There are only a few more days to Christmas. To be exact:
Here are a few more suggestions for presents to give your techie love ones. Some of these actually are good for anyone.
I love to take photographs of my family and friends. For many years I hauled around a heavy 35mm film camera which gave great photos. As time went on, I converted to a snapshot (point and shoot) film camera and then finally a first, second and third generation digital snapshot cameras. There are a hundreds of great digital cameras out there and just about all of them will be provide great photos. Here is a suggestion for a point and shoot camera made by Sony: Cyber-shot DSC-T90; Compact so it can fit in your pocket, great resolution (12 mega pixels), large screen (3") and a good zoom. It even will record short videos. All this for less than $300.
After a while, I wanted a camera which I could use to take action photos of my kids playing soccer or basketball. This requires a different kind camera with a larger zoom lens and able to take photos quickly before the action passes you. These kind of cameras are called SLR's. My favorite brands for these kind of cameras are Nikon and Canon. In the Nikon line, SLR's start from around $500 for a 10 mega pixel camera (D5000). Newer ones go for $800 or more but they provide even higher resolution and even record HD quality video. Canon's SLR's start at about $600 for a 12 mega pixel camera (Rebel XSi). These can be purchased at your traditional camera stores like Ritz Camera or at your favorite warehouse superstore like Costco or Sam's Club.
Have you gotten your Christmas cards yet? It's even easier to get holiday photo cards. If you have a digital photo you like, you can choose the card design, upload your digital phone and order the prints for pick up at your nearest store location. I've used both Costco and Sam's Club to make my cards. They both provide a good selection of designs and you can customize the printed words right on the card. Here are links to Costco and to Sam's Club. If you don't have a membership at either of these places, there are others stores such as Longs Drugs or Wal-Mart who provide similar services. There are also many other personalize photo items you can create and order on-line. Calendars, mugs, mouse pads, t-shirts and posters are just some of the things you can get.
If you have a number of photos you would like to give, you can create wonderful photobooks totally on-line. These photobooks are printed and bound to your directions. Their websites gives step by step directions to guide you through the process, so it is really easy to produce great results. The only caution I have is to watch your dates. Because these are produced on the Mainland and must be mail to you, you do need to get your orders in by the first week of December to receive them by Christmas.
One of the hottest gifts on the list for this year are the electronic books. The Amazon Kindle is a portable wireless 3G device with 6" or 9.7" display that you can use to read a selection of over 360,000 books, newspapers and magazines. You download the documents wirelessly and can read them when you want: in car or bus, in a plane or even at home. You don't have to worry about the stores being sold out of the latest novel and the average price is $9.99 per book. The 6" unit goes for $259 and a larger 9.7" unit goes for $489
An alternative to the Kindle is the new Nook by Barnes and Noble. The Nook is priced the same as the 6" Kindle but advertises that it has over one million titles available. It also has an expandable memory so you can add more titles to it and it has Wi-Fi capabilities that can be used in addition to it's 3G service. The only catch is that it will not be available for this Christmas but will be delivered at the start of the new year (2010).
A couple suggestions from my buddy David Kawika Talisman: The first is a Wi-Fi enable mobile webcam robot called the WowWee Rovio. Once it is set up, you can access it remotely from any computer browser around the world. You can control it's movements and view live video. It goes for $229.99.
Here's the second item from Kawika. Did you ever wanted to display your computer screen to a bunch of people but didn't have a video projector handy? Now there is a small portable projector called the Cinemin Swivel that you can take anywhere. Battery powered, it claims it can project a 60" picture for two hours. It cost $299.99.
I hope this helps you enjoy your holiday season a little more because you got your shopping done early for those Nerds you love. Remember to also Elf yourself.
