Great Gadgets
The holidays are the time to ask for (and give) stuff you’d never buy for yourself. New technologies, hip form-factors, dubious products for which there is no need but they’re kind of cool nevertheless — the items listed below all fall into this group.
Pamela Pfiffner: As my work moved from print to online, my dad realized that to share in his daughter’s career he could no longer go to the newsstand and pick up a copy of whatever magazine I was working for. He’d need to go online. The computer he bought to do so was far too complicated for him (Did he listen to me? Nooooo!) so he gave it away. I want him to at least send and receive email, so I’m looking at the Earthlink Mivo 350 Cordless Email Appliance. It connects through standard phone lines to let him access email throughout the house and see HTML, JPG, and GIF attachments without cumbersome hardware. Another option I’m investigating is the RCA MSN TV Internet Receiver which would give him email and Web access through MSN via his television set. And as my dad is (shall we say ) very familiar with his TV, this may be the right route to take.
Eric J. Adams: On the techie side, I say go digital music this year. For instance:
- The $49 Xitel HiFi-Link PC to Stereo Connector that lets you bypass inferior computer sound cards and play MP3 or streaming radio on your stereo;
- The $399 PoGo Flipster, a dedicated portable multimedia player equipped with LCD display for watching downloaded videos, listening to MP3s, recording voice memos and live recordings, storing and viewing high resolution still images, and soon watching TV (see figure 6);
- The $99 AVerFoto Play: TV Digital Photo Player, a palm-sized plug-and-play device that allows you to display and browse pictures captured by digital cameras on a big screen using such remote-controlled features as a 16-picture preview, 90-degree clockwise rotation, and digital zoom.
Figure 6: PoGo Flipster is a handheld multimedia machine.
(Pamela Pfiffner: I feel like I’m the only one on the planet without an Apple iPod. I’d like that to change, please.)
David Morgenstern: One of the coolest products I’ve seen in the past couple of years is the ProScope by Scalar digital microscope for Macs and PCs (see figure 7). The high-resolution USB camera costs around $229 and is sold by a number of online retailers (the lowest price I’ve seen is from Proscope.net).
ProScope comes with a 50X lens, but also supports a variety of optional lenses, from 1-10X to 200X; there’s also an adapter for standard C-mount photographic camera lenses. The camera can take extremely close still images at 640-by-480-pixel resolution as well as movies in either QuickTime or .AVI formats. Certainly, the ProScope could replace the optical loop for some gadget-minded folks.
Figure 7: . The ProScope is usually pictured looking at butterflies or bugs, and works just as great for examining the CMYK dots of printed output. For a disturbing personal tour, point it at the pores of your nose. While its name suggests professional use, Scalar sells a “real” USB microscope for about $500.
For Stocking Stuffers and Miscellaneous, turn the page.
This article was last modified on January 3, 2023
This article was first published on December 4, 2002
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