Christmas Tech Shopping Tips - Entertainment

The perfect Christmas gift is something the recipient will love and treasure everyday while still being affordable for the giver.  Tech gifts are perfect for Christmas, if chosen wisely.

There are countless gift options in a wide range of categories for the novice to the savvy including:

• Entertainment
• Mobile Computing
• Gaming
• Home, Car and Personal
• Connectivity

Entertainment
Jamaicans live to entertain and be entertained.  We like movies, TV and especially music and we like it all loud enough to entertain the neighbors not just next door, but down the block as well.  Thanks to Courts and Flow, it may well be a merry Christmas.

From the affordable to the luxurious, headphones, component sets (stereo systems) and flat screen TV’s are all great gifts.

Courts offers a range of iSound headphones to suit every taste.  Trendsetters like Beats by Dre.  Another option is House of Marley headphones; they are environmentally friendly, have great sound quality and are inspired by the life and legend of Bob Marley.


Just about everyone can use a good set of headphones so that they can enjoy their music, podcasts, audio books or really just about any sound, privately.   But when being really loud is actually the preference, a component set can deliver clear sound across a room, or across a neighborhood, if desired.

Clearly, sound quality is the first and most important determining factor, but also consider enhanced features like iOS docs for seamless iPhone, iPod or iPad integration, USB playback of music on flash drives and wireless connectivity via Bluetooth or WiFi for cord free streaming to remote speakers.

A flat screen TV is a sizable gift - from 16” to 60” - but a well received one.  To compliment the wide range of component sets at Courts, the retailer also has on display a wide range of TV’s.  Samsung is the hot brand, with Sony and LG also offering excellent options.

Forego the expensive and unnecessary 3D options and look for smart TV’s with internet connectivity, popular apps pre-installed and USB playback to transform the TV into a large photo album.

For bonus points, get USB drives as stocking stuffers.  And like batteries for toys on Christmas morning, consider giving the gift of connectivity and HD cable.  After all, what is the point of having an HD TV without HD content or having a smart TV that doesn’t have internet access.  Thankfully, both issues can be solved with gift certificates from Flow.

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Tech Time: Protecting Your Phone

If you are prone to losing your Blackberry, RIM has found a solution for you; of course, iPhone found it first.

Later this year, you will be able to install Blackberry Protect and app which will help you “wipe, lock or locate” a lost device with the help of your PC (sorry Mac users). To make it work, you’ll be required to download and install the Blackberry protect app to your handset and your PC.

You can use the programme to help you locate a lost phone in a couple of ways. First, you can view the location of the phone on a map or your can activate the “loud ring” feature which will override any prior audio setting which might have been on the phone. If someone else has found the phone, you can send them a message – a custom message you compose can appear on the phone’s screen, even if the phone is locked.

Speaking of locked, if you forgot to lock you phone before losing it, use Blackberry Protect to lock it remotely or, for an extra level of protection, wipe all the data on the phone. Wiping all your data on the phone itself does not mean that you have lost all your data. Blackberry Connect allows you to back up you contacts, calendar, tasks, browser bookmarks and text messages over WiFi or 3G to the cloud, making the information instantly accessible if you wish to migrate the data to a new device.

These features are all similar to Find My iPhone successfully introduced by Apple earlier this year. Though the Find My iPhone app is free from the iTunes store, it only works with a US$99 Mobile Me subscription. Regardless of platform, these “wipe, lock and locate” features only work if the phone is on AND connected via WiFi or 3G. BES (Blackberry Enterprise Server) users, iPhone users and adventurous third-party software adopter already have access to these features, but the introduction of Blackberry Protector in the fourth quarter will provide a sense of security for the causal BB user – that is, if they don’t mind all their data being stored in the cloud.

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