Gift Guide: What to Get Friends, Staff and Customer

Evernote Smart Notebook by Moleskine, $24.95

Available in a pocket size and notebook size (for $29.99), this Moleskin pad uses either lined or "squared" pages. Using the Evernote Camera App, you can snap a photo of the page and transfer the notes as searchable text to the app (iPhone or Android). Price includes a three-month subscription to Evernote Premium

Hydros Bottle, $27.99

You don’t really want to know what is in an ordinary glass of tap water. And even if you use one of those water machines at the office, bacteria can build up on the dispenser. This water bottle uses a filter on the bottle itself that removes most contaminants like chlorine and chloramine.

Segura Viudas Reserva Heredad, $25

Nothing says “thanks for being an awesome employee” like a bottle of wine. Freixenetusa.com imports cava sparkling wines from the Sant Sadurni d'Anoia region near Barcelona. This blend, aged on lees for about three years, comes from hand-picked grapes and vinified from nine different wines.

Parker Ingenuity Pen, $190

A bit pricey but built for a lifetime of use, this high-end writing instrument uses a “smart glide” tip that adjusts to your writing style. The grip has a texturized rubber finish, and there is a gold finish on the arrow and tip. Bonus: The pen comes in a stylish gift box. Refill cartridges cost $8 each.

Biscoff Holiday Favor Boxes, $22.95

This set of four gift boxes, meant to hang on a tree, includes four cookies in each box. They’re caramelized crisps, originally served on Delta airlines as a coffee accoutrement. To buy them in bulk, there’s also an eight-box set available at Biscoff.com for $36.95.

Marbles JuggleFit, $24.99

Minnesota-based Marbles Brain Store makes games that improve gray matter. Studies show that learning how to juggle can improve brain cell activity in one week. This kit includes three scarfs for practicing and three heavier balls, plus a training DVD and a handy tote.

The Fruit Guys TakeHome Case, $26

This eclectic mix of fruits and nuts comes in a few different sizes to fit your budget. There are mini packs with five or eight pieces of fruit all the way up to a bountiful 36-piece pack with four bags of nuts. There’s also an organic veggie case with avocados, garlic, sweet potatoes, and kale.

Gadgets That Changed The World Part 1

Every so often, a device comes along that changes the way we live our daily lives and things are never the same again. With today's digital technology, such devices may come more frequently than in the past, but our list revolutionary gadgets extends back two centuries.

Apple Macintosh

The personal computer debuted in the 1970s, but the 1984 introduction of the Macintosh set the standard for how they would operate from then on. A Mac-like computer had debuted a year earlier -- the Lisa -- but at nearly $10,000, it was a flop. At $2,495, the Macintosh wasn't exactly cheap by 1984 standards, but it revolutionized the way people interacted with their computers, establishing the interface and metaphor that every current OS uses.
We do love our gadgets. They serve as tokens of tribal identification, but they also make our lives easier. And sometimes they change everything. Who would have thought fifteen years ago that we could have our entire music libraries in our pockets to listen to whenever we wanted? For that matter, who would have thought 35 years ago that we could take music with us wherever we went?
Some of the 19 gadgets on our list are obsolete or nearly so, but even those changed the world by paving the way for what comes after. They represented a paradigm shift: they caused a permanent change in our idea of what was possible, and they created new standards that later devices had to meet. 

ATM

For our money -- get it? -- this is probably the most revolutionary gadget in the list. It's hard to believe there was a time when the money you had in hand by 3 PM on a Friday afternoon was all the money you had for the weekend. Experiments with cash-dispensing and deposit-taking machines at individual banks started in the early sixties, but it was in 1963 that the first networked ATM made its debut. Nightlife would never be the same. 

GPS

These days we can always know where we are and how to get where we're going, thanks to the portable satellite receiver known as a GPS (Global Positioning System) unit. The system was first conceived by the U.S. military in the 1970s, and the satellites that let the units triangulate their locations were launched between 1989 and 1994. Magellan claims to have been first out with a hand-held unit, in 1989. 

VCR

First introduced in 1963, the VCR may now be almost obsolete, but it revolutionized Americans' relationship with their TV entertainment. We no longer had to make sure we watched something when it was first broadcast or risk missing it forever, and it enabled us to watch our shows whenever we wanted rather than when the networks thought we should. 

Microwave Oven

It might come as a surprise that the microwave has been around for more than 60 years, but in fact, there was a commercial model (almost 6 feet tall and weighing 750 pounds) on the market in 1947, two years after a chocolate bar melted in the pocket of an engineer working around a source of radio waves. College students and harried homemakers everywhere owe their ability to eat something resembling real food to that happy accident in 1945

Samsung Galaxy Camera for £399

If you've been looking for an unholy union 'twixt smartphone and compact shooter, then Samsung's Galaxy Camera can't come soon enough. The Android-powered snapper arrives in the UK on Thursday November 8th, with an RRP of £399, unless, that is, you're in the vicinity of the Samsung store. If so, then the devices are being sold early at 5:00pm on November 7th, when you can snag one a few hours early and enjoy some Champagne and canapés supplied by the Korean behemoth.

Samsung's Android-powered Galaxy Camera is a bit of a wild card, marrying Google's Android Jelly Bean OS with a 16-megapixel camera -- heck, it's even got a 4.8-inch 1,280 x 720-pixel (308 ppi) touchscreen display. Yup, rather than offering a digital viewfinder out back like a normal digital point-and-shoot, the Samsung Galaxy Camera offers a multitouch panel; the entire back consists of that 4.8-inch screen, edge-to-edge. It's not all touchscreen, though -- several buttons (controlling a pop-up flash, power, zoom toggle, and shutter release) are also part of the somewhat bulky build. Beyond the WiFi radio built in, the Galaxy Camera also comes with 3G/4G support via micro-SIM -- which we now know at least one carrier will support: AT&T.

During an event with the cellular data carrier this evening, we got our hands-on the Galaxy Camera once more (albeit now with an AT&T micro-SIM on board). That speedy 1.4GHz quad-core processor helped us along, speedily swiping through Jelly Bean's panes and launching its photo app promptly. Apps like Instagram were also on display, allowing for even nicer photos to be defiled by software filters (we kid!). The AT&T connectivity allowed us to upload photos directly to the cloud while snapping, utilizing its Auto Cloud Backup feature; image quality isn't quite professional-grade, but its no slouch either.

The Galaxy Camera is, for all intents and purposes, a full-on Android smartphone ... minus that whole "phone" thing. Its heft is perhaps more than we'd like in a point-and-shoot, but that gigantic -- and gorgeous -- viewfinder out back certainly helps assuage our space concerns. The device arrives at both carriers and camera retailers this October for an unknown price.