Gifts to Satisfy and Surprise
This year’s holiday gift lists no doubt are loaded with the latest must-have tech marvels, such as digital cameras, portable music players, smart phones, game consoles and even big-screen televisions.
But there are lots of less obvious choices that could surprise your friends and relatives while satisfying their digital desires.
Here are five suggestions (plus one bonus item), at a variety of prices:
* MultiPot (Design Within Reach, $278). If your household is like mine, the cellphone is plugged into a socket in one room, the portable music player is charging in another -- and at the moment I can’t remember where the PDA is.
One elegant solution for this chaos is the MultiPot, an electronics recharging device imported from Italy by Design Within Reach, popularly known as DWR. It looks like a stylish ice bucket (or an upside-down version of the hat the band Devo used to wear), but hidden inside are five outlets, plus room for power cords to be tucked out of sight. The gadgets to be charged sit on top in a neat array.
The MultiPot also lights up from within, with a glow that makes it a bit of a conversation piece. But admittedly, a somewhat expensive one. As a friend of mine says of DWR, “It’s Design Within Reach -- just not yours.”
* Live365 Subscription (Live365 Inc., $5.95 a month). Internet radio is a true narrowcast medium -- no matter what kind of music or other type of programming you enjoy, you probably can find an online station devoted to it.
The trouble is that most Internet radio hub sites that provide links to stations are either bereft of some of the most interesting programming available or are poorly organized.
But Live365 (www.live365.com) is a gateway to nearly 10,000 stations. You can listen to many of them for free, but a subscription eliminates commercials, provides a higher-quality audio stream and gives the user tools for organizing favorite stations.
* Atomix Winslow Clock (Chaney Instrument Co., about $35). I like atomic radio-controlled clocks; I hate how they look.
Maybe it’s a generational thing, but I find the look of digital numbers that most atomic clocks feature to be cold and clinical, especially in a living room setting. But I appreciate not only the convenience of a self-setting clock but also the science and engineering that made precise time-keeping so widely available.
The bridge between these divergent sensibilities is this wooden table clock that shows the time with traditional hour and minute hands. Hidden inside is a time-keeping mechanism regulated by radio signals from the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Colorado.
* Wireless Weather Station (La Crosse Technology Ltd., $50-$100). Maybe we don’t have the weather extremes of much of the country, but even non-nerds in Southern California seem to love home weather stations showing digital readouts of outside/inside temperatures, barometric pressure and humidity.
I find myself glancing at the readouts a couple of times a day. Perhaps it’s partly nostalgia -- many of us are transplants from the Northeast where weather information is vital.
There are several makes of these stations on the market, but I have found that some conk out after a few seasons. The La Crosse unit I have on a kitchen shelf has been working faithfully for years.
* Webcam (Logitech Inc., $30-$130) These little digital cameras, which were once cool novelty items, might make a comeback because of a new free video communications service.
Sony Corp. this month launched Instant Video Everywhere, which allows users to make video calls, computer to computer, via the Internet. The software can be downloaded from www.sonyive.com at no cost. That plus a Webcam can be used to make video calls around the world (to folks who also have the software and a Web camera).
The image quality is not pristine, but it’s a lot better than the usual postage-stamp-size Webcam views now available on instant-messaging services.
Sony’s Instant Video site also offers Voice Over Internet Protocol com- puter-to-telephone calls at low rates, but as long as you stick to computer-to-computer communications there is no cost.
The Instant Video system is only for PCs, but Mac fans can use the similar iChat AV system that was introduced two years ago (www.apple.com/macosx/features/ichat/). For that, they need an iSight camera (Apple Computer Inc. -- $149) or the latest version of the iMac computer that comes with an embedded camera.
* Bonus Non-Digital Gift. A ticket to Walt Disney Concert Hall ($15-$129).
Digital music is everywhere, from the littlest music player to stadium concerts where every note is electrified and processed.
Just as a reminder that there are still pure, unamplified sources of music, consider treating someone (especially a young person who has spent most of his or her life in the digital era) to a live concert by the Los Angeles Philharmonic or Master Chorale, the resident companies of the spectacular-sounding (and spectacular-looking) hall.
It could provide someone who has never heard a live orchestra or choral concert with the nicest surprise of the season -- the enduring power of analog.
David Colker can be reached via e-mail at technopolis@latimes.com. Previous columns can be found at latimes.com/technopolis.
