Gift Ideas For Techies And Regular Folk [Infographic]

Technology may not be the most personal of gifts, but it's got two things going for it as a holiday offering:

1. Typically this is the time of year when tech prices are cut

2. Tech gifts usually last for a while.

But how do you know what tech gizmo or service people want? Tthat's the real question, isn't it?

Start with this rule of thumb: Don't buy someone a smartphone or computer unless you know exactly what they want. Purchasing such items as a surprise gift - unless it's for a young child - usually doesn't work out very well, since the odds are you won't be able to figure what will really make them happy.

All is not lost, though. There's plenty of tech out there that makes a great gift for that special someone. I'll start with some cool stuff that I'm either buying or coveting. (If they don't work for you in terms of price or availability, hopefully they'll spark ideas for similar items.) And if you need hard-core gift suggestions for true technology professionals but don't want to spoil the surprise by asking what they want, take a look at the infographic from the IT community at Spiceworks.

Casual Tech

Moleskine Evernote Smart Notebook. Earlier this year I riffed on Evernote, the note-gathering and organizational app, but this line of paper notebooks is a pretty nice way to combine the use of paper note-taking, which a lot of people still do, with electronic organization. Throw in a nice fountain pen, and you've got a very personal gift for the organizer in your life.

Roku 2. If you know someone who loves to stream entertainment from the Interwebs, Rokus are awesomely cool devices to give them. Starting at $49.99, the price is about right, too. There's no subscription with these devices; any existing Netflix, Hulu Plus, or Amazon subscription is completely compatible. And that's just the tip of the channels available.

Serious Tech

Nexus 7. There's a lot of tablets out there now, in a lot of sizes. Here's why I like the Nexus 7: the size is right for users who just want to consume content. And the $199 starting price makes it the best deal on the tablet market right now.

Nikon Coolpix P300. It's a little weird to recommend a stand-alone camera in an age where every mobile phone comes with its own camera. But frankly, for anything more than quick snapshots, most phone cameras suck. Serious photography enthusiasts will have serious equipment needs, but even casual image takers sometimes need something more than a phone, The Coolpix P300 is compact, powerful and takes great pictures.

Tech For Fun

If you have a serious geek to buy for, the best site by far to visit is ThinkGeek. With a myriad of tech toys, apparel and gadgets, the only problem you will have finding something is making sure your gift recipient doesn't already have it.

For the discriminating science fiction lovers, try these totally cool items:

Star Trek Federation: The First 150 Years. Got a serious Trekker on your planet? Is there any other kind? This hardback volume features key documents and events for the first 150 of Star Trek's United Federation of Planets. But if there's someone strong with the Force in your life, this 50-inch Super Star Destroyer from Lego will keep them doing, not trying.

What The IT Pros Want

But what if you're buying for serious tech heads, and you don't want to ask them what they're hoping to find under the tree. The folks at Spiceworks have just released their own survey results on the tools and toys most wanted by IT professionals:

If all else fails, of course, there's always the gift card option. But you can do better than that if you try...

Lead image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Technologies We Are Thankful For

The evolution of human society has been closely related to the technology that it has produced. We have gone from the Stone Age, to the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, the Industrial Revolution and now Silicon Era. We have seen technological innovations change the lives of billions, from indoor plumbing to the printing press, the telephone to the personal computer. Assessing the history of the world, we have a lot of technology to be thankful for.

So today, on Thanksgiving, the folks at ReadWrite would like to spare a moment to give a shout out to some of the technologies that make life better, from big sweeping innovations that have fundamentally changed how we live our lives, to little items like apps and services that make every day a little more enjoyable. 

Touchscreens

A variety of factors have come together to create the new Mobile Era of computing with smartphones and tablets. There is no doubt that the capacitive multi-touch screen has changed the very nature of human-computer interaction and led us down a new era of computing. 

Without the evolution of the touchscreen from single touch to multi-touch, we would not have iPhones, Androids, Windows Phones, iPads and a variety of other meaningful devices. The touchscreen interface was a spur to the Mobile Revolution and a critical inspiration to the countless applications and companies that thrive off them. 

Ubiquitous Cloud Computing

Another important factor in the spread of the Mobile Era has been the spread and availability of cloud computing. Our smartphones and tablets are powerful little computers, but they the would be a lot less useful if they had to rely on local storage and processing.  Enter cloud computing, where complex calculations, data sorting and storage can be done on some remote server and then connected to the smartphone through a cellular data connection. Cloud computing is the backbone of mobile and some of our favorite services and apps could not exist without it.

Cloud computing is also changing the way enterprises and IT departments do business. The need for giant datacenters holding big, dedicated sets of servers has been mitigated by the availability of the cloud - where someone else deals with those datacenters. More than any other industry, cloud computing is changing the way IT operates. 

The cloud has changed the way people store their own data, such as notes and recordings, videos and music. Evernote would not exist without the cloud. Spotify would not exist without the cloud. Netflix, Hulu and Amazon's Video On Demand would not exist without cloud computing. Truly, the ubiquitous cloud is a technology to be thankful for. 

Long Term Evolution (4G)

The other big advance in enabling mobile technology was the advent of extremely fast wireless data connections. As such, Long Term Evolution (LTE) is something to be supremely thankful for. LTE is what most of the big global cellular carriers are rolling out for their next-generation wireless plans. Here in the United States, LTE for most smartphone users is nearly a reality. 

LTE lets us use apps that dd not have run well on 3G (or earlier generations) data services. It streamlines the connection and can creates speeds that often best your home Wi-Fi . The best part? It too will soon be ubiquitous. Once upon a time, people dreamed of blanketing the world with Wi-Fi to keep everybody connected at all times. Instead, we have LTE and it has the potential to be faster and more reliable than anything that came before. 

But Wait, There's More!

The ReadWrite team is thankful for a lot of other technologies, too, including the little things that may not have changed the world, but that make day-to-day life easier and that much more enjoyable:

Cormac Foster, the author of our popular Deathwatch series, is thankful for Wi-Fi. Despite the advent of LTE, Wi-Fi remains surprisingly available and, usually, free! What's not to be thankful for?

Our managing editor Fredric Paul - along with our crack writer Brian Proffitt - are thankful for video conferencing innovations like Skype, FaceTime or Google Video Chat.  'Skype, because I remember a world where long distance calls were luxuries,' Proffitt says. For Paul, the reason was more family oriented: 'I'm grateful for video conferencing that really works - so I can at least see my distant loved ones over the holidays.'

Taylor Hatmaker, who covers all things social, is thankful for Spotify. I wholeheartedly agree. Spotify is perhaps my most-used app of all time. Hatmaker is also grateful for 'the Nexus 4.' 

Writer Adam Popescu is thankful for notebook computers and laptops. 

Finallly, senior writer Jon Mitchell - who created our Pause series about how to balance technology with the rest of your life - took a slightly different approch: 'I'm thankful for Do Not Disturb mode in iOS 6.'

On Thanksgiving, at least, aren't we all?

What technologies are you thankful for? Let us know in the comments. 

Shopping Apps To Navigate Black Friday Crazy

Black Friday crazy is upon us, that one day of the year where Americans take leave of their senses and go out and buy all their holiday gifts 32 days early, and yet still manage to panic-shop on Christmas Eve. If you insist on participating in this shoppingpalooza, these iPhone and Android  apps can help you find the best price for the items you seek.

Get The Basics

If you use nothing else, get yourself a basic barcode scanner app. A lot of stores display QR codes for items and even if you plan to buy in-store and not online later, scanning these codes can get you more information about the item that might not be in the display. The app I like is ShopSavvy, which takes care of these basic features and also conducts local and online searches to see if it's available anywhere else cheaper. The other thing I like about this app is that it can store credit card and shipping information and if you're in a supported store, like WalMart or Barnes & Noble, you can buy the item with just one swipe. I love following my kids around in stores with this functionality, because I can surreptitiously buy the item right then and there without having to come back to the store or have them see me buying it. (Free. Available for iOS, Android.)

Dare To Compare

If I'm going to commit to a shopping app, I would like it to have not just price comparisons, but also product reviews. If I am checking out a really snazzy-looking item in the store, I really don't want to get home and find out that it's had some reported issues like, oh, catching fire. I use Google Shopper as a steady guide to search for product reviews and conduct pricing checks. It's accurate, delivers robust results and the integration with Google Maps makes it a great tool for finding nearby stores if you're in a new locale. This app just got an update in November and now features a Sales section listing local weekly discounts in your area, so you can point the car in the right direction in the first place. (Free. Available for iOS, Android.)

You can't talk holiday shopping these days without bringing up Amazon (a sentence I'm sure just thrilled its PR team, but it's true nonetheless). The fact is, as largest retailer on the Internet, low prices and low- to no-cost shipping on orders, it would be silly to ignore Amazon as a source for your holiday (or any other shopping needs), especially if money is tight. Amazon has two apps to use for your mobile device, and it's important to know the difference. The Amazon Mobile app is a mobile gateway to the company's commerce site. The even more useful Price Check for Amazon does pretty much what you would expect: like Google Shopper and other product/price comparison apps, it scans an item and let's you know what that item is going for elsewhere - except with the Price Check app, "elsewhere" means Amazon, period. (Free. Available for iOS, Android.)

It is certainly true that using apps like Google Shopper and Price Check for Amazon could result in you performing what retailers derisively refer to as "showrooming," where shoppers come into the store, scan an item, and promptly leave to purchase it elsewhere or online. This practice is kicking retailers' collective butts, since their business models rarely enable them to compete with the pricing models of online outlets, just as small businesses struggle to compete with the big-box stores. This is something about which you will have to make a personal choice as you shop with these apps, weighing potential savings against local service and supporting your community.

Something For Every Day

Finally, Key Ring Reward Cards is my new favorite shopping app. By scanning your loyalty cards for various stores that you have in your wallet or on your key ring, you can virtually store them on your phone and free up your wallet from these cards. To make sure they work, you can take photos of the front and back of your card, which is also useful for any loyalty programs that might be directly supported by the app. Most stores handle these well, though a grocery store's laser scanner might choke trying to read the screen-displayed barcode. If the loyalty program is supported, you can also get weekly circular sales information and notices of special discounts. Just be warned, if you have privacy issues with  store loyalty programs, Key Ring Reward Cards isn't going to help (Free. Available for iOS, Android.)

Best Black Friday Apps

All of the apps listed above have the benefit of being usable year-round. But what about apps for this coming weekend? Lots of stores have their own dedicated Blak Friday apps, but those are mostly a waste of time. Instead, look for the apps that pull in the best deals from multiple places. 

One of the most popular apps in this category is DealNews' Black Friday app, which aggregates news and ads of deals that may be happening in stores near you. You can even check out "leaked" ads that retailers let slip to the public with a wink. Since the app is geo-specific, you can target store near wherever you are. (Free. Available for iOS, Android.)

Another app for Black Friday is TGI Black Friday, which offers similar aggregation of ads for nearby stores. It's very similar to DealNews' app, but TGI Black Friday fans swear by it. (Free. Available for iOS, Android.)

No matter how you like to shop on Black Friday - or even if you wait till Christmas Eve - these apps should help ease the pinch on your pocketbook and ensure a smoother shopping process.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Twitter's New Image Search Takes Aim At Instagram

Late last week Twitter rolled out a new image search function that previews photos at the top of queries. This improvement has been in the works for some time, and is a step towards a head-to-head battle between Twitter and social image giant Instagram.

Twitter says the move was made to "highlight the photos, videos and news shared on Twitter, all wrapped up in more social context," according to Tian Wang on the Twitter blog. 

Search, Post, Share

Right now, image results are only for selected terms. The use of hashtags before some words can determine whether or not the search function works or not. For example, dogs does not illicit results, but #dogs does (same for canine rivals cats and #cats). More terms will be integrated as the tool gets further refined. 

Since its 2006 debut, Twitter has built a base of 140 million users and dominated the micro-blogging world. Up until recently, this content has been far more textual than image based. However, rear-view mirror competition has precipitated change. A slew of recent moves point to Twitter effectively declaring war against rival Instagram: 

• The addition of highlighted video news.
• Image previews for articles and stories.
• The new photo search.
• Rumors of adding filters to images.

Despite Twitter's attempts, though, Facebook's Instagram, with a reported 100 million users, has kept its stranglehold on social photography. And it has moved to keep Twitter out by making it hard to tag Twitter profiles in Instagram posts (here's how to share your Instagram photos on Twitter).

Social media strategist Nick Cicero says Twitter's latest move is a fight to own social images. "It's really becoming a battleground for social image and rich media in general," Cicero said. "Twitter is putting an emphasis on sharing rich media, not just 140-character messages. Twitter and Instagram have millions of users with camera phones in their pockets, so the playing field is level. The goal is making the most attractive platform for people to spend the most time sharing their experiences through pictures."

 Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Will Autonomy Break HP's Back?

The question of whether Hewlett-Packard can avoid a break-up will be answered over the next six months. That's how long the company has to convince investors its PC, printer and technology-services businesses can generate the cash needed to build and sell products into growth markets, especially mobile and cloud computing.

Sharks have been circling HP for a while now (see June's ReadWrite DeathWatch: Hewlett-Packard and October's Why Meg Whitman's Plan To Rescue HP Won't Work), but the turnaround window shrank considerably Tuesday when HP claimed that it had been duped into paying $10.3 billion in 2011 for British software maker Autonomy. That led HP to garnish its fourth-quarter earnings with a whopping and disastrous $8.8 billion charge for the acquisition, with $5 billion directly related to accounting improprieties allegedly committed by Autonomy execs.

Not surprisingly, the disclosure rattled investors who sent HP shares plunging to a 10-year low. HP's $6.85 billion net loss for the quarter ended Oct. 31 followed an $8.9 billion loss in the previous quarter. That loss, too, was primarily due to a huge write-down on a major acquistion, in that case the $9.2 billion spent in 2008 to buy tech services provider EDS.

Leo Apotheker To be fair, chief executive Meg Whitman inherited Autonomy and EDS from her predecessors, ousted CEOs Leo Apotheker and Mark Hurd, respectively. Nevertheless, she's being paid millions to clean up the mess, and so far, for every step forward, the company has taken two steps back.

Why Autonomy Is So Damaging

The Autonomy deal is especially troubling because it makes investors and analysts -- not to mention customers, the media and just about everyone else -- wonder how many more giant blunders are on the way. If in fact Autonomy executives are guilty of accounting malfeasance, as Whitman claims and Autonmy execs and Apotheker strongly deny, just how did HP execs get hoodwinked? And how can we be sure it won't happen again?

Blaming others won't ease the doubts about the competency of HP execs and its board. And without confidence in management, corporate customers are unlikely to bet big on HP. If that doesn't happen, HP can't generate the cash it needs to expand into growing and emerging markets.

"If they can't do that (increase sales), then there's going to be massive pressure for them to split the company up," warned Crawford Del Prete, an analyst for IDC. "Otherwise, the perception would be they're just going to atrophy," he said. "Those assets are going to become less and less and less valuable."

Unless Whitman can demonstrate -- soon -- that a turnaround is inevitable, investors will agitate for a breakup sooner than later, in order to get the highest returns on the pieces. The Autonomy setback gives Whitman less time to do that. Starting right now, she has to nail every move to stabilize the company and show steady progress.

Market Hurdles

Under even favorable condistions, boosting sales would be difficult her. A quarter of HP's revenue comes from PCs, and that market is taking a drubbing as people adopt smartphones and tablets. The PC market is expected to shrink 1.2%, to 348.7 million units, this year, according to IHS iSuppli. The decline is the first since 2001.

Worse, HP does not yet have a competitive smartphone or tablet. Whitman says a smartphone is coming, and the company is scheduled to release a business tablet, called the ElitePad, in January.

Then there's the printer business, a major revenue stream for HP. Once again, the company will have to find a way to increase business in a contracting market as people forego expensive printers and ink for digital media.

HP Still Has Hope

HP is not without competitive products, however. In the high-margin enterprise market, for example, the company has competitive data-center hardware and software.

"There's many product lines that Hewlett-Packard has that are world-class competitive and other product lines that can be world-class competitive," Del Prete said.

Whitman isn't sitting still through all of this. She is cutting 29,000 jobs by the end of fiscal year 2014 to reduce costs by as much as $3.5 billion. Whitman is also streamlining the printer portfolio and overhauling HP's technology-services business.

If you set aside the Autonomy disaster, HP's overall results were mixed. The company's fourth quarter profit excluding the write-down and other items was $1.16 a share, besting the average of analysts' estimates of $1.14. Revenue was $30 billion, just below analysts' projections of $30.4 billion.

While those numbers are nothing to celebrate, they are the base line that HP must build upon if it hopes to stay in one piece. Oh, and must avoid any more Autonomy-style surprises. The iconic Silicon Valley pioneer simply won't be able to survive any more shocks like that.

 

Images courtesy of Shutterstock.

The Notifications Are Too Damn Many

How many notifications do you receive from apps in a day? How many of those are really important? More important than whatever you're doing at the time? OK, maybe you're an E.R. doctor on call. But if you aren't, consider turning off Facebook notifications off this Thanksgiving. The food pictures will still be there after dinner.

Apps are needy. They need your eyeballs on them as much as possible. Notifications are how they get you. It's really the only trick in the smartphone era. Push notifications are twisting beloved apps into nagging annoyances, and it's on us to manage them.

A Cautionary Tale

Recently, a friend who works for a tech startup was crashing at my house for a couple days while his converted San Francisco warehouse room was blasted for bedbugs. He brought an iPad, a Nexus 7 and a Windows laptop, in addition to his phone.

He was out and about in the evenings, which I usually use for solo creative writing while my roommates are out. So he had the phone with him. The PC was sleeping. But the two tablets were wide awake and vigilant, just waiting for something to happen somewhere in my friend's digital world.

I swear to you, he was getting more than a notification a minute on the iPad, the Nexus 7 or both. It ranged from iMessages to email to Facebook to calendar events to some kind of life-tracking, goal-setting app. They were all pinging and bonging and dinging across the room pretty much constantly, each with their own attention-destroying sound. It was profoundly awful. Add one more buzzing device, and that's my friend [REDACTED]'s life. Don't end up like [REDACTED].

Of course, it's easy to find other people's notifications annoying. For instance, the guy in my office whose phone plays the Simpsons theme song every 12 minutes is going to need another phone next time it happens. But when it's your own notifications, it's more complicated.

Protect Your Brain

Messages are like little rewards for your brain, so you're tempted to check them immediately to get little rush of self-validation. But the interruption just isn't worth it. Multitasking makes us worse at all the things we're doing, and these messages imposing the needs of others stress us out. We need some coping strategies.

After my four-day Digital Detox, I made a few sensible changes to my signal-to-noise ratio that really helped. I never had push notifications for email (how do people survive that?), but I still had way too many bells and whistles in my life, and I scaled them back successfully.

I turned off Twitter notifications for mentions, and I turned off sound and vibration for the rest of them. Then I went a step further and moved Twitter off the front screen of my phone. I stopped letting Twitter pull me in. Instead, I decide when to go there deliberately, do what I need to do, and leave.

But the most important thing you can do for yourself is go through each service and carefully decide which notifications, if any, you need. If your apps are sending notifications in the first place, you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. If you have them make sound, you're constantly interrupted and distracted. If you have them come in silently, you'll keep coming back to your phone to check, or wait a while and see 11 new messages and get stressed out.

If you want out of this cycle, you've got to comb through your settings and disable the notifications at the root of the problem -- except for those you honestly need. 

Many of us in the United States have some official downtime this week. It's a great chance to turn down the noise in our lives.

This Video Company Powers Google Hangouts - And Nintendo's Wii U

Chances are you've never heard of Vidyo -- even though you've probably used its technology, and might be using it even more in the not-too-distant future, thanks to a new deal that Vidyo has struck with Nintendo, which is using Vidyo's software to power the telepresence feature in the new Wii U gaming system.

Vidyo is headquartered in not-so-sexy Hackensack, N.J., but its software shows up in some very sexy places. Google uses it in Google+ Hangouts, and Fuzebox, a hot little startup in San Francisco, builds its system on top of Vidyo's software. Philips uses Vidyo software in a solution for monitors used in hospital rooms, so doctors from remote locations can videoconference with a patient or with doctors and nurses in the patient's room.

But this new deal with Nintendo deal brings this piece of enterprise-class software to a different and much larger audience as potentially tens or even hundreds of millions of people will eventually get a Wii U.

Are Video Apps The Next Big Thing?

One use will be gamers connecting with each other over video. Another is using the Wii U to do a video call with grandma. 

But there's a much bigger picture here. Vidyo envisions a new ecosystem of apps that could be developed on top of Vidyo's platform, says Ashish Gupta, chief marketing officer at Vidyo. "We think this will become a platform that developers will focus on."

What exactly could they do? Think of online shopping applications that involve multi-party video. Or: personal training, yoga classes, financial planning.

Vidyo was founded in 2006 by a pair of video industry veterans, Ofer Shapiro (now CEO) and Alex Eleftheriadis (chief scientist). Avery Moore, a tech industry veteran, was a third co-founder and serves as chairman of the board of directors.

The company has raised almost $100 million in venture funding, employs 250 people and has been growing at an 80% clip, Gupta says. Vidyo's technologists have received 22 patents and have 54 more pending.

The company's claim to fame is software that enables any device on any network to deliver really high-quality video. "I can be on an iPad at an airport and join a videoconference with people who are on desktops and room systems and I'm still a first-class citizen because I'm getting very good quality," Gupta says.

High-quality videoconferencing has been around for a long time. Not so long ago it carried a huge price tag that only big corporations could afford. Now it's being built into a $300 game console. If you don't think this is going to disrupt the enterprise market (and its incumbent vendors) in a huge way, you're nuts.

Image courtesy of Vidyo.