The holiday season is creeping up slowly upon us and I’m starting to get in the gift-giving mode. What will the lucky recipients receive from us this year? Buying for family has always been a stressful thing for me. My husband takes the backseat on this one. In fact, if it were up to him, no one would get anything or they would get something really cheesy, picked up the day before Christmas and wrapped in newspaper. I, on the other hand, love to shoot for the most unique gifts, ones that say, “I took the time to pick this out just for YOU”. I’m kind of into those personalized gifts.
Putting all of this thought into the perfect gift gives me a headache though. It’s a challenge to top what I’ve purchased the year before. The expectations have been set and I must follow through. Let the gift-giving season begin!
That being said, I’m glad that I attended the Staples Blogger Event at The James Hotel in Chicago last week (sponsored by Staples and Coburn Communication). Our very own Beth Blecherman of the Silicon Valley Moms Blog and Techmamas made the trek out to our windy city to speak to us about what’s “in” for tech gifts this holiday season. Several CMB contributors attended the same morning session as I did including, Kathy of “Barking at Kathy“, Kerry, a soon-to-be CMB’er, MJ of “I Want a Little Sugar in My Bowl” and Veronica. We were joined by some other local area mom bloggers as well. I also found out that Staples sells more than just printer paper and pens, too. They actually do have some of the coolest tech-gift ideas sitting right there on their shelves. Kinda gives me warm fuzzies knowing that there is a new Staples right down the street from my house.
One must-have tech gift that I’d like to focus on this season is a digital photo frame. Everyone who is anyone has a digital camera these days and I for one know that displaying photos on my computer isn’t always the most convenient thing to do, especially when you want them to be portable. The digital photo frame is a perfect way to display all of those unique photos that have been piling up with “hard-drive dust” in your computer. Staples carries the Pandigital 7″ Digital Picture Frame (retailing for around $99.98). What is great about this particular photo frame is that it plays images, videos AND music. It has a multi-card reader that accepts a variety of memory cards. This is a plus since a lot of digital equipment out there carries different size memory cards. Those are some important features to consider if you’re thinking about purchasing one of these as a gift for someone this year. The other cool thing about digital picture frames is that you can load them up with pictures and the gift recipient can display the frame right away at the holiday event. FYI, last year, these babies sold like HOT CAKES. There wasn’t a one to be found in the weeks leading up to December 25th.
I think it’s great that Staples came forth and wanted to get us together to create a buzz about things like the digital photo frame, GPS systems, digital cameras, Bluetooth headsets and whatnot. Part of the whole gift-giving idea is to research the best possible gift that will fit the recipient’s needs. Having Beth there to point out some key features on these products was just the icing on the techie-cake.
Hope this helps you all when you hit the .net or the stores searching for the gift that says, “Yeah, I know how to pick ‘em”. After all, gift-giving is supposed to be “easy” right?
*One of my original Chicago Moms Blog posts
