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Nov 9, 2007 12:07 pm US/Central
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High-Tech Gift Ideas
(WCCO)
We're now six and a half weeks away from
Christmas. If you are looking for gift ideas for those hard-to-buy-for friends
and family members, we've got some ideas of the high-tech nature.
A team from Philips Electronics came to the Twin Cities recently to show off their latest and
greatest products that just hit store shelves this fall. They carefully placed
many of their favorites items on display throughout a suite in a downtown
Minneapolis hotel.
More and more of us have huge flat screen TVs
in our homes, but now there's something you can get to accompany it. A single
speaker that has the same power and effect as a surround sound system.
"What you are getting with this is true
surround sound with one unit. so it a loft like this ... if you had traditional
surround sound you would have to have speaker around the room to give you that
enveloping effect that you are getting from ambi-sound technology," Lindsay Woods from Philips said.
It even houses a DVD player and you can attach
your iPod to it. It costs $800.
Or how about this? An iPod docking alarm clock.
Yeah, you can wake up your favorite song. Just select it and then set your
alarm. It also charges your iPod. It costs about $80.
How are your iPod earphones looking these days?
Check out what is all the craze in Europe right now. Earphones dressed up with
Swarovski crystals.
Woods explained their popularity.
"And for those who like to wear a small
iPod shuffle or MP3 player, we have this beautiful necklace that goes with it.
So you can just put this around your neck, hook your MP3 player up to it and
then you have the jeweled headphones," she said.
Those jeweled earphones cost between $80 and $130,
depending on how fancy you get. You can also buy a pendant for a USB drive.
Digital frames are still all the rage for those
of you with lots of photos to share. The difference this year is that the
quality of the photos has improved quite a bit. The images are a lot sharper.
The frames come is different sizes and colors.
The digital frames range in price depending on
the size. They cost between $50 and $200.
How about something that would really pack a
surprise? A defibrillator for your home. The folks at Philips say they make the
only FDA approved over the counter defibrillator. There is a computerized voice
that takes you through the steps of how to use it.
The defibrillator may seem like an odd gift,
but consider this, the American Heart Association says that about 80 percent of
all sudden cardiac arrests occur in the home. That device costs about $1,300.
If you love your electric toothbrush, the
upgraded Sonicare toothbrush that comes with to include a UV sanitizer that
kills certain bacteria on the brush head.
Portable DVDs have gotten fancier as well. You
can buy one that connects to your iPod.
"A fantastic use for it can be families
going on that road trip for the holidays ... having a couple of kids you want
to keep entertained on that trip. They can use it as a normal DVD player and
they can use it to play their videos from their iPod," said David Wolf of
Philips.
That portable DVD player costs about $150.
A
must-have for a new mom is a state-of-the-art electronic breast pump that you
can program to adjust to your personal body rhythm.
Shannon Jenest from Philips showed us how it
works.
"She actually is going to use this to pump
manually and then when she feels let down, when she gets it to the right place,
she is going to push this blue button and it is going to go into memory mode
and it is going to remember that rhythm and do it on its own. So the next time
she goes to use it, that memory is going to be locked in and it is going to
restart using that same rhythm."
That breast pump costs about $350.
(© MMVIII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)