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The moment you’ve all been waiting for has finally arrived, the top 2 gifts for my 5 tech gifts for the holidays list. These are the best of the best my friends, the gifts that no one should be without. So without further ado, here they are.

#4 Is the Pleo Dinosaur. This little guy has sensors all over the place and will react to you when you pet him, tug his tail, or scratch his chin. The Pleo Dinosaur will walk around on his own and explore his surroundings, or he will look for attention from you if you scratch him and interact with him often. This is a great gift for anyone who is interest in robotics, AI, or just a plain old cool tech toy. You can order your Pleo Dinosaur on Tuesday December 18th so be ready, these are going to sell out very fast.

This is definitely a step in the right direction for AI. The Pleo Dinosaur learns as he interact and can even express simple emotions. This will be one of those toys that people will be talking about for years to come. Ugobe has done an excellent job in creating a lifelike creature that can react to touch and respond to its environment.

So if you’re really into robotics, or just want a companion the won’t make a mess around the house, the Pleo Dinosaur is what you want to get.

And finally, the #5 tech gift for the holidays, the Nintendo Wii. This is still one of the hardest tech gifts to get. The Nintendo Wii is one of the most innovative game consoles ever created. With party style and family oriented games, a sleek design and motion sensing controllers, the Nintendo Wii is above all the other game consoles out there. People of all ages can enjoy the Nintendo Wii and everything it has to offer. This is also the best game console to own if you have a lot of parties, because most of the games offer multi-player for up to 4 people.

This system is very hard to find, so you might have to shop around a bit but I’ve provided the best place to search with the best price I’ve found.

So there they are, my final 2 tech gifts for the holidays, the Pleo Dinosaur and the Nintendo Wii.

So to recap, the 5 tech gifts for the holidays are:

1. Canon PowerShot SD850
2. Logitech Harmony 1000 Advanced Universal Remote
3. Palmsize RC Helicopter
4. Pleo Dinosaur
5. Nintendo Wii

Happy Holidays to everyone and keep checking back because you never know what going to be on the site next.

To continue the list of tech gifts for the holidays, I present you with 2 more ideal tech items that make even the most tech savvy person drool.

The #2 item on my top 5 list of tech items is the Logitech Harmony 1000 Advanced Universal Remote. This sweet all-in-one remote has a color touch LCD screen, rechargeable battery, and hooks up to your computer via USB cable. This baby is fully programmable to turn on all your media devices, dim your lights, and even activate certain remote controlled fireplaces. All of this is done through an intuitive computer program that comes with the remote. You just enter your device models and the remote control does the rest. As someone who used to do home theater installs, I highly recommend the Logitech Harmony 1000 Advanced Universal Remote for any media centric person.

This is a staple item for anyone that has multiple pieces of home theater equipment that they need to turn on to enjoy their favorite show or movie.

Next up we have one of the hottest tech toys for 2007.

#3 is the Palmsize RC Helicopter. This little guy has some impressive aerial stunts it can perform, as well as a decent flying time per battery charge. I work at a company that allows people to play with toys throughout the day and I see several grown men playing with this as well as a few women.

The Palmsize RC Helicopter makes a great gift for anyone who is interested in flight, geek gifts, or just a plain toy fanatic. And while you’re at it, you can check out all the other interesting things that ThinkGeek.com has to offer.

They have some of the most interesting tech toys around and they’re definitely on my top list of places to buy new things from.

And there you have it folks, only 2 more gifts remain on my 5 tech gifts for the holidays list. Check back soon to catch the final 2 tech gifts of the 5 tech gifts for the holidays list. If you’re not a holiday person or just aren’t in the spirit, check out some of my other posts.

It’s that time again, a time for eggnog, sugar cookies, and of course a time for everyone to start sweating over what to get people for the holidays. Well don’t worry, I’ve got your back. This will be the first of a 5 part series of the top 5 gifts to buy for that special tech person in your life. So keep checking the site so you don’t miss a single gift idea.

First up we have a something that no techie should be without these days, a digital camera. The Canon PowerShot SD850 delivers a sharp 8 mega- pixel picture, and has all the extra features like preset camera modes and shot timer, along with everything else one would expect to come with a digital camera. The research has been done for you already, so no searching around for the perfect digital camera at the right price, this is a great digital camera at a reasonable price. So why not buy that special tech person something that they can use to take photos of your family members acting all weird during the holidays.

Come back soon to see the rest of the list, also keep an eye on your RSS feeds so you don’t miss a single post. If you don’t have the RSS feed, you should subscribe to it so you don’t miss anything that goes up on the site.

The Thinking Blog is holding a contest to giveaway a free laptop. The laptop is made by Ruff PC and if you haven’t heard, it’s a rugged, water resistant, bad-ass laptop that is made from a magnesium alloy that allows it to survive many harsh conditions that would cause other laptops to fail miserably. So check out the links and don’t forget to enter the contest.

Now that the iPhone has been released in the UK and has been out in the US for a while, I thought I would take the time to talk about the reasons why I won’t be buying one.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Apple as much as the next person and the iPhone has many of the features found on most cell phones on the market today and makes use of them in a much better and more user friendly way. The layout of the iPhone allows for easier internet browsing and the storage capacity for music make this one of the top tech gadgets of the year. Yet the iPhone makes use of the EDGE network, instead of the 3g network which allows for much faster data transfer speeds for downloads and streaming and is used by less advanced cell phones already on the market. It is also a very bulky, expensive product.

Now on to why I will not be buying one of these phones. First off, the price is a little steep for my budget. My phone cost me around $200 and I can browse the internet and store music on my phone just like the iPhone and even though my cell phone doesn’t have the same storage capacity, my phone runs on the 3g network, which allows me to download things faster that the iPhone can.

Secondly, is the lack of multi-carrier support. Apple made several people upset by limiting the carrier to Cingular only as well as making some people’s iPhones useless when they released a firmware update that caused many unlocked phones to not operate anymore. It took one high school student an entire summer to crack the “lock” on the iPhone, and when people started downloading the crack so they can use their phones with other carriers, Apple was forced to release a firmware update that basically broke any iPhone that was unlocked using the crack.

Third, the size of the phone, although necessary for the visibility factor, is still a little too large for a cell phone for my liking. I don’t understand how people can comfortably talk on their blackberry, and the same holds true for the iPhone. Having to rest the screen on my face while I make a call to someone seems a bit annoying and I can’t imagine how often you have to clean off the screen from all the oil and dirt from one’s face that would get on it after each call.

At one time everyone wanted their gadgets and anything technological to shrink in size for easy portability, yet this seems to be a step backwards. Some gadgets get smaller yes, but it seems that if we want to have a ton of features in our gadgets, then they are doomed to be big and bulky.

For those of you who haven’t gotten an iPhone and have the funds to buy one, you can click here to buy one from Apple’s online store

 Many of you know that there is a war going on. No I’m not talking about Iraq, I’m talking about the format war between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. These 2 formats of high definition discs are vying to become the standard format for hi-def home theaters. Similar to Beta-max and VHS back in the day.

HD-DVDs can generally deliver the same resolution and sound quality as Blu-Rays can, and it uses the same blue laser to read the disk, but Blu-Ray has a tighter data thread which allows it to hold more data on a single disk than HD-DVD can. 50GB for Blu-Ray as opposed to 30GB for HD-DVD. This allows for more extras on the disk such as trailers, added artwork, and any other bonus feature you can think of.

So which one is on top? Blu-Ray currently is outselling HD-DVD by about 2:1. Now sales aren’t the only thing that would make me tip my hat off to Blu-Ray. Sony’s Playstation 3 uses Blu-Ray discs for it’s games, and Panasonic has released an in-car dashboard Blu-Ray player.

More and more I am seeing Blu-Ray players come out on the market, yet all I see for HD-DVD is price drops and no new standalone players, or even more niche players like the dashboard Blu-Ray unit.

Honestly if you are watching a movie in 1080p with Dolby Digital surround, then it really doesn’t matter which format you choose. They are both going to deliver the quality you want to see and hear. But for some, having more support behind one or the other can tip the scales in one direction. This is why i would put my money on Blu-Ray discs.

Seven of the eight major studios (Disney, Fox, Warner, Paramount, Sony, Lionsgate and MGM) have opted to go with Blu-Ray for their hi-def choice. Several studios release their movies on HD-DVD as well, but there are only a few big name studios such as Universal and New Line Cinema which choose to back HD-DVD wholeheartedly.

The choice is with you, the consumer. It is up to you to determine who will rise victoriously through the dust and data to become the top format of this generation.

For more information on Blu-ray, check out Blu-Ray.com

For more info on HD-DVD click here.

Click here to read my previous post on HDTVs

A quick post about this video i found on Sebastian’s Pamphlets

YankoDesign posted this concept credit card created by Jacob Palmborg, and it is by far one of the better ideas on how we should be integrating technology into our lives.

You can read the post here