This is a short list of some my favorite inexpensive gadgets that could make cool gifts  for friends and family (or better, for yourself, because you know you deserved it!).

For a lazy and casual blogger like me, it's been a busy year with many interesting new gadgets to try.

Here's a short list of the best ones, most of which I still use daily.

Gadgets are slowly becoming more and more a part of our daily lives. From smartphones to smart fridges, technology is slowly being integrated more into our daily routine. While gadgets may make our lives slightly easier, they do come at a cost.

It's already that time of the year, and in a few days we'll realize in panic that some people have been omitted in our End of Year shopping list.


Here's some last minute ideas that could get you sorted.

Sorry Gearbest, I won't review this one...

Whoever designed this thing must be nuts!

From time to time, we see a re-edition of an electronic toy from the eighties, and this always makes me nostalgic: the Merlin (see also Yahoo! Merlin widget) , Simon , the Atari VCS ... and now it's the comeback time for BigTrak!

The festive online shopping deadline is coming fast (taking into account the shipping delay necessary to get those items from eBay, DealExtreme, Iwoot, Firebox, DX and such...)

So here's my short list of gadgets of interest for this year. I hope it will help you finding the inspiration:

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Idea #1: A Cassette MP3 Player
For some reason, many new cars are still coming with an cassette auto-radio, and at best, a CD player that doesn't play MP3's. The most popular solution was to plug one of those MP3 players with FM transmitter but the sound quality would be quite poor and depend on unoccupied frequencies available. 

Now you can put an MP3 player shaped as a cassette directly into your auto-radio. Much nicer! It also works as a standalone player.

Found at Chinavasion.com for €17.51 incl. 2GB SD card.



Audience: owners of old or French car.

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Idea #2: A Digital USB Microscope
The interest of this gadget really depends on the price you'll pay for it.
At close to €70 (called "new low price"!) from Firebox, I'd say, forget it. But from €28 (shipping included) on eBay, you may think twice.

Audience: student, teacher, engineer, hobbyist...

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Idea #3: An Atari joystick key chain
After the full size re-edition of the Atari VCS 2600 joystick a few years ago, there's now a tiny keychain version, and it's still playable on a TV screen!
My only regret is that it come with only 2 games when a hundred would have fit easily. This gadget is NTSC only.

Found at Firebox for  €17

Audience: nostalgic geeks, kids from 40 and over.

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Idea #4: An USB Missile launcher

Probably the most useless usb gadget on the market. For real fun, couple this with a web/ip-camera and remotely control the host computer to fire at innocent people passing by...




Found on eBay, cheapest: item #390118120613 for €25.6 delivered.
Enhanced version with Webcam on Firebox for €45.

Target: any human or pet.

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Idea #5: A Digital Note Taker

I didn't like those electronic pens that work only on special and expensive paper. A much nicer alternative consist of a wireless receiver that captures everything done with it's dedicated pen (using standard ink refill), then, the receiver memory is dumped to a PC where it can be archived or processed through the provided OCR program. It can also nicely replace a graphic tablet although the accuracy is probably not as high. It was found commonly at over €200 realier this year, but it now dropped to €59.99.

Found in Aldi stores @ €59.99 (Medion branded) and eBay, item #220506455598 at €59.59

Audience: student, professionals, kids,...

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Idea #6: A Binary watch

Maybe you know someone so geek he's drifting toward being rather a neird ?
Well you'll have a gift for this person too:
While a binary watch is really for a selected audience, most of them found on eBay are just stylish enough to start and finish their life in a drawer.
But this particular Ovo binary watch found at IWOOT is far more elegant and reasonably sized.

Found on I Want One of Those at €22

Audience: hardcore geek and casual neirds

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Idea #7: A Rollnet kit




If your garden is too windy and your house too small for a full size table, this simple idea let you play table tennis on any flat surface.
The Artengo Rollnet is also reasonably priced.

Found in Decathlon stores from €14.90 (€19.90 with 2 bats and 3 balls)

Audience: casual tennis table players

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Idea #8: the ultimate tea and coffee travel mug


Audience: Coffee and Tea lovers (with a geeky twist)

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What if your next PDA would be made of sensitive, self cleaning, self feeding, transparent, waterproof and flexible electronics ?
Nokia is, presenting an attractive concept about what nanotechnology may offer one day.





More on the morph concept: http://www.nokia.com/about-nokia/research/demos/the-morph-concept

More on nanoscience: http://www.nanoscience.cam.ac.uk/




.

With a price around €10000, I'd stick with my netbook for the moment...unless I manage to repair my donate button ...










To be really irresistible, the next generation should comme with some Holo-chess widget (see more on this on WookiePedia)










More about this:
http://www.microsoft.com/surface/
http://www.touchtable.com/

The little rural village where I live in Ireland has been blessed two years ago with the arrival of the 3G, and the national operator couldn't do anything against it this time (they're still making so much money with all the dial-up users!).
Some competition finally took off, and viable wireless solution became available in this Internet black spot.
So it's only in mid-2007 that I got an internet access with a usable bandwidth (and stop laughing, will you!).

This gave at last some justification to invest in a wireless router and wifi-enabled gadgets.

Thanks to that, I've been close to adopt a rabbit.

At that time, I read a lot of related articles and reviews and it appears that many customers are complaining about the randomly accessible server and the few services that actually work.
What holds me as well is certainly the price tag of the Nabaztag (€200).
The only potential competitor seems to be a wireless (not wi-fi) penguin (€150) built around the same idea, but more Linux developer than final-user friendly.

This product will certainly evolve and may become more attractive with time. So I keep it in my whish-list.

Known alternatives:

- Tux Droid penguin.

- Chumby.
- Your next TV ?

This falls into my wish-list, although I'm not really planning to get one any time soon. I just like to keep an eye on it to see how it evolves price-wise (around €300 at the moment) and feature-wise: The Rovio from Wowwee is an eye-catching IP camera on wheels.

This USB rocket launcher seemed appropriate to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission.


I usually don't like to waste my precious USB ports with useless things, but I'll probably make an exception for this one... one day.