December 2004  Email this  Print this
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SHOPPING
Yule Haul
From satellite radio receivers to high-tech toasters that turn bread just the right shade of brown, here are 21 gift ideas that are sure to please even the pickiest on Santa's list -- plus the Web sites that will make your shopping easy. Cooking on a grand scale
Some cooks swear they don't have to measure, but real bakers know better. The Giga electronic scale, made by Soehnle ($72 at www.your-kitchen.com), measures in fractions of ounces and grams, putting the pinch-of-this, dab-of-that school to shame. The stainless-steel bowl holds six cups and sits on a sleek base with a well-placed readout.
Megazoom and moving pictures
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If the typical digital camera's 3X optical zoom just doesn't cut it for soccer-game close-ups, the 3.2-megapixel Canon PowerShot S1 IS with 10X optical zoom ($400; find a dealer at consumer.usa.canon.com) is what you need. Its comfortable grip and rotating LCD screen make this camera easy to use. Also, you can shoot high-quality movies (at 30 frames per second) with sound for up to two minutes on a 256-megabyte memory card.
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Break the ice
Leave it to a Danish designer to create a better ice scraper. Unlike those long and flimsy dollar-store gadgets, the Rosendahl scraper, by Erik Bagger, lets you get a good grip so you can blast away frozen swaths as if you were mowing your windshield ($26 at www.retromodern.com). The steel-core scraper is a dual-edge tool: Use the rubber side to tackle frost, or flip the scraper over and use the plastic edge to attack ice. Plus, it's stylish enough to keep in plain view.
No juice, no problem
The new Illuminator Wind-Up Flashlight ($28 at www.momastore.org) shines brighter than the typical flashlight because of its three light-emitting diodes. Best of all, batteries are not necessary. Just crank the handle for one minute and the light will beam for an hour.
Wood makes it good
A keyboard is just a keyboard -- unless its frame and keys are crafted from exotic, red-and-black-striped cocobolo wood from Central America. That is just one of the 110 types of wood, from ash to zebrawood, used by Wood Contour (www.woodcontour.com) to make computer keyboards, monitor frames and stands, and mice. (The typing action on our keyboard was smooth and solid.) Complete sets range from $5,450 to more than $10,000 -- mice alone start at a mere $175.
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