Sometimes you don’t need to go all out with a gift that costs $$$$ to show someone they’re on your mind. I like gifts that are useful – that I will actually use and here are our thoughts on them.

Our Top 3 Stocking Stuffers

1. Open it
This is the ultimate gift for anyone. This is a multi-purpose tool that allows you to cut, screw, open a bottle or use a box cutter. The reason I fell so in love with it is because it is only $12.59 and within minutes of receiving it I used it for a bunch of things. It’s great for opening packages, cutting open mail, screwing your computer, etc. It is the perfect tool to have in a kitchen or an office and it comes in green or orange.

Here is my favorite iPhone 4 case – do you like the cutegeek colors??

3. Colorful Wii Wands by Nyko
In college people told me it was a NYC thing to match – because my sneakers, belts, etc. would all match my shirt – well I haven’t grown out of that. I bought the Black Wii because it matched everything else but what I do love is the fact that there are colored controllers out there. This is the ultimate gift for a gamer that you have – that loves pink…or purple…or blue…Nyko makes Wii remotes in all the right colors to liven up your living or bedroom with some excitement. I personally have pink, purple, and black…the one that gets used the most are the colored ones, they always match my funky sheets.

Nyko controllers can be found on their website or on Amazon – for as low as $15.99.

Thanks for checking this out –stay tuned to some giveaways on our site…

Related Posts

1. The CuteGeek 2010 Holiday Gift Guide-Top 10 Gifts
2. CES & AEE 2010: The End of My Trip
3. CES & the AEE 2010: Radiris’ first day

I tested three products designed to protect your iPad in various ways.  First I tried out the Speck Shield View, which sells for $24.95.  It comes in a 2 pack, and it’s supposed to stick to your iPad screen perfectly, protecting it from scratches and smudges.  Getting it on the iPad was fairly easy.  The product comes with instructions on how to get it on smoothly.  However, once I peeled the backing to expose the protective film, a couple bubbles showed up that I couldn’t remove.  Granted, they were just two small bubbles on the edges, but bubbles are still annoying.  I give it a B for application and an A- for preventing fingerprint smudges.

The second product I checked out was also from Speck – the Fitted fabric-wrapped hard shell case.  It gets an A for design in that it comes in 5 different fabric patterns, but I found placing the iPad in the fitted case difficult.  The frame did not perfectly snap in, and it took several minutes to get it on right.  Also, if you’re like me and you keep the iPad on its docking station, this case isn’t something you can keep on your iPad as it won’t fit in the docking station with the case on.  It’s also a little pricey at $49.95.

The best iPad protective carrying case I’ve come across so far is Case-mate’s The Express iPad Vertical Nylon Flip Case.  It’s made out of black ballistic nylon and it’s got a simple, practical design.  There are embedded magnets in the front flap screen to help keep your iPad secure.  At $34.99 it’s a good investment to help protect your iPad from scratches, dirt, and occasional spills.

Related Posts

No related posts.

Pretty snazzy, huh?

Dudes, if you’ve been reading my posts at all, you know I have kind of a thing for protective accessories. Call me crazy, but when you lay out a bunch of dough on a sweet electronic gadget, the last thing you want is scratches, cracks, or crashes to have their way with your darling machine. For this reason, I was intrigued to receive a Kindle Fitted case for my Kindle 2 in the mail from Speck– its a hard case with two pieces that snap together, fitting perfectly over your Kindle and providing it with a hard plastic home.

For my Kindle 2, I had been using a Belkin soft zipper case, which I still love. The Speck hardshell is intriguing, however, for several reasons.

1) It’s stylin! The back covers are SUPER cute. I have the white stripes pattern, but I think all of the options are really snazzy, and add a huge kick of style to an otherwise boring white Kindle.

I love the stripes!

2) It stays on the Kindle, whereas my soft cover zipper case was just a “holder.” In this way, the case is more of an accessory for the actual machine, versus just being the means for transport.

You can see from the pictures I took that the case is pretty attractive. There is a noticeable, and for me, pretty significant downer– it adds a load of heft to your machine! One of the hugely attractive features of a Kindle is how lightweight it is, making it easy to hold up for long periods of time. This case, when snapped on, made the Kindle feel significantly heavier! The Speck specs (hehe) list the case as a full 8 ounces! When your Kindle 2 is 10.2 ounces (I checked!), adding another 8 is no joke!

Coupled with the pretty steep price tag of $39.95, I would think hard about whether the looks, no matter how attractive they are, would be worth that kind of tradeoff. Think of your poor wrists!

Related Posts

No related posts.

After nearly a year of rumor-milling, gossip-mongering, and speculation galore, the iPad debuted to a round of applause (and many an amusing joke about Boston accents.) If you’re one of the early adopting crowd that has in their possession, or are about to procure, a magical iPad for yourself, you’ve likely has a nightmare (or, at least, a bad daydream) about dropping that baby on the concrete or scratching it up when carrying it in your bag from place to place.

If you were in the Apple store looking for a case and were kind of disappointed with either their lack of stock (or the rate at which they seem to be selling it out) or the lack of a cute selection, I wanted to add an option to the pot that I think is pretty sweet.

Speck, maker of the popular candy hardshell covers for Macbooks (and iPhones, and iPads too now) has an iPad case in their product line that I think is tops. The Speck PixelSleeve Plus is a cute and protective case that the iPad zips into, and a handle for slick portability.

The case is made of stretchy neoprene, and the inside has a flexible and reinforced layer to protect your baby from scratches or other mishaps.  While I didn’t imagine I would need a handle for an iPad holder, its surprisingly convenient in moments of transport. Rather than grabbing the whole unit in two fingers and risk it slipping out of your hands, the handle makes movement of the entire thing pretty darn easy. That sounds trivial, but since the iPad is so gosh darned (and disappointingly) heavy, that extra handling ability really plays a solid role.

The case is a $39.95 investment, which can seem steep for a case. On the other hand, when you consider the cost of your iPad and the likely diagnosis of FanBoy/Girl that you have, $40 is worth it to protect your little piece of preshus.

Related Posts

No related posts.

It was fun…there is always too much going on to realize what’s really going on but the world of technology never seizes to amaze me.

I will be posting many pictures and information regarding new products that I saw at both conventions.

Stay tuned!

Related Posts

No related posts.

Men and women of this generation are travelers. No matter if you drive 10 minutes or take the subway an hour to work or fly across the country weekly, I bet you have a certain set of gear that you need to transport with you on a routine basis that you can’t carry in your hands, or a shopping bag. And the nature of our technology–the portable laptops, power cords, hard drives, adapters, headsets—coupled with our traveling bodies, necessitates for practical solutions which serve to transport all of our junk from place to place, in order for us to make ends meet.

Now, while there is never a shortage of junk on the market that will allow us the means by which to do this, transport all of our wares, there is a severe shortage of stylin‘ options. Ladies, can I get a “hell yea?”

Enter Speck– the same company which has an extensive line of cute but practical smart phone cases also has a line of cute but practical carrying bags. During an email conversation wherein a Speck representative asked me if I were interested in checking out their line of notebook shoulder bags, called the “Portpack,” I happily agreed because, I, ladies and gents, am the victim of BUSINESS BAG-itis. What I want in a bag– form, function, and fierce style! What I get, usually– big, bulky, monstrosities. My current work bag:

Swiss Gear: ridiculously functional, superbly un-cute

Why is it such a (fully functional, durable, sturdy, superbly practical) horror?

I am one of the people who travels to work cross-country, boarding the same plane with the same business travelers and sometimes even the same crew, every Sunday and Thursday. It gets old. But you know what’s older? The airport hauling, bag checking, laptop-in-the-bin, craziness of the travel grind. I need a bag that holds my 14 inch Thinkpad snugly and securely, but which is also business friendly (can’t be polka dotted or made of velour, let’s say). This is a challenge, however, because my machine suffers from a massive rear-end. (You know those extended battery packs all good business travelers have? Well, my machine came with that battery pack attached. And it’s never coming off, baby. (‘Cause I don’t have a replacement)). So no cute bags for me? Probably.

I wanted to check out the Portpack out because I wanted to live the dream of having it all– a functional work bag that’s cute too! I wanted to look like this girl, except with no skin showing and dressed in business casual attire!

Did it work? Well, my impressions of the bag that arrived were that it’s superbly lightweight and made of a durable material. The blue velvety goodness of the inner pocket that snugly holds a laptop is something I want to sleep in. All the pockets and various cut outs are made for functionality, but uphold the principles of cuteness. However. This monster?

Not fitting inside for a million dollars. My business pack-sack solution is not solved yet.

But wait, there’s more.

I do have a life outside of my job. And in that life, “I’m a Mac.”  And presto change-o, check this out!

Alas, my friends, I will still be the hunchback with the Swiss gear mound on her back, transporting all of her crap coast to coast in a sturdy, durable, ugly bag.

However, on the weekends, when I’m free to be just me, I will be airily skipping about Silicon Valley with my Macbook in the Portpack, because I like the way the Portpack snugly hugs my computer but also has room for my peripherals, wallet, keys, and lipgloss! Portpack win– I may even bare some skin, like the girl in their promos! (Photos not forthcoming.)

If you are or know a girl (or boy) who is in need of a laptop bag that is developed both in form and in function, check out the Portpack collection at Speck. For $80, it’s a bit pricey, but definitely comparable in the laptop bag category. And since they come in some super cute patterns, its definitely a solid holiday gift player.

*Note: Speck did not compensate me in any way for writing this post. I do, however, get to keep the test unit.

Related Posts

No related posts.

Last week I got an email inviting me to test run a newly redesigned hard shell See-Thru iPhone case from Speck. While I know that some folks (like my boyfriend) are iPhone purists, and can’t stand the thought of putting a case on their beautiful babies which takes away from the essence of these babies’ beauty, I support protective coverings for my iPhone wholeheartedly.

When I first got my 3G, I was a little bit like those loonies who don’t want a case in order to preserve the mouth-breathing “WOW” factor, but I didn’t want it to get all scratched up in my purse, so I got the next best thing– an iPhone sock, which worked well for what I needed but got kind of grimy and lost its elasticity after a bit, so I had to launder it (and lather rinse repeat.) Also it just wasn’t that cute, so after I dropped my iPhone once straight on the floor with no sock on it, I decided enough was enough and I got an Incase rubberized flexible shell. I paid $20 for it in the Apple store, and it was pink. The thing I loved about it immediately was its traction– you could put your phone down on a plane thats angled, like, 45 degrees, and it wouldn’t budge! In fact, I used that “feature” of the case often, as I take my phone with me to work out so I can listen to and watch podcasts from the “iPod part” of my phone as it is sitting nicely on whatever plane of exercise machine is in front of me.

What I did NOT like at all about my Incase cover was how grossly grimy it got! The dirt from my hands and purse, and basically anything I set it on, felt like it coated the case and got etched in the grooves (which were part of the design) and the pink color of it dulled slowly. Anytime I put it in a coat pocket or a jeans pocket and took it back out, the case would be covered in lint, which was super hard to rub off. It was getting kind of annoying.

The email from the Speck representative couldn’t have come at a better time for me– I was grossed out by my case and looking for something cooler. I was skeptical about this review unit being a hard case, because I think some of the hard cases on the market are kind of kitschy and DO take away from the glam that is the Jesus phone.

But when I got the case, and put it on, I loved it!

It came in blue, which I probably wouldn’t have picked out myself, but was a surprisingly attractive hue once combined with the actual black iPhone inside. It also came with a plastic sheet, which is supposed to be the protective overlay for the screen, which I applied and did not like at all. My boyfriend thought I didn’t like it because I couldn’t apply it correctly (bubbles, y’all?) but I could! The application of the sticky overlay wasn’t difficult, I just didn’t like it because once it was on my phone, it obsructed the clarity of the screen, to my view. It looked almost like (bear with me here) an infinitely fine clear grid had been overlaid on my screen, almost like a super thin cheesecloth. You could see everything ok, just like you always had, but the teeny tiny gridlike pattern of that clear overlay was distracting enough, so I peeled it right off and threw it away (its pretty much useless once you attempt to apply it once– it gets fingerprints and fibers on the sticky side, so it would be hard to reuse, unless you like fingerprints and fibers on your protective overlay.)

My phone, once encased in the hard shell, looked super cute! I’m not going to drop it on the floor just to “test” how well the protective aspect of the case works, I will just have to have faith. I like how it’s low profile, how the edges of the opening don’t cover up the iPhones silver lining (like my old pink Incase did) and I like how you can see the Apple logo on the backside of the phone.

I don’t think I will be reapplying my pink rubbery mess of an Incase case back onto my phone unless, for some reason, this Speck case cracks or breaks. I will miss the traction of the surface of the pink case though, as the hard shell of the Speck is smooth and will not, under any circumstances, remain stationary in the instance of movement or elevation. But hey, that’s what the case is for, right? To protect it from those spills that happen when there’s surprise motion and elevation? Mission accomplished, then.

The case retails for $29.95 which is pretty steep for an accessory, but its brand new, so we might see the price drop after some time, especially for the holidays? Ultimately, though, when you have a $300-400 baby nestled in your purse that you want to keep happy and healthy (at least for the length of your two year contract) $30 doesn’t seem like too much money to drop, especially after your phone makes a horrifying sound when you drop it on the floor…and it didn’t break!

[Note: While I did not and will not receive any payment for reviewing this product, it is mine to keep, courtesy of  Speck products.]

Related Posts

No related posts.