What’s some stuff that’s only come out this year, and that I’ve probably never heard of?
For instance, this thing is pretty neat:
It’s a kitchen fire extinguisher that is designed to be simple to use and look nice enough that you actually leave it on your counter. It only came out in October, so it’s new and fancy and no one will have heard of it.
I read about the AeroGrow garden here on the SDMB. People here were giving it the thumbs-up.
Had I a bigger Christmas budget this year, I’d have gotten one for my mom and my SIL.
In the Netherlands the current “it”-gift is the LCD photoframes that rotate digital photo’s.
There’s that PDA book-reader that amazon came out with, I think, and a couple other companies have aped, although I’m not entirely sure that amazon had the original. Link here
I’d absolutely love to have the Fujitsu Scansnap scanner which has 1-button scan-to-PDF functionality (that apparently doesn’t suck) and a fax-style paper tray so you can queue up a bunch of papers and go do something else. It would cut down on my (paper-based) clutter by a TON. Of course, it’s a $400+ gadget, so it’s still a little tough to justify.
More info here.
I want one of those. After Christmas, I may buy one, too. I saw one at Target that had an alarmclock and weather station build into it, too.
Pleo the robotic dinosaur. This makes me sort of wish I had a seven year old so I could buy it for [sub]us[/sub]…I mean, him or her.
I saw this in WIRED magazine’s round-up of cool gift ideas.
It even has a little Luke Skywalker with grappling hook that hangs under it. Only 1137 pieces!
I’m not sure when it came out, but many dopers could extoll the virtues of Bacon Salt. I bought the variety pack for my dad as one of his gifts this year actually. He will think he has died and gone to a bacon-flavored heaven!
I don’t remember seeing any USB Turntables last year - now everyone has them, some butt ugly, some reasonable looking. I’ve asked about this is a GQ thread. I got a little device that takes audio in from cassette players or turntables and produces MP3s, which is much better, but I’m surprised that just about every catalog has one of these things now.
pbbth, thanks! I just ordered a three-pack of Bacon Salt. I might break it up though: one for my dad, one for my brother, and one for ME.
There are also (finally!) ones that will also display short video clips, allowing for some very Harry Potter-style moving photos. I wouldn’t mind having one of those. 