What’s a geek to do before Christmas? Buy a Techgoondu-approved gift to make others – and ourselves – happy of course. Granted, this year-end is shaping up to be more austere than the past few with the financial downturn already upon us. But austerity driving shouldn’t mean no giving for Christmas, right? So here’s a list of diverse geek gifts mooted by us, and we promise it is a cool one:

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Thanks to Daft Logic, exercise junkies – those who pound the pavement with their Asics and crank the gears on their Cervelos – can find out exactly how much miles and kms they are covering in Singapore – or any other country for that matter. This Google distance calculator app may not be new to some, but I tried it out for the first time last week and just loved it.

Call me impressed with blobs meet Facebook concept! Having used the new Facebook Xperia panel briefly last week, I must say this alternative mobile interface for Facebook is one of the best to date. Better than Facebook’s own insipid mobile version.

I don’t have a screenshot to show, but click on this link to see what I mean by blobs. Basically, Xperia X1 owners who have installed this free panel will be greeted by a Facebook home screen where their friends’ thumbnail photos float quiveringly in blobs around you. Click on a blob to read your friend’s latest status. Better yet, viewing inbox messages, updating status and all those other addictive Facebook chores are all neatly and intuitively collated in the panel.

And the best part is of this panel is that it is surprisingly fleetfooted, something which the other Xperia panels are not. It’s free for Xperia owners, who can go download here.

Type the words “Quantum of Solace” followed by the “Singapore” in the local Google search box (as in www.google.com.sg). Voila! A shortlist of local cinemas showing this latest Bond flick complete with screening times now appear below the first result. Click on the “More Theatres” link and you will be taken to a page with a fuller listing of more cinemas showing the movie.

Dubbed Movie Onebox, this feature was launched by Google today. And it is a concept so easy and intuitive that one hopes the search engine giant will take the idea and run with it. Restaurant, gadget and TV listing comes to mind. There is also an iGoogle gadget available for this feature. Check out this link for more info. Nice one, Google.

My latest tech splurge is not exactly high on geek-factor, so I’ve decided to call it a goondu buy instead. But boy has it saved me a ton of time since I got it, saving me from doing the goondu thing of filing loads of name cards I collect weekly.

If you are looking for an idiot-proof name card scanner, then take a serious look at the CardScan range. My guess is that this is the best in the market now. It has unerring accuracy over a broad range of card designs, will flip-flop cards that you scan so that they are right-side up, scans snappily, and can work with other applications such as Excel, Outlook and even Word’s Mail Merge feature.

Only drawback is price: the CardScan is among the most expensive available. The model I bought – CardScan Executive – left me nearly $400 poorer.

But it will be worth it if you have a voracious appetite for namecards – like I do.

Another drool-worthy phone has gone on sale in Singapore: the Sony Ericsson Xperia X1. The bad news: its hefty price tag of S$1,298 without operator contract.

The quad-band X1′s calling card lists three notable features: a 3-inch WVGA (that’s 800×480 pixels!) touch screen display, slide-out qwerty keyboard and customisable home screen. It fights, therefore, in the same arena as the HTC Touch Pro – joining the latter as one of the few touch phones to incorporate qwerty goodness in the market today. The camera resolution of 3.2 megapixel ain’t bad, but is nothing to shout at.

LIke HTC, Sony Ericsson has wisely chosen to bury the phone’s engine – Windows Mobile 6.1 – with its own snazzy shell software. It also includes the Opera web browser (yay!) in addition to Windows own Internet Explorer Mobile. And with its Sony heritage, it should shine as a music playing device.

Let’s hope the phone’s performance doesn’t get bogged down by the oodles of goodies that have been included.

From left to right: LG KC910, Sony Ericsson Cyber-shot C905and Samsung innov8

The high-end, 8-megapixel camera phones war looks set to escalate soon in Singapore. This month should see the launch of the LG KC910, while Sony Ericsson is expected to step into the ring with its Cyber-shot C905 soon, before year-end. They join the Samsung innov8, launched here last month.

Sweet? I have not laid hands on the innov8 yet, so dunno how good it is. But for these phones to replace my regular camera, the aging 8.6 megapixel Leica D-Lux 2, they better have a snappy user interface, fast write times, not too jarring noise artifacts, no shutter lag and be great at indoor shots without flash. These are typical archilles heels of today’s crop, and are many mid-end digicams’ failings too.

Win an LG 42-inch LCD TV now.
Contest closes Nov 12, 2008.

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While the tech media were busy swooning over Google Chrome this past week, I’ve been busy trying out Firefox’s newest browser version – Firefox 3.1, the curiously-dubbed Shiretoko. And I give this, still buggy (Shiretoko is still in Alpha 2, after all) and newest web browser from Mozilla, top marks.
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BlackBerry phones are cool. How they handle email is still the best in the market. BlackBerrys have fab qwerty keyboards, an intuitive interface and excellent battery life. And that free-spinning micro trackball is just a blast. And Research In Motion’s (RIM) newest BlacBerry, Bold, is the first 3G BlackBerry (correction: actually, it is the first 3.5G BlackBerry; RIM had 3G phones before this) and the best PDA phone yet from the Canadian company.

Bold was to be my next mobile phone.

I saved up for it, but eventually got tired of waiting for it to show up in shops here. I got the Nokia E71 instead. Others have gotten the iPhone and the HTC Touch.

But at last, RIM confirmed that Bold will be in Singapore by this month.

But might its launch success be stymied because many consumers here have already had their fill of gee-whiz PDA phones in the past two months?

With the E71 and Touch making grand splashes to doting reviews here earlier, and Apple’s iPhone finally landing in Singapore last month to irrationally long queues, what kind of response will Blackberry’s first 3G phone draw when it finally lands here?
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I’ve ditched iTunes, finally.

Finally, I’ve found a media player application that is quicker and better than Apple’s nice but increasingly bloated app to manage my 10k+ and growing song list.

MediaMonkey is my new favourite application for playing digital music through my music rig. And its free to boot.

This elegant app has plenty going for it: playback support for the Apple Lossless Encoder format, encoding support for the open source Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC), a fab interface where album covers are displayed in a thumbnail grid format that makes browsing one’s music collection so much more intuitive, and – perhaps most importantly – the fact that MediaMonkey is nimbler than iTunes when it comes to managing huge and growing music collections.
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