photo credit: Marco Alioli aka Marcus

I was sitting in the barbershop on Saturday morning (quite early I might add) and I couldn’t help but notice all the cool gadgets all of the customers were using. Any one of those gadgets I think would make a pretty good gift (no Zhu Zhu Pets) for the technologically literate savy member of your family.

If you don’t know by now, a brotha loves cheap (if not free) so I decided to come up with a list of five solid, yet affordable tech gifts for this holiday season. (note: these are solid tech gadgets that YOU know they will like, not those lame ones that they pray you didn’t buy at the end of last year’s shopping season, so the reciept is still good).

The Low Down:

Pretty much anything under 100 bucks from Apple.
That includes: iPod shuffle or Nano, in-ear headphones, Magic Mouse…or if you’re like me, an Apple/iTunes gift card so they can buy whatever they feel like getting (in my name, of course). (Hint: Buy Apple Certified Refurished products – You may save some money on an otherwise perfect piece of equipment that somebody just didn’t know how to operate!)

Bluetooth Headset
I think those folks who ALWAYS have the headset in their ear even when they are NOT on a call are clowns…but I must admit they do come in handy when you are on a call and need two free hands. So if you know somebody whose large “cheeseblock” phone (thanks sweetie) stays glued to the side of their face, this might be a good gift for them.

Flash/Thumb Drive
A cool item that you will never use…until you need it. Then you will thank God you have it. A great way to carry around pics, pdfs, spreadsheets and other documents with you. So if you frequent public computers and they have a “No Downloading” policy, or you need to have 100 copies of your resume printed out on fancy Kinko’s paper for the umpteenth Career Fair you’ve been to this year (keep your head up!) a Flash/Thumb Drive is the way to go.

Noise-Cancelling Earphones
You’d prefer NOT crank up your earphones until your ears bleed just so you don’t have to listen to the person in the check-out lane who doesn’t think their super smart phone can pick up their normal speaking voice when they are on a call. Well noise-cancelling earphones may just do the trick. They come in full-size or in-ear (for those of us who don’t want to be mistaken for a DJ)

Logitech Harmony Remote
Chances are, the techy you are shopping for (like myself) has researched, designed, manufactured, and implemented his “routine” for turning on the TV, turning on the Cable/Satellite box, turning on the Receiver, chaning the video input on the TV and the audio input on the receiver to ‘Video 1′, using a myriad of ATLEST three remotes. Well Logitech has taken all the fun out of only ONE person in the whole house knowing how to operate the ‘big TV’ and introducing a line a remotes that stress user-friendlyness (it’s a word now). You simply hook the remote up to your computer, find all of your components, and the software automagically (another patened word) programs the remote.

So there you have it, a brotha’s picks for solid tech gifts for this holiday season. You only have a couple more shopping days till the big day, so I suggest that you remind the ‘Mrs.’ of all the shopping she has to do hop to it and start checking off those Christmas lists.

image courtesy of flickr.com/Penny Sense

If you’re like me, then you don’t shop for the holidays. If you’re better than me (I hope so) then you will probably buy something for somebody for the holidays. Most of us have been able to get over our “scared to death to buy something online” and will do a great deal of their holiday shopping online. So let Brotha Tech give you some tips on how to make those online purchases as non scary as possible.

The Lowdown:

- Get a Paypal or Google Checkout account. They are accepted just about everywhere online. You create an account, enter all of your personal information in one spot (with one login), and use that to make all of your purchases. If you do run into a snafu, you have one source to cuss at deal with versus dealing with whatever merchant (and there are many) that half-assed your transaction.

If you really don’t wanna go through the painful 5-minute registration process then:

- Designate ONE credit card/bank account as the online purchasing account. It will be easier for you to track a charge/purchase if you KNOW what card/account you used. Then, I would contact the company that issued the card/account and see if they have purchase alerts that will notify you by email of recent charges you made. So if something fishy pops up, you will see it almost immediately, and have the opportunity to react faster. Most companies give the you the ability to customize the alerts so you only get notified if there are a string of quick purchases or large purchases of x amount or higher.

I like the “BBD” (Bigger Better Deal) just like the next person, but if finding that deal means buying from a shady-looking site where you need a secret handshake just to see the merchandise, it’s better that you just:

- Trust your gut. If it’s too good to be true… If it walks like a duck, quacks like duck… (I’ve got more if you don’t catch my drift). If you have even the slightest reservation about the site – LEAVE. You will be able to find that exact item listed on a bunch of other sites, I promise!

Bottom line, online shopping is supposed to give the shopper the freedom to shop at home in your drawls pj’s. You shouldn’t have to be stressed out about whether or not your every keystroke on a site is being recorded by some loser who spent a whole lot of time, effort, and money into taking your hard-earned holiday cash.

I know I may have missed some online shopping techniques, so tell me, how do you ensure your safety while making purchases online?