Gift tech on Christmas day (First of two parts)

MANILA, Philippines - A Spanish Jesuit and baroque prose writer named Baltasar Gracian born in 1601 apparently have said, “The great art of giving consists in this: the gift should cost very little and yet be greatly coveted, so that it may be the more highly appreciated.”

In theory that may still be true but life has become extravagant and expensive that the mundane things that Fr. Gracian’s generation took pleasure from such as books, music, toys, and even food, have drastically taken different forms of late.

The most sought-after books now are not just printed on paper but also reformatted for electronic readers from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Sony, among others. Our most common musical instrument today is a small MP3 player that can hold up to 16,000 songs, while the most coveted toys today are not made of wood or stone but are gaming machines from Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony that don’t come cheap.

Even the word apple has taken a new meaning and no longer singularly refers to the special fruit Filipinos associate with Christmas. Say apple and the giant tech company behind the shiniest gadgets also come to mind.

Game on

In this season of merriment, one gizmo that can surely add a lot of fun to celebrations is Microsoft’s Xbox Kinect. The newly released Kinect is the gaming industry’s first hands-free motion control system. Microsoft sold one million Kinect for Xbox 360 units worldwide, just 10 days after the official launch. Microsoft is confident it will hit its sales target of five million units by the end of the year.

The iPad Chair gives people not just a hands-free way to use the tablet PC but also optimum ergonomic luxury because it has lumbar support, rich leather seat cushion used in sports car, and motorized recliner, according to its creator.

Kinect lets Xbox 360 players physically interact with on-screen games. The Kinect sensor bar, which plugs directly into the Xbox 360 console, features a camera, audio- and motion-sensing technology that tracks 48 points of movements a human body makes. This way, a player simply has to move, gesture or speak to control the on-screen games. With just the wave of a hand or the sound of a voice, consumers can play games, stream music, watch HD movies and live ESPN sporting events, and engage in video chat.

Microsoft is also making available a $299 entertainment bundle that includes the Kinect sensor bar attached to the new 4GB Xbox 360 console and the Kinect Adventures exploration game designed to showcase how Kinect performs. The slimmed down 4GB Xbox 360 can be bought separately for $199. Microsoft also reportedly will offer a Kinect sensor bar bundled with Kinect Adventures for $149 as add-ons for existing Xbox 360.

“We are appreciative of the response we have seen from consumers that has culminated in sales of more than one million units in the first 10 days on the market for Kinect for Xbox 360,” Don Mattrick, president of Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Business, said in an official statement.

“This is a great start to the holiday season, and we will continue to work with our retailer partners to keep pace with high demand and deliver against our plan to sell more than five million Kinect sensors worldwide by the end of this year,” Mattrick added.

Before the Kinect launch, Microsoft raised its worldwide sales forecast from three million to five million sensors sold by yearend. Kinect launched in North America on Nov. 4, followed by Europe on Nov. 10, and will land next in Asia (Nov. 18) and Japan (Nov. 20). By this holiday, controller-free games and entertainment will reach more than 60,000 retailers in 38 countries with up to 17 Kinect games available.

Microsoft also recently announced that the more than 25 million Xbox LIVE members have spent more than one billion hours on the service a month, an average of over 40 hours per member.

In addition to Xbox 360 console momentum, and the ever-expanding service and content library of Xbox LIVE, Microsoft released franchise games such as “Halo: Reach” and “Fable III” and announced that Xbox 360 will be the first console to launch add-on content for all “Call of Duty” titles through 2012.

USB flash drives make for great gifts like those by Mimobot, designer of character-based USB flash drives.

But though fresh and innovative, Kinect has a long way to go before it could catch up with the Nintendo Wii which, for now, continues to be the leading motion-sensing game platform. According to VGChartz.com, worldwide Wii sales in Q3 reached 74 million, compared with 43 million for the Xbox 360 and 37.6 million for the PlayStation 3. Meanwhile, sales of the $199.99 Nintendo Wii are expected to further balloon this Christmas, thanks to the release of more game titles.

Apple pie

Apple’s share of the Christmas market pie is expected to be huge because of its new popular products led by the iPod Touch, iMac, iPad, iPhone4, and the Mac Air. These Apples are pricey temptations but many people are opening their wallets to pick them.

The success of Apple products has spawned a veritable cottage industry of accessories for the iPhone, iPod and the iPad. The latest of these is the iPad Chair. Didn’t people always say they just want to curl up in a corner to read a book? Now they can read an e-book from their iPad in the comfort of the iPad Chair.

Designed by Elite Home Theater Seating System, the Luxa2 H4 model, a.k.a. the iPad Chair, features a special holder for the iPad so it doesn’t need to be held or placed on one’s lap. The holder slides into the cupholder and can then swivel and pivot 360 degrees. The iPad can be rotated vertically or horizontally or positioned flat like when it’s placed on a table.

The creator said the iPad Chair gives people not just a hands-free way to use the tablet PC but also optimum ergonomic luxury because it has lumbar support, rich leather seat cushion used in sports car, and motorized recliner. At $2,495, it can easily buy five iPads though.

Three for the show

The much-awaited 3D TV has cautiously found its way in commercial stores this year and, hopefully, will get installed in many living rooms this Christmas or before the year is over.

TV giants that include Samsung, LG, Sony, Toshiba, Mitsubishi and Panasonic have launched their own line of 3D TVs supported by 3D Blu-ray players and 3D viewing glasses.

By research firm Screen Digest’s count, at least 100 3D TVs and nearly a dozen 3D Blu-ray players were announced or released during the first half of the year, and by 2014 more than 20 percent of US households will be ready for 3D content.

Techie Christmas

Given the gadget gift options out there, it would be hard to find a Christmas wish list without a single gadget. In fact, a new consumer electronics survey reveals that a vast majority of people today cannot function without their devices, so to not want a brand new one these holidays is highly unlikely.

Based on a 2010 Electronics Retail Survey done last August by Eye, a seller of outdoor and commercial indoor ad space, majority (82 percent) of its 608 online respondents aged 18 to 64 said they could not live without their electronics, and more than half (52 percent) said their CE devices define who they are.

About 82 percent of respondents said they could not live without their computers, while 14 percent said they could not survive without their TVs. A small group of respondents (three percent) said they could not afford not to have a digital camera while only one percent of respondents said they got to have MP3 players all the time.

The survey also revealed that the majority (60 percent) maintained that they “cannot resist new gadgets.”

On that note, the great art of giving has turned into a game of specs, features and prices for people who love to give and receive gadgets on Christmas. It runs totally opposite to the wisdom of Jesuit priest Gracian who preached to give only simple yet thoughtful gifts to one another.

Okay, geeks surely would be just as happy to get a USB flash drive, especially one with an astoundingly huge capacity like the Kingston DataTraveler 300, which boasts a whopping 256GB. It’s currently the world’s largest flash drive, which makes it like a giant sinkhole for data. But first one must sink in almost a thousand dollars into this nifty device that costs nearly that much.

But there really are still tech items out there that don’t require tons of money to buy. Seriously, USB flash drives make for great gifts like those by Mimobot (mimoco.com), designer of character-based USB flash drives.

Mimobot has a collection of Sanrio, Star Wars, Halo, Domo and other popular characters that are so appealing. The Darth Vader Unmasked 4GB USB flash drive costs only $39.95. It’s also available in 2GB, 8GB and 16GB capacities. Seriously, only a Grinch won’t be happy to receive these little items that don’t cost much but sure are highly coveted and thus, should be highly appreciated.

(Part II: e-readers, digital cameras, music players, cameras, computers, and smartphones)