Tech gifts for $50 or less
By Leonard Fischer
Gannett News Service
To help you stay within your gift-giving budget, check out this guide to tech items under $50.
You'll find ideas for hassle-free Internet surfing as well as creative add-ons for folks who enjoy digital photography and video.
Safe choices
Know folks getting a new computer this season? Help them keep it secure with software add-ons. ZoneLabs ZoneAlarm Pro 4 from Broderbund ($39.99, www.broderbund.com) helps protect Windows PCs from hackers and other Internet snoops. It's a good gift for anyone with a new broadband connection.
Symantec recently introduced a program to block another Internet intruder. AntiSpam 2004 ($39.95, www.symantec.com) filters annoying junk e-mail. It works with any POP3 e-mail account and a variety of e-mail software. Mailblocks, a relatively new e-mail service, never lets spam through the front door: Mailblocks (www.mailblocks.com) challenges anyone sending you e-mail to verify his or her identity by typing a special code. Once the code has been accepted, senders are never challenged again. Bulk mailers don't have the time to respond to every challenge and automated spam bots aren't smart enough, effectively rejecting both types of spam. Mailblocks' "one-call setup" service makes it easy to order an account as a gift. A mailbox with 15-megabyte inbox costs $9.95 per year, while 100MB of storage is $24.95.
Creative options
Inexpensive gifts abound in the category of digital photography and video. Here are some best bets.
Digital camera newbies and pros both should find a lot to like in the Windows-only Adobe Photoshop Album 2.0 ($49.95, www.adobe.com), software for organizing, archiving and sharing images. Album knows how to transfer photos from hundreds of cameras, and it includes simplified versions of editing tools found in Photoshop, its big brother.
If you know someone who loves experimenting with digital photos, Microsoft's $19.95 Plus! Digital Media Edition makes a great stocking stuffer. Plus! includes PhotoStory 2, a tool for making sophisticated slide shows that let you pan and zoom across photos, and include narration, background music and transition effects.
For those who enjoy showing off digital prints, take a look at Radiant Frame — a photo frame available in several styles that comes with a backlight and special inkjet paper ($29.95, www.radiantframes.com). After printing the image you want to frame on the special paper, drop it into the frame and turn on the backlight. It will appear brighter and crisper in daylight and glow softly at night.
If you know someone who likes creating cards, invitations and other print creations, Photo Clip Art 100,000 from Hemera ($29.95 for Windows or Macintosh, www.hemera.com) is a seven-CD collection of high-quality photos in dozens of categories, ensuring that there's something for every occasion. All images are royalty free and can be used in print or on the Web. A handy file browser is included.
A number of timesaving video tools also make great gifts. AutoProducer 3.0 from muvee Technologies ($49.95, www.muvee.com) creates short movies by analyzing the action in your video clips and splicing them together to the beat of the music you choose.
Once your budding Spielberg or Soderbergh has wrapped filming, let him or her share the results on Verbatim's Digital Movie DVD-R discs (www.verbatim.com), which look like film reels.
The DVD-Rs are about $11 for a pack of three.
