More inexpensive gift ideas for the holidays

By the time you read this, your holiday shopping days are hitting the single digits, so consider this my last column on inexpensive holiday technology gift ideas for the geeks in your life.

1. Drive them mad with delight

This first one is for whomever you usually would buy a lump of coal. Last April Fool’s Day, I wrote about an evil little device called the Annoy-a-tron that looks like a tiny circuit board that’s powered by a watch battery. It’s proven to be a very popular gift item for the practical joker. You secretly hide the device somewhere in a victim’s home or office. The Annoy-a-tron generates a short (but very annoying; hence the name) beep every few minutes. Given that the beep is so short in its duration, it’s almost impossible to determine the direction from which the sound is coming. This makes it very hard to find — which is the idea.

You can drive someone mad as they desperately try to find what it is and its location. As if this wasn’t bad enough, ThinkGeek has just introduced their 2.0 version just in time for the holidays. It offers an additional four sounds to the original’s two. They are an Instant Message sound, a cricket and the most insidious of all, the Teen Buzz tone. For those of you not familiar with the Teen Buzz, it’s a frequency so high that only teenagers and younger children can hear it. The medical explanation is that as we get older, our hearing range narrows. The recent technological application of this sound has been a cell phone ring tone so only kids know they’ve got a call, and not their parents. But it seems like the table has turned. Parents can now set their Annoy-a-trons to the Teen Buzz sound and drive their kids over the edge instead. $12.99.

2. Science toys make great gifts

I have always loved really cool science toys. Growing up, I had the chemistry and Erector Set, Slinky, Wheel-O, water rocket and more. Today’s kids have it made with all the technology toys we adults play with but, there are still some new, cool ones out there.

Check out the Fly Stick Van de Graaff Levitation Wand. This battery-powered wand consists of a small cardboard tube that fits on a plastic handle with a button. Pushing it endows the cardboard tube with a static charge. Included are several Mylar shapes, including a butterfly, sphere and hourglass. When you release a shape near the tube and touch it for a moment, the shape expands and literally levitates in midair. This is not like some kind of floating balloon, but rather a controlled levitation that looks like something a magician would perform onstage. There’s a video on the Think Geek Web site that demonstrates this amazing little science toy that any geek, young or old, will love. $26.99.

3. Be very frayed

Finally, check out what I believe to be one of the coolest flash drives I’ve ever seen. A flash drive is a portable memory device that you can plug into any available USB port. They come in a variety of capacities. I’ve seen flash drives in an array of shapes and placed inside just about anything you can imagine. I’ve seen them in pens, lighters and watches. I’ve seen ones that look like rubber ducks, sushi, a can opener. It goes on and on.

But the Hacked And Frayed Spy Flash Drive has to be the strangest one yet. Imagine an ordinary USB cable. Now cut off one of the ends, but leave about 4 inches of the cable hanging from it. Then strip off the outer sheath from the severed end, leaving all of the colored wires exposed. That’s what this flash drive looks like; a severed USB cable! Hidden within the severed plug is a 2-gigabyte flash drive. Just plug the USB end into your laptop and enjoy the stares from people wondering why there’s a severed cable sticking out of your computer. $29.99.

All of these items are available at www.thinkgeek.com.

Happy Holidays!

XCraig Crossman is a national newspaper columnist writing about computers and technology. For more information, visit his Web site at www.computeramerica.com.

2008 McClatchy Tribune