Morning all

With Christmas fast approaching, today I wanted to suggest a couple of gadgets you could give as gifts this year (to friends, family……or yourself). I’ve tried to steer away from the stereotypes – Xbox, PlayStation and iPad’s – because most of you know all about them I’m sure……but I tried to come up with a few offbeat ideas for gadgets that should be well received. Starting at around £20, going up to £109 (some of the speakers can get more expensive) this should give you sufficient food for thought when working out what to buy.

Cable organiser

Most people travel these days with some sort of bag; be it a rucksack, a messenger bag, a handback or a briefcase. And most of those bags will be crammed full of stuff that takes an age to find. Your phone, pens, earphones, cables etc are always a pain in the proverbial inside your bag, rattling about and get tangled up with other stuff.   But with the Cocoon Grid It  system, you can get various sized inserts (to fit your needs and/or bag) that allow you to securely attach equipment to a semi-rigid backing using a series of rubberised woven elastic straps. This helps you keep your bag organised, and carry more things in an organised manner. I personally have the XL version and keep 3 external hard drives and a number of cables attached to it for use when out on client sites, and find it invaluable.

There also several different sizes available to suit all needs, as well as organiser for attaching behind the visor in your car, and ones for carrying your notebook computer in.

Olloclip

The iPhone gets some of the best reviews in its sector for the pictures it takes, not because of the number of megapixels or fancy hardware, but because the software for the camera is so well written. But, what if you want to take some really close up pictures (macro), get a bit more of the room in shot (wide angle) or shoot a whole room with a fisheye effect? Or even get a bit closer to the action (without losing picture quality)? That’s where Olloclip lens attachments come in. The 3-in-1 lens adaptor  slips over your iphone lens and allows you take quality photographs closer, or from a wider angle than ever before. The telephoto version also lets you get in closer, optically rather than using the digital zoom built into the phone, keeping your picture quality high. Take a look at the Olloclip site for some examples of what you can do with the attachments.

NB. Competitor products can be much cheaper, but when it comes to optical products like this, you really do get what you pay for.

Raspberry Pi

This is the ultimate geek present. A build your own computer that can be customised to perform all sorts of tasks. There are companion books available that will show you how to have your Raspberry Pi operate as a media streaming centre, a home automation system, a weather station or something completely different (there’s more ideas here). There are so many custom projects out there for Raspberry Pi, that there’ll be ideas that’ll grab just about anyone.

My recommendation as a starter point would be one of the books, and a model B Raspberry Pi. The geek in your life will be able to expand it from there, and it’ll keep them occupied for hours while you do something more exciting!

Braven

Now that virtually everybody has got most or all of their music with them at all times, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to play it wherever you are? There’s adverts everywhere these days for portable ‘sound docks’, and I’ve tried most of them.

But the brand that stands out for my money is Braven. Depending on which model you go for, as well as being great speakers, you can also charge your USB device straight from the speakers (massive) internal battery, and on the bigger units you can pair two speakers together to act as a stereo pair, creating a wider sound that sounds so much better than a single speaker (and louder of course).

They do look like another brands speaker, but trust me, these are better.

Withings

Christmas might not be the ideal time to suggest to your loved one that they ought to lose some weight. But for the health conscious, or someone that has already suggested they want to lose a few pounds after the festive season, I can’t recommend this product highly enough. You see, a few years ago I was verging on morbidly obese, and I credit the previous model of these scales (as well as some calorie tracking software and a lot of hard work on my part) for enabling me to lose 6 stone in weight by the following Christmas.

Gadget lovers will enjoy using them, they connect via WiFi to your account and store your weight, body fat percentage and heart rate for every measurement you take, allowing you to track your weight and body make up over time without any effort on your part. You can also choose, if you so wish, to have the scales tweet your statistics out to the world (although I fail to see why I’d want that!). Not only are they a techie’s fantasy, they look good too. And, the true longevity test of something like this, the batteries last a decent length of time (I think we’ve changed ours once in 3 years).

Nest Protect

The in thing at the moment is ‘connected devices’ or as it seems to have become known ‘ the Internet of things’. Nest were one of the first companies to launch a connected device a few years ago when they created a learning thermostat device for the US market; unfortunately this never officially launched here because it really didn’t fit the way our heating systems work (hopefully one day they’ll launch a more UK targeted version).

Started by the guy credited with designing the iPod, Tony Fadell, Nest have an Apple-like eye for design and simplicity, and that is very much what the Protect device is about. Designed to replace your typical home smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, this product looks great. But the beauty is in its use.

Designed for one or more of them to link up together within your home, they won’t start screeching in the middle of the night because the battery is dead (they’ll warn you before bed time if the battery needs changing). They’ll give you a gentle green light for a couple of seconds when you turn the lights off in the room (to let you know all is well). And if there is an alarm, they speak – in English – to tell you which of your alarms is going off and why. Not only that, but you can see the status of your alarms when you’re not even home on your iOS device. Absolutely fantastic devices, and certainly something you should have in a ‘home of the future’. Watch Nest’s own video here for more information.