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Gift-Giving Guide By Royal Van Horn Illustration © 1998 by Mario Noche

THIS YEAR'S guide to holiday giving will focus on technology that helps solve nagging problems, enhances what you can do with technology, and moves you from one generation of equipment to the next. For more information on "handcrafted" high-tech gifts and other ideas, please refer to previous December columns. Before I get to theme-related gifts, I need to keep up with a tradition I started last year.

Last year I named a "must-have audio CD of the year" -- Henry Mancini's "'As Time Goes By' and Other Classic Movie Love Songs." One of the reasons I selected this CD was the fact that it was recorded in "Dolby ProLogic" surround sound and contains a killer version of the classic song "Unchained Melody." More about Dolby ProLogic later.

This year I would like to name two "must-have" CDs. My first pick is "Touched by an Angel: The Album." (I don't watch the television show of the same title, but I like the album anyway.) This CD is packed with music -- 16 tracks -- performed by a variety of artists, such as Della Reese, Celine Dion, Deana Carter, Wynonna, Bob Dylan, and Amy Grant. The CD has a bit of a gospel/country flavor, but most people I have suggested it to have thanked me. My second pick is "Visions of Love," a CD produced by the legendary Jim Brickman. It's worth buying this CD just for the second track, "After All These Years," by Anne Cochran, which is likely to become the new official anniversary song for couples who have been together for more than a few years.

Obviously, these two CDs will not appeal to the under-20 crowd, so I'll mention a new CD just out from Lynyrd Skynyrd, "Edge of Forever." It has a cut that is getting a lot of air time and may well be a chart climber -- "Tomorrow's Goodbye." You might say that this CD is pure southern fried rock 'n' roll. Now to the theme of this year's column.

My wife has been bugging me for years to have an entertainment center built for our living room. She hates seeing audio components stacked up with the requisite wires dangling everywhere. I finally got around to having a friend who is a cabinetmaker build the entertainment center. It's now in place, and we love it. But, when my friend was drawing up the plans for the unit, he asked me if I wanted glass or wood cabinet doors. Since the design was in a traditional style, I wanted wood doors. The problem is that wireless infrared remote control units for stereo gear cannot shine infrared light through wood doors.

The solution is a nifty device made by Home Producer that costs $80 and is called the "One for All." Technically, the device is an RF/IR remote-control unit -- a "universal" radio frequency-to-infrared remote-control unit. Although it is not a "learning remote," it will still control nearly everything. The device broadcasts your button pushes via radio frequency to a device inside the entertainment center where a miniature receiver translates the radio signals and sends them on to a powerful infrared light that effectively "bathes" the stereo components in the infrared that they can understand.

While the human eye cannot see infrared radiation, this device works great. It comes with a hand-held remote controller that has giant blue-lighted buttons that are especially nice at night. This remote may be one of the ugliest ever made, but it allows me to adjust the volume of the stereo and change CDs from nearby rooms in my house. Radio signals go through most walls nicely! This unit works so well that I could have put all the stereo gear in the closet, but we like the entertainment center as furniture.

One downside is that it takes about an hour of fiddling with the remote to get it to operate your components; however, the manual is easy to follow. As an added bonus, "One for All" comes with the codes necessary to operate home automation systems. For example, you can dim the room lights from this unit if you install any one of a number of inexpensive dimmers. Nearly any large electronics store will have the "All for One" or similar universal remotes. Most home improvement stores and electronics stores such as Radio Shack can help you find remote-controlled light dimmers and other home automation gear. Nothing pleases me more than finding technology that helps solve my problems!

If anyone on your gift list does a lot of writing, I recommend you consider giving that person some inexpensive software to help make the job of writing easier. Three such programs are Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary; a bibliography "formatting" program that forces users to space, punctuate, and capitalize references properly; and a grammar checker, such as Grammarian from Cassady & Green (http://www.cassadyg.com). I use the Mac version of Grammarian, but there are a number of other products available for both Macs and PCs. Incidentally, the grammar checker in Microsoft Word, which comes preinstalled as part of the Microsoft Office suite of programs on most PCs, is awful.

Grammarian is much handier and more powerful than older grammar checkers, and you can even enter your own usage rules. I hope to exploit this feature of Grammarian soon because of a new role I recently assumed. I agreed to be the "technology consultant" to a project at my university that provisionally admits about 100 high-risk, low-socioeconomic-status, ghetto kids who are mostly African Americans. These students have lived in a world where "standard" or "formal" English is not the norm. Some language/usage patterns common in the South are not exactly "standard," either. (No offense meant.) Eventually, I hope to enter the rules in Grammarian that will catch such nonstandard expressions as "I want to get me a drink of water" or "Please ride me over to the dorm." If I manage to use Grammarian to help these kids, I'll let you know in a future column. Incidentally, if you do use a program like Grammarian, my advice is to ignore the suggestions that you don't understand or that don't sound right to you. Do study Grammarian's suggestions, however. By the way, this column does well when Grammarian is set to compare it to the rules in "personal writing," but not well at all when compared to the rules in "academic writing." Sorry.

Now, let's get back to that relatively inexpensive Dolby ProLogic surround sound system. You might call my system a home theater system, minus the large-screen TV. This year, I upgraded my combination receiver/amp (with ProLogic) to a similar unit with DSP or "digital signal processing." I found a 100-watt by five-channel unit on sale for under $400. My old unit had mono rear speakers and lacked a connection for my subwoofer. The new unit has stereo rear speakers and a separately controlled subwoofer "out channel." Essentially, DSP units are capable of providing discrete front stereo, rear stereo, center channel (for voice), and subwoofer out signals. On some DVDs (digital videodiscs), the new DSP receiver is twice as good as the old ProLogic receiver. If I had known what a striking difference this upgrade to DSP would make, I would have done it long ago. If you are shopping for any new stereo gear, my advice is think DSP. And, if your local video store rents DVDs, you can buy a DVD player either now or later. But eventually you will buy one. In a few years, videotape will vanish as laser discs are now vanishing.

The good news is that my new DSP-equipped receiver/amp sounds awesome. The bad news is that I did not pay enough attention to the cheap remote that came with it. I love the unit but hate the remote. The remote won't work from any position except straight in front of the unit, has button labels that are impossible to read, and has every button illogically placed on the unit. If you buy anything with a remote this season, even a cheap VCR, test the remote extensively before buying the device it runs. It's funny how the functioning of a $30 remote can affect your enjoyment of a $400 piece of equipment. I guess I'll just have to order an upgraded remote from the manufacturer. This will cost about $75, but it will save a day's work removing the current unit, returning it, and then wiring up a new unit. Live and learn. I repeat: test the remote extensively.

Another technology that I have been fiddling with this year is solar-powered landscape lighting. I would like to illuminate the border of my outside patios, but I am not up to digging a trench and laying underground wire. Solar-powered lighting is a good alternative. Until recently, however, a solar-powered yard light cost about $70 -- too much to use a lot of them to light a deck, path, or driveway. Recently I found an attractive hanging-lantern-style unit that uses a technology relatively new to such devices. Its light is created by LCDs (liquid crystal displays). Although the unit is not very bright, it emits a soft amber light. The lamp I've been testing cost about $20 and is the Endura Solar Max, manufactured by Brinkman. I think I'll use five or more of these units to mark the border of my outside wood deck. The lamp needs nearly a full day of sun to build up a good charge, so if you live in a forest, forget it.

Still another piece of technology that helps solve a multitude of problems is a set of stereo headphones. I like loud stereo music, but unfortunately I often want to hear it when my wife is trying to watch TV in an adjoining room. I have a great pair of miniature stereo headphones, but because of their "off-the-ear" design, they leak a lot of noise. I intend to solve this problem by purchasing a set of old-fashioned, "engulf-the-ear" headphones, and I intend to buy good ones. I suspect the price will be between $100 and $200 -- a small price to pay for family harmony!

Speaking of problem-solving technology, did you know they make remote-controlled window shades? I live in a contemporary house. My den/guest room has a vaulted ceiling that is 16 feet high, with two windows at the peak of the ceiling. I've never been able to figure out how to put shades on these windows. Recently, I was in a home improvement store and found remote-controlled window shades. I think this might be a cool invention. Just imagine, you wake in the morning, reach for the remote-control unit on the nightstand, push a button, and the shades rise. You can find out what the weather's like without even getting out of bed!

Here's an offbeat gift-giving idea. Give any nostalgia buff you know a subscription to the Jukebox Collector.1 Anyone interested in rock 'n' roll, jukeboxes, vending machines, slot machines, and so on would love this magazine. I've been a subscriber for five years now, and I read every issue. Jukeboxes are good investments, and there's a large and helpful "network" of friendly people who read and write for this magazine who are happy to help newcomers. Speaking of magazines, for the techie on your gift-giving list I recommend Technology Review: MIT's Magazine of Innovation.2 Whenever I need a really high-tech "fix," I read either Wired3 or Technology Review.

My last "can't go wrong" gift idea is simple: buy an Epson Color Stylus printer with any model number from 700 to 800. In the past year, I have helped more than a dozen people try to get photo-quality print from other brands of printers. I often had to tell friends who bought a different brand, "Just go buy a $200 Epson." And don't forget some expensive photo-quality paper.

This year, why not give a gift that uses technology to solve a problem or helps the recipient upgrade from old to new technology? Thanks for reading the column this year. I wish you strong trees, healthy animals, loving friends, and enabling technology.

2. Technology Review, 201 Vassar Street, MIT Bldg. W59-200, Cambridge, MA 02139; ph. 617/253-8250; six issues per year, $20.

3. Wired, P.O. Box 55690, Boulder, CO 80323-5690; ph. 800/769-4733; 12 issues per year, $29.95.

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Last updated 8 December 1999
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