Great Presents for Your Favorite Geek

Although everything is online in the Web 2.0 world, there are still a few brick-and-mortar places in Silicon Valley where you can walk in and experience the kind of last-minute gratification that I typically require for the holidays. So, I wondered, what's hot this year with the technorati, what should I go check out at the stores, and where?

I asked around.

Geeks like to build things, and a lot of people I know in the Bay Area seem to relish the idea of scavenging through big, rambling superstores for cool components.

Now, when you think of a big, rambling superstore for geeks in Silicon Valley, one word comes to mind: "Fry's, Fry's, Fry's," said Samba developer Jeremy Allison. "There is no one else. The back-page ads in the Mercury News are like geek porn."

Of course, if you're on a budget, there's Allan Steel in Redwood City -- a great place to rummage for old cameras and motor controllers -- or HSC Electronic Supply in Santa Clara, a surplus store with some hot deals.

But my personal favorite is Sunnyvale's Weird Stuff Warehouse. It's more retro-chic cool than bleeding edge. Right now they're offering MS-DOS on 5 1/4 inch disks for $20, or you can get glass-paneled Compaq 7000 series server racks, four for $1000.

"It's like the graveyard of hundreds of long-gone dot coms and has lots of neat tech pieces," says hardware hacker Joe Grand.

This being Silicon Valley, most of the things that people want don't exactly work as stocking stuffers.

If you're not up for a build-your-own holiday robot, Grand recommended the Isaac Joule Aerotic bicycle, and Allison said he is lusting after the Nokia N810 handheld computer with built-in GPS.

Trolltech Chief Technology Officer Benoit Schillings says that Wi-Fi on airplanes, or perhaps some kind of low-cost genetic screening service -- 23andme for $23 -- would be great gifts. Thanks to a wireless provider called Aircell, which is promising to bring 3MHz Wi-Fi to American Airlines and Virgin America next year, he may get at least one of those wishes.

Cloudmark's Adam O'Donnell says he'd take either peace on earth or a 3G iPhone. Both seem equally likely to occur by Dec. 25.

As for me, I hope Santa brings me the TV-B-Gone, a universal remote that will turn off any television.

Now, I have some shopping to do.