Active SETI Put Earth in Danger? ) and I have been unable to find one of thse "Ohhh-paper-is-the-ultimate! versions at all (or at least any price point I would pay for - the last one on Amazon I saw was a used copy for about $200 (Yeah, I wish I was kidding too.))).
Anyway...
Paper books will join pay-phones in the Obsolescence Hall Of Fame; of this I am sure.
I was looking at one of these "top 10" lists over on ArsTechnica, and they recommended, among other things, "The Slanket". It's basically a large blanket with oversize sleeves sewn into it - so you can still easily use a laptop computer, work a TV remote control, etc. etc. while bundled up in it.
.... but I think I'm going to scrap it for this season.
One of these will set you back about $45-50 (more like $30 if you want the child-sized version they offer), BUT - it appears nobody has these things in stock to ship before Christmas!
No matter which color I tried to select, their main web site said they were out of stock until mid-January. I tried placing an order on www.asseenontv.com, since they acted like they had at least 2 colors of them in stock and ready to ship. But again, doesn't look like it. They pre-authorized my credit card, but my order status never changed to "packaging for shipment" after over a week -- and now the temporary charge was removed from my card, with no sign of them actually charging for the order. I think they probably plan on taking orders, and not shipping them until mid-Jan. either!
I thought this was a great gift for one of my friends who *always* complains about the cold, and likes watching TV
It's an interesting link...but I think that a suggestion for a $350 reader fails to address the OP's primary criterion - "CHEAP" (i.e., inexpensive).
While some may find the Treo's 320x320 screen to be inadequate, the device may qualify as (sic) "cheap". Frankly, I actually like the screen on my Treo. It's bright and very responsive. I find eInk displays to be dull and slow to refresh. Sure, they are normally larger...and many may prefer them...but I find the Treo screen to be excellent for reading text-based documents (i.e., docs without images)...and I already own it...and normally have it with me.
I do appreciate the link though. I had not heard of that product. Seems like they have an uphill battle to fight with the latest Sony Reader and the Kindle...especially at that price point.
cheers,
Scuba
... the one tech present that I have given this holiday, and would like to receive myself, is the Roomba 560. It actually vacuums my carpets. So I don't have to and I can do something else instead. No other gadget I've owned or given has ever managed to free my time to do something else - they all require care and attention and don't save me any time. (Apart from the cheap sat nav I bought from Maplins - it stops me from being late to appointments - but I even had to hack that.)
...that didn't get a Xmas bonus ?
Oh, I can't help quoting you because everything that you said rings true
I still want a Squeezebox.
...you insensitive clod :)
Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, you can leave politics alone, but politics won't leave you alone.-rms
I'll bet that most of us technology enslaved workabees could spent some more time with our family or friends. Save your geek toys for another time and they will all remember the times spent together long after any other gift.
Jane Howard once said "Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family. Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one."
Here's something to put it into perspective.
"Saturday Mornings and Marbles"
The older I get, the more I enjoy Saturday mornings. Perhaps it's the
quiet solitude that comes with being the first to rise, or maybe it's
the unbounded joy of not having to be at work. Either way, the first
few hours of a Saturday morning are most enjoyable.
A few weeks ago, I was shuffling toward the basement shack with a
steaming cup of coffee in one hand and the morning paper in the other.
What began as a typical Saturday morning, turned into one of those
lessons that life seems to hand you from time to time. Let me tell you
about it.
I turned the dial up into the phone portion of the band on my ham radio
in order to listen to a Saturday morning swap net.
Along the way, I came across an older sounding chap, with a tremendous
signal and a golden voice. You know the kind, he sounded like he should
be in the broadcasting business. He was telling whoever he was talking
with something about "a thousand marbles."
I was intrigued and stopped to listen to what he had to say.
"Well, Tom, it sure sounds like you're busy with your job. I'm sure
they pay you well but it's a shame you have to be away from home and
your family so much. Hard to believe a young fellow should have to work
60 or 70 hours a week to make ends meet. Too bad you missed your
daughter's dance recital."
He continued, "Let me tell you something Tom, something that has helped
me keep a good perspective on my own priorities."
And that's when he began to explain his theory of a "thousand marbles."
"You see, I sat down one day and did a little arithmetic. The average
person lives about seventy-five years. I know, some live more and some
live less, but on average, folks live about seventy-five years."
"Now then, I multiplied 75 times 52 and I came up with 3900 which is
the number of Saturdays that the average person has in their entire
lifetime. Now stick with me Tom, I'm getting to the important part."
"It took me until I was fifty-five years old to think about all this in
any detail," he went on, "and by that time I had lived through over
twenty-eight hundred Saturdays. I got to thinking that if I lived to be
seventy-five, I only had about a thousand of them left to enjoy."
"So I went to a toy store and bought every single marble they had. I
ended up having to visit three toy stores to round-up 1000 marbles. I
took them home and put them inside of a large, clear plastic container
right here in the shack next to my gear. Every Saturday since then, I
have taken one marble out and thrown it away."
"I found that by watching the marbles diminish, I focused more on the
really important things in life. There is nothing like watching your
time here on this earth run out to help get your priorities straight."
"Now let me tell you one last thing before I sign-off with you and take
A candle loses nothing when lighting another -Internet
Dad sells son's 90-dollar video game online for more than 9000
9000$ for a video game?
The fact that I share the same planet, not to mention species, with the person that paid 9000$ for a game worries and insults me at the same time.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
While there are some nice toys out there, I didn't see SlingBoxes mentioned on most sites. I find it strange that we aren't being forced to get one of those this season.
But my most coveted toy of the season wasn't mentioned at all!
http://www.chumby.com/
I know that these devices are not officially released, but you can still get them, and the software will be updated as soon as it comes out. Given the open design process, I'm surprised no one here has mentioned them yet.
from the dallas news article "One of the few complaints I have is after a day of heavy use, my iPhone warns me of a low battery by the time I'm finished with dinner. This means I have to charge the iPhone each night before I go to bed. That's not always convenient."
uhhhhhhh. god forbid you have to reach out a hand and plug it in. i imagine that must be really taxing after a long day on the phone. i guess he must sleep in a tent without access to power. wonder how he pays for his iPhone...
No fuss, no bother, no stupid guesswork. Built the way technology was supposed to be built.
Plug it into your phone and push the button.
Bang, all text fields in your "Cellular Phonebook" are backed up.
Transfer/Restore is just as simple.
Switching phones? Just switch the tip.
They're even going to support a whole slew more phones next year than just Motorola and Samsung!
www.Backup-Pal.com
(Featured on the Good Morning America Show by Men's Health Magazine http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/ChristmasCountdown/story?id=3983896&page=1 )
Well retailers are going to love me anyway. I'm in the market for a new PC that is future-proof. From a decent LCD monitor that doesn't kill the eyes (and lasts), to a UPS that protects my investment (for some reason my equipment doesn't last as long as it should).*
Note to self. Try to find a viable backup solution.
Yes these "cheap" ereader discussions resemble the "but I just want a phone" discussions so much. Anyway maybe you should think of the ereader as a purchase spread out over the total number of books you'll buy for it? It's a lot cheaper that way without the disadvantages of the cell-phone model.
I got my PRS500 for $50 with a new Sony credit card. $50 & hard credit pull is pretty cheap. Since they have a new reader, the PRS500 will probably have other special deals too.
It uses e-ink, which is a damn sight prettier than LCD & won't burn through your batteries.