The pre-Y2K holiday buzz in the digital world has been in a frenzied state for the last few weeks as online retailers face a make or break time -- not every site is going to survive the "selling at a loss" disease that has infected them. But what this means to you as a normal consumer is that you can get cool presents for your friends and family at pretty reasonable prices. I've been poking around the net for shopping ideas and offer these suggestions for the wired set in your life. Some of these are fairly cheap, while others may only appeal to you if you own a lot of Yahoo stock. :30
The holidays are a time for receiving things you're probably not get for yourself, right? So lets start with something impractical... the Aibo (eye-boh) from Sony. A cute -- and hard to find -- robot dog that chases a pink ball, learns commands you teach it, and wanders around your home. Think of Furby, one of those little hotdog kinds of dogs, and the robot from Buck Rogers put together. Sony's, uh, adoption program as they call it is officially over... that is, they're sold out, but you can grab one from eBay for around 4 grand. You teach Aibo tricks by inserting a memory stick into its little body so that it can remember commands, and according to the Sony web site, store "information that AIBO needs to make decisions for its own survival. " I've only read rviews of the cute little digital pup, but if price is no object and Furby is just too sickeningly cute, and if the thought of house breaking a real doggy over the holidays is too much, then go nuts. I guarantee it'll be the hit present in your neighborhood. 1:30
I don't have any teenagers on my shopping list, but Playmates Electronics has the ultimate digital answer to passing notes in class. A $20 pager like device called the Friend Link lets kids send text messages back and forth... either person to person or to an entire group. Best of all, with FriendLink, there is no paper trail with incriminating gossip about who thinks who is cute. I'm sure teachers will just love these -- count the days til they're banned in schools. Unless school officials are too busy confiscating Pokemon stuff. I'm thinking of getting some for my co-workers for use during meetings... a way of lobbing silent pot-shots. Who knows, if they become popular enough you could even pass notes at the local bar or maybe when you're stuck in traffic... 2:10
There are a host of new things designed this year to make sitting in your car a happy experience. A friend of mine has a 6 CD changer in her car and we're forever getting sick of the rotation. Changing a CD requires a long grab under the passenger seat. That doesn't make you look cool, and its certainly not safe. Now that MP3 files are the de facto Internet standard for saving and playing back music, a bunch of companies have started making hardware to play them back -- handheld units like the Rio have been around for months, and new home stereo MP3 players are starting to appear. But its the car one I want. The Empeg Car unit slips into your dashboard like any other audio component... and holds 75 hours of music -- that's the equivalent of more than 70 normal CDs. Best of all, the unit is removable and is easily hooked into your home PC when you need to reload. And really, what a thousand bucks in the name on musical diversity? Plus the Empeg Car player doesn't use any Microsoft products, so its a good way to support alternative operating systems like Linux. 3:10
There are literally hundreds of models of home computers to pick from, but there are only a few that even remotely qualify as cool. And since I'm guessing you are tired of the iMac hype, we'll pick two other machines for the net-head on your list. First up, if you're a windows user there is the Sony Vaio... a 3 and a half pound, $28-Hundred portable marvel. It comeswith a DVD drive for watching movies, a high speed FireWire connector to attach a Camcorder, and a slot to read that memory stick from your little dog the Aibo. All in a 1" thick magnesium alloy case. This is a machine that turns heads -- no mean feat for a Windows PC. 3:45
But for even less money you can get an almost as feature-packed Apple iBook. This candy colored laptop is like a squished version of the iMac... and while it won't do DVD movies, you can use the built-in antennas to connect to the Internet without wires. Sitting on the couch in my living room, I can surf the net through my high speed DSL connection. 4:00
DSL -- which stands for digital subscriber line -- is not yet available everywhere, but here in San Francisco, its just $49 a month for unlimited, always-on, high speed action. My DSL line is at least 7 times faster than my regular old 56K modem and because its always on, there are no busy signals... ever. *This* is the way to connect to the web, and it really is the gift that keeps on giving. Think of it as a way to give your friends more free time. 4:30
Finally, whilst vegetating and surfing from the couch, the good little geeks on your list need a VCR to go along with their high tech lifestyle. Tapes are soooo 1990, so don't bother with the traditional video machine -- instead grab one of the new digital recorders. These personal TV receivers as they are being called let you pause live TV shows and easily record your favorite shows without the, uh, complex steps involved with a normal VCR.
Both units use a hard drive like the one in your computer to store shows... that means higher quality and no worn our or eaten tapes. ReplayTV and TiVo let you pick favorite actors and record 14-20 hours of their movies even when you don;t know they are on! 5:10
The TiVO unit costs about $500 and ReplayTV is $700 and both require a subscription to be truly useful. While not the way to store your favorite shows, these recorders are perfect for simply and quickly catching shows you missed and for pausing live TV to hit the bathroom or the kitchen. 5.30
Don't worry if you missed some of these links, they're all listed on the Weekend Edition web site at www.npr.org. With all of the new stuff on the market, this should be a good year to be a gadget geek, at least if your friends support your expensive taste. And if I've missed anything -- like that zippy new BMW Z8-- feel free to go ahead and send me a nice holiday present too.
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[Sony Aibo http://www.world.sony.com/aibo/ ]
[PlayMates Electronics http://www.playmatestoys.com/html/friendlink.html ]
[MP3 Player for Car - Empeg MP3 Car Unit http://www.empeg.com ]
[Sony VAIO http://www.ita.sel.sony.com/products/pc/notebook/pcgz505rx.html ]
[Apple iBook http://www.apple.com/ ]
[DSL Check for availability and prices http://www.dsl.com/ ]
[TiVo http://www.tivo.com/ ]
[ReplayTV [http://www.replaytv.com/ ]
BMW http://www.bmwusa.com/