Tablets, Guitar Solos, and Robots, Oh My!
Online Editor Roberto Baldwin

I’m on a mission to make sure no one ever gets another pair of socks, bright green reindeer sweater, or any other horrible gift for the holidays again. Every gift should be an excuse for the receiver to try something new and be creative. Remember how quickly your excitement was crushed when you opened that extra-large present, just to find out it was a case of underwear? Yeah, let’s stop giving those gifts. This year give the gift of creativity. The youngins’ and the adults will thank you for it.

 

Robbie's gifts for giving...

Ergonomically entertaining.

The mouse is the worst input device ever created. There, I said it. I switched from a mouse to a tablet about a year ago and my wrist thanks me for it every day. Wacom’s Bamboo Fun tablets ($99, www.wacom.com/bambootablet) are definitely on my list of hardware to give to friends who make their living with their computers. Before you say, “My friends don’t draw, why do they need a tablet?” keep in mind that I use the tablet to write, edit video, manipulate photos, and surf the Internet. If I had my way, everyone would throw out their mouses, ahem, mice. Giving a tablet means my friends won’t be wearing orthopedic wristbands when they’re older, talking about how quaint the first iPhone was.

When you’re the super-nerd among your friends and family, you get support calls all the time. Leopard’s ability to easily share screens means no more explaining to my sister what the Finder is for the one-hundredth time. Never again will I have to explain to folks how to get their WAN IP address while they boot up Remote Desktop. Leopard makes it easy with Back to My Mac and screen sharing in iChat. Giving everyone Leopard ($129, www.apple.com/macosx) will make my life easier and will help my friends and family get back to editing their latest iMovie creation—at least before they have to call me with another tech question.

 

Robbie's gifts for getting...

Instant guitar collection you can turn up to 11.

Now that I’ve mastered Guitar Hero and Rock Band, it’s time step up to the challenge of relearning the guitar. The Line 6 Variax 600 guitar (around $800, line6.com/variax/) has 25 built-in sounds, which should make learning a bit more interesting. That’s 25 different guitar/effect settings right on the guitar for the on-the-fly ability to go from deep blues to sitar to acoustic. It’s like having my very own roadie handing me a guitar every few minutes. Best of all, it plugs directly into my Mac, so I can create my own custom sound for my big sitar-stompbox solo.

Build your very own Iron Giant.

Since robots will someday overthrow their human masters, I want to stay ahead of the curve. If I build a few Lego Mindstorms robots ($249.99 for the Mindstorms NXT Kit, shop.lego.com) and treat them the way robots deserve to be treated, when the big scary robots come to throw me into their undersea human prison, my army of tiny robot friends will speak on my behalf and I’ll be given a cushy job at the robo-smoothy hut. Mindstorms programming software is available for Mac and PC. Bluetooth support means I can control my robot with my phone, and I’m pretty sure someone, somewhere is working on software for the iPhone. 

 

In 2009, Robbie resolves to...

Get back in shape. Writing doesn’t exactly burn calories. No matter how fast I type, I’m sure that summer job on the farm when I was a kid burned more calories in one day then a month’s worth of writing. Needless to day, I’ve gotten a little rounder in the middle. After seeing how much my wife enjoys her iPod nano with Nike+ ($29, nikeplus.nike.com), I’m ready to join the running revolution. Being able to see how many miles I’ve run on the Nike website is nice, but it’s the ability to challenge others (Laura, are you ready to get served?) and set goals for myself that makes the Nike+ a must-have for my get-back-in-shape resolution.