Useful Tech Gifts For The Person Who Has Everything
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Have someone on your gift list that has everything? This holiday you can surprise that person with something that did not exist this time last year.
The $60 easyBloom Plant Sensor can measure temperature, sunlight, humidity, and soil moisture anywhere.
"You leave it someplace for 24 hours and it's going to gather up what that microclimate is exactly," explains Matthew Glenn of easyBloom Plant Sensor. "You can plug it into your USB port on your computer and it will connect to our website and tell you not only what plant's going to grow, but what plant's going to thrive in the location where it was placed. It can also diagnose what's wrong with whatever plant is what's there."
Also on the market for $70, an Audiovox Homebase Digital Message Center that serves as an updated Post-It note.
"What we did is we included a whiteboard, incorporated a video camera with a built-in microphone so you can leave a video message for family members," says Jeremy Stoehr of Audiovox. "We also have Post-Its for old-school, handwritten, stick-it-to-the-counter messages, and magnets so you can keep track of receipts."
Finally, there are a bunch of digital pens that record what you're writing so that you can transfer it back to a computer. The
Livescribe Pulse Smartpen takes that idea even further, making it ideal for students who can record audio of a professor's lecture which is then automatically linked to the notes they're writing.
"It's a killer application is called 'paper replay,' which allows you to record all of your notes and capture all the audio associated with it," says Jody Farrar of Livescribe Inc. "You can later go back and tap on your notes and hear the conversation or upload it to your computer and share it with others. There are tiny dots printed on the paper and a little camera at the end of the pen so as you're writing you don't need to tell the pen where you're recording or what audio you want associated with it. It automatically knows where you were writing when something was said and automatically syncs it for you."
The Pulse costs $150 for 1 gigabyte of storage; $200 for 2 gigabytes. The extra ink and special pads are an additional cost.