What to get a geek

Posted: Tuesday, November 25, 2008 6:06 PM by Alan Boyle

WowWee via MarketWire

Tri-bot is among the latest entrants in the robotic toy market.

It's hard to know what to buy for a science geek - so hard that we're offering geeky prizes for the best holiday gift idea.

Here's the drill: Submit your gift suggestions or reviews as comments at the bottom of this item.

I'll select a list of finalists next Tuesday, and leave the winning gift choice for you to decide in a future blog posting.

The winner as of 3 p.m. ET Dec. 8 will receive his or her choice from a grab bag of goodies, including:

• "When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions," a DVD set that chronicles NASA's glory days in high definition.
• "Hubble: Imaging Space and Time," a glorious coffee-table book about the world's favorite space telescope, written by David Devorkin and Robert W. Smith.
• "Planetology: Unlocking the Secrets of the Solar System," another coffee-table book by Tom Jones and Ellen Stofan that links together planetary phenomena seen on Earth with the wonders of other planets and moons.
• "Einstein: His Life and Universe," the paperback edition of Walter Isaacson's award-winning biography of the 20th century's best-known scientist.
• "13 Things That Don't Make Sense," Michael Brooks' book-length rundown of the most baffling scientific mysteries of our time.

Any goodies that the winner doesn't want will be offered to the second-place finisher, and so on. I just might add some goodies to sweeten the pot for the also-rans.

If this sounds familiar, that's because we did something similar a couple of years ago for our holiday geek gift guide. (The winner was the nuclear-powered spinthariscope toy.) To get yourself in the holiday mood, I'm serving up a load o' links - starting with the gift guides from previous years:

• The gift of science (2002)
• For the scientist who has everything (2002)
• Toy traditions go back to the future (2003)
• Your toys will be assimilated (2004)
• Gifts for space geeks (2004)
• Find your star (2005)
• The top gift for science geeks (2006)
• Season's readings for kids ... and for grown-ups (2007)

As for this year, there are already enough recommendations out there on the Web to fill the space shuttle's cargo bay, including:

• Gobs of gewgaws from ThinkGeek - including the Kaossilator touchpad synthesizer to release your inner theremin and a USB Doomsday Device Hub you can hook up to the Large Hadron Collider.
• A slew of scientific specimens from Educational Innovations - including a FunFlyStick static electricity wand and a simulated blood-typing kit (for the "Twilight" geek on your list).
• A bevy of board games from Late for the Sky - including Dino-opoly for dinosaur fans and Earthopoly for those who want to practice keeping track of carbon credits.
• Ranks of robots, recommended by Robot Living and Robot Snob. Robots.net is due to post its gift roundup next month, but you can check out the 2007 list for starters. WowWee has brought out a whole new line of toy robots for the holiday season, headlined by the three-wheeled, remote-controlled Tri-Bot. The only downside is that it sounds as if WowWee's robots are getting harder to hack.

If you're looking for still more ideas, the GeekDad blog is already well into the holiday season. And of course there's BBspot's Geek Gift Guide. The mother of all lists would have to be Make Magazine's photo coverage of the NYC Toy Fair. Magnet blocks! Robo-bugs! Laser strategy games, retro science kits and chemistry sets! It looks like a geek's paradise.

But enough of stealing ideas from other bloggers: Now it's time to steal ideas from you. Please feel free to add your suggestions and mini-reviews below, but make sure your comments are short and insightful. Brevity is the soul of wit, and a little bit of both will earn you extra points in this contest.

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