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Money is tight. Maybe you can't afford to give that new iMac your techie is longing for. But there are still many gadgets and services that the tech loving geek in your life will love.
Before you begin, you may want to make some geeky moves of your own. One way is to use SMS or Twitter to get electronic product reviews from Retrevo. An article at TechCrunch explains how this works. If you are shopping online, you might want to install the Firefox add-on Invisible Hand. It's described at eHow in How to Save Money Online With Invisible Hand. I've been using this add-on for several weeks and find it very helpful. Invisible Hand doesn't work in every online store, but it works at Best Buy, Amazon, Borders, Buy.com, The Home Depot, New Egg, Sears, and Walmart. Popgadget describes a new search engine just for gadgets in New Site Promises to Help in Search for Perfect Gadget. The search tool is still in beta but might help you make a decision.
Here are some gift ideas, organized by price.
Inexpensive Gifts
How about a Pro account on Flickr for your photography nut? Unlimited photo uploads for a mere $25 a year. Or, as Flickr says it, Holy Smokes. That's cheap!
Flickr and other online photo sharing sites often offer access to Moo gifts. Use your own photos to make business cards, holiday cards, post cards and various accessories for your techies.
Many photo tools like iPhoto, Picasa, and Picnik have options that allow you to create personalized gifts like calendars or books at very reasonable prices. I always make calendars for my family at Christmas time. With iPhoto and printing by Apple, a calendar is about $30.
There are inexpensive options for the music lover too. An iTunes gift card can cover a range of prices. The nice thing about an iTunes gift card is that it's multipurpose. The gift can buy music, apps, games, or movies.
The iPhone Mom recently reviewed Christmas Apps. These apps range from Grinchmas, which lets you deliver either presents or snowballs, to Christmas List, which helps you keep track of what people want and the stores where the gifts are available.
A music lover might also appreciate a $36 account at Pandora One. The Pandora subscription buys the listener Pandora on several devices, high quality audio steams, custom skins, no skip limits, and no ads.
Last.fm is just $3 a month for a subscription to its music libraries. It's computer based listening, and by extension, an iPod.
I love this inexpensive idea, even though it is a physical product that needs delivery. How about giving your geek a Wi-Fi Detector Shirt? Its a tee shirt that flashes when there is a wi-fi signal nearby. On sale right now for about $20, it's normally $30.
Gifts Under $500
Another music service you may want to offer as a gift is Rhapsody. Rhapsody provides streaming music for $13 a month. The music can be streamed to a computer or several Internet capable systems such as Squeezebox or TiVo. For $15 a month, Rhapsody has an app for iPhone or iPod Touch.
Give a video camera for between $100 and $150 with a flip camera like these from Amazon. These little video camera capture HD, are super easy to use, and are built to upload video to the web with ease.
Digital cameras are nothing short of amazing these days. You can get one that slips in your pocket, a slightly larger one with an impressive 12X zoom, or an SLR camera for under $500. Some of the pocket-sized camera such as the Nikon Coolpix are selling for about $100. Many cameras take both still and video. Here's a look at cameras at Amazon. Every large store like Target or WalMart has many of the video and still cameras you see at Amazon.
For the readers in your world, you may want to consider a Kindle Reader or Sony Reader. These devices are in the $200–$300 price range.
Most digital music players come in under the $500 price limit. You can choose an iPod or Zune for well below that. The iPod Touch and the Zune HD with 32GB of music storage are both about $300. An iPod Nano is half that and includes an FM tuner and a video camera.
Not including the phone service plan, you can find many smart phones for somewhere between $100 and $300. In this price range you can choose
