Gifts That Don't Start With i

WSJ.com - THE JOURNAL REPORT: TECHNOLOGY By LEE GOMES : "The Museum of Modern Art in New York has been at this the longest; its Web site, MOMAStore.org, has a pleasant selection of objects that go whirr, tick or tock.

There is, for instance, the $65 Freeplay Energy windup radio. Turn the crank and charge the battery; you can then listen to AM or FM radio for a day. It's four inches high and looks great on a desk.

It also can function as a conversation starter, though not to the same extent as the $325 solar-powered backpack the museum also sells. The latter is for hikers who perhaps worry that their iPod battery will go out on them en route. There are three photovoltaic panels affixed to the back of the backpack, which, when the weather cooperates, can produce enough power to recharge all sorts of portable gadgets. You can thus bring new life to your music player -- or your cellphone or digital camera or GPS navigator -- even without an outlet around.

Other city museums have their own gift shops, as well as their own Web sites for folks who can't make a visit in person. San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art, for instance, offers a $110 "pin clock" at Shop.store.Yahoo.com/SFMOMA. It's a digital clock from Australia that uses a grid of 3,000 pins to tell you what time it is. The Dallas Museum of Art store (Shop.store.Yahoo.com/DallasMuseumofArt/) features "Cranky," a $12 insect-like windup toy for your desktop that will hold small note cards (or whatever) and then dance about, calling attention to itself. Washington's Smithsonian Institution (SmithsonianStore.com) offers a $36 "Space Age Pen Watch" that not only writes upside down, but also under water, by virtue of a pressurized ink cartridge. The top of the pen also sports a dime-sized watch. Practical? No. Memorable? No question about it!

In New York, one of the trendiest is Moss, a home accessories shop located in Lower Manhattan in the real world and at MossOnline.com on the Web.

Moss is for the person whose every object must be a design statement, like the $114 Scotch tape dispenser that sports a soaring parabola on top of a stainless steel base. On an only slightly more practical note, there is a $340 night-vision telescope, made in Russia, which you might not guess from its sleek black styling.

If that resonates with you, consider Design Within Reach (DesignWithinReach.com) a home and accessories store that is a bit like Crate and Barrel made over with Eames chairs and Noguchi coffee tables. You might consider buying a Tizio desk lamp; it's famous for its sweeping and delicately balanced arms that let you position the light anywhere you want it. It's $336 -- pricey, yes, but this is a famous piece of Italian home furnishing, and think of how fashionable you'll be making someone feel.

At the other end of the style spectrum is Radio Shack, which despite its relatively humble circumstances merits a close look by anyone seeking gadgets for gifts. There are, for instance, numerous GPS receivers and other navigation aids available; Radio Shack has models costing as much as $1,300, many just on its Web site. While that certainly puts it out of the stocking-stuffer category, there are, of course, more-modest gifts, such as the battery-powered coin counter, which runs $20 through the holidays.

If someone on your list likes gadgets but is also handy (and has a lot of free time) you might want to send a gift subscription to Make magazine, which is published quarterly for $35 a year.

Make is Popular Mechanics redone for the age of blogs, Linux and laptops. The articles are mostly how-to pieces for decidedly cool undertakings, like taking a cabinet-style turntable from the 1940s, the sort that was a piece of living-room furniture, and turning it into an MP3 encoder for LP albums. Make has considerable coffee-table appeal, meaning you don't have to actually build anything to enjoy leafing through it. Some of the projects are vaguely tongue-in-cheek anyway, like building an electric guitar out of a cigar box.

My colleague Walt Mossberg recommends the Logitech QuickCam Fusion. This is a Webcam that attaches to your computer so you can send video of yourself to anyone you'd like to chat with; Amazon.com was offering it last week for $79.85. Walt says it's Logitech's best such model yet. He notes that the device has a feature that, if you're camera-shy, replaces your picture with that of an animated character of your choosing. Your digital replacement will blink and nod and smile along with you.

We mentioned at the outset that this is an annual guide. A couple of last year's gift ideas -- the Grado SR-125 headphones, available from many online retailers for around $150, and the Home Theater Master MX-500 remote, also online for around $85 -- are still favorites around the house, and would work just as well this year.

And if none of these appeal to you -- well, there's always that old standby, gift certificates. With music, for instance, Apple's iTunes store sells them for downloads for its you-know-what."