IFWERANTHEWORLD & MAKE LOVE NOT PORN

Cindy Gallop is a game changer in traditional business models and start-ups. She believes you have to change something to where it makes you feel uncomfortable to truly be different and potentially successful. She follows this philosophy with her two start-ups, If We Ran the World and Make Love Not Porn.

Gallop believes that “”in order to predict the future, you have to invent it.” Gallop took this idea and created her two start-ups with the intent that these ideas will carry weight into the future and will change the game in their own industries.

Noah Kagan

APP SUMO

Noah Kagan came to the stage at Big Omaha to share what controls his happiness: wealth, health and love. He did so by showing his failures – and explaining how people can learn from his failures to find happiness.
Wealth
When Kagan is doing what he wants and having fun, he is far happier than he is when focusing on making money. Now he spends time and money on improving himself.
Health
Kagan believes having a healthy lifestyle is necessary to improve your business and your personal life. This involves eating well, sleeping, exercising, and “having people around you that you want to have around you.”
Love
Kagan’s focus surrounding love is to motivate the audience to surround themselves with great people. Family, friends and relationships are extremely important in one’s life, and by surrounding yourselves by these people, you will be happier. He suggested that if you are unable to be around the people you love the most, put them in the background of your phone, have photos of them around, or give them a call.

“In terms of fulfillment – health, wealth and love – I feel amazing. But you have to keep doing what you did to get there,” said Kagan.

Micah Baldwin

GRAPHICLY

While Micah wasn’t originally supposed to talk at Big Omaha, he did an amazing job. He encouraged everyone to focus on themselves and what makes them happy. “Why, as entrepreneurs, don’t we smile more?” Baldwin asked. We focus on the companies that we start or work for, but the majority of us might not focus on ourselves enough. Baldwin then walked attendees through seven tips to find happiness in the startup world:
• Be selfish
• Gift yourself
• Fail purposefully
• Find “easy”
• Join life
• Be happy
• “Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.” -Picasso

If you spend too much of your time sitting down, connected and working, then you get burnt out too soon. Go outside and do something exciting once or twice a day to take a break from emails, phone calls, tweets and computers in general. By focusing on how you feel, you’ll become more productive with your start-up or the company you work with.

Gentry Underwood

MAILBOX

Gentry Underwood co-founded Mailbox, which was acquired by Dropbox less than a month after it launched. The public demand was so high they had to enforce a waiting list. Although the majority of talks at Big Omaha were about sticking with your start-up and not selling, Underwood recognized his customer’s needs were outgrowing his team’s capacity. “Even though we might be able to raise a bunch of money,” he said, “we weren’t able to put together a big enough team fast enough. Mailbox fits Dropbox’s mission.”

Since then, his team continues to seek a more user-friendly mail system that could be even better than Mailbox. Underwood has a bright mind, and he’ll continue to come up with great products and services to better the mobile industry.

THINKQACTION

To start day two, our emcee took a break to offer his own story. Neves has been committed to supporting start-ups since his 6th grade teacher picked him as the lead role in The Nutcracker. Through the challenges Neves has experienced, he’s learned that whenever he has wanted to give up, that’s when he needed to push harder. With that, he has chosen to coach and support start-ups, offering them inspiration and creating an atmosphere for them to develop their ideas. Neves is the CEO for THINKQACTION and co-founded The Ignition Lab, which offers support and coaching to tech entrepreneurs.

Marc Ecko

MARC ECKO ENTERPRISES

Marc Ecko started his presentation with some Notorious B.I.G. and a cocktail – something you wouldn’t expect before 10 a.m. at Big Omaha. Ecko took the collaboration of hip hop and business to a whole new level by uncovering the ten rules of business in The Notorious B.I.G.’s song, ‘Ten Crack Commandments‘. His presentation of the ten rules of business was both educational and obviously entertaining.

1. Never let no one know how much dough you hold.
2. Never let ‘em know your next move, don’t you know bad boys move in silence or violence?
3. Never trust nobody.
4. Never get high on your own supply.
5. Never sell no crack where you rest at.
6. That G** d*mn credit, dead it.
7. Keep your family and business separated.
8. Never keep no weight on you.
9. Stay the f*** from police.
10. If you ain’t got the clientele, say hell no.

Diana Kander

EWING MARION KAUFFMAN FOUNDATION

Kander discussed the ‘birds and the bees’ of entrepreneurship. As Kander put it, she was six months pregnant and obviously had babies on the mind, so what could be more relevant than to identify how much babies and start-ups have in common?

Kander stated that “there’s a fundamental flaw in how we think about start-ups.” She identified that most people consider themselves a start-up (like Dwolla), before they even give their own ideas a decent amount of time to develop. Like having a baby, start-ups need to have a great deal of research and planning in order for it to be successful. This takes time. This discussion was great because with a high fail rate in start-ups, entrepreneurs need to step back and think through all aspects of their idea to create a great product.

Dave McClure

500 STARTUPS

If you weren’t able to be at Big Omaha or watch it live, the conversation on Twitter would have told you that Dave McClure’s points were being drowned out with curse words and offensive slurs. McClure’s point was to convey that “everything sucks” in the tech industry because there are a lot of areas of improvement, but since they are not billion-dollar ideas necessarily, they get forgotten. However, with the amount of unnecessary cursing, this point wasn’t received well by the crowd at Big Omaha.

BACK TO THE ROOTS

Alejandro and Nikhil, founders of Back to the Roots, came from an investment banking and consulting background at Berkeley. The idea for their business started in a business ethics class with the idea of growing mushrooms from coffee ground waste. They started with the sale of mushrooms, but as they noticed potential for a new concept, BTTR created a mushroom kit allowing customers to grow mushrooms from a box in less than 10 days. Today their mission statement is to “make food personal again” and their kits are sold nationwide.

Alejandro and Nikhil shared lessons they have learned since their launch: Be transparent, observe how consumers react to your products and create valuable partnerships between the brand and the customer, treating the relationship like you are both experiencing the “journey” together.

Catherine Rohr

DEFY VENTURES, INC

If the audience was looking for some true and honest inspiration, Catherine Rohr certainly came equipped. Rohr found her inspiration during a prison visit with a friend in New York. A lot of the prisoners she met had great entrepreneurial skills. Realizing her own stereotypes of prisoners, she wanted to help demolish the public’s opinion that prisoners were all “crazy locked-up animals.” Her idea for Defy Ventures was to utilize the skills prisoners have, make them legitimate and help them do something important with their lives.

One of the most intriguing questions she asked the audience to participate in (not answer out loud) was, “If you were known for the worst thing you ever did, what would your life be like?” Rohr asked this to make people realize that having that as your primary identity is not the way to live. She wanted to create a world for some of these individuals to live in to improve their lives by showing their true potential.

Anil Dash

THINKUP

“We must find meaning in the time we spend online.” We all know it to be true; we spend the majority of our lives online. Dash even went to say, “I’ve spent more time in the past two years reading my Twitter stream than to my kid.” His point was not to have others spend less time online necessarily, but to find the meaning in the time we spend online and understand the value of it.

Dash therefore created ThinkUp. ThinkUp is an app that helps people get more meaning out of the time they spend online. It gives you access to your data by allowing you to search through your social networks and find old tweets or posts. The app also lets you know how your participation makes a difference on the network. All of these features within ThinkUp backs up Dash’s intent to find more meaning in your time spent online.

Ben Milne

DWOLLA

If you need a blunt and honest opinion about your start-up or your attitude toward business, Ben Milne is your guy. Milne is the founder of Dwolla, an online payment network that takes the power away from traditional payment methods that are costly to businesses. Today, Dwolla moves more than $1 billion each year.

Milne is a Midwest guy who believes that the majority of talent he is looking for is right here in the heartland. A lot of people in the Midwest believe that the only way for them to succeed is to move to the coasts – something Milne stressed just isn’t true. His strongest point at Big Omaha (as well as Thinc Iowa) is the advice he gives to fellow entrepreneurs and start-ups. This advice includes investing in sleep, surrounding yourself with great people, keeping the manners that the Midwest possesses and staying away from what is “normal” and “standard.”

At the end of the day, Milne was right about everything he spoke on. While some of it was harsh, his points at Big Omaha were dead-on and a great way to finish day one.

Speakers came from all over to share their thoughts, inspiration, advice, and their own stories of how they got where they are.

Tony Conrad

ABOUT.ME

Tony Conrad is both a founder and an investor. He is the founder/CEO of Sphere and about.me, as well as a part of True Ventures, Investor Automattic (WordPress), MakerBot, and Blue Bottle. Conrad’s focus at Big Omaha was to motivate its attendees not to start companies, but to start movements. He mentioned that people shouldn’t be just thinking about how to start a business, but instead think about how it will change the world. He asked the audience to ask themselves, “How does my product impact the world?” and “How does this product capture imagination?” This was a great point. Customers are looking for the back story to businesses today and motivation for why they should do business with one versus another.

Megan Casey

PACK

Megan Casey is the founder/CEO of Pack, an online community of profiles for dogs. Prior to Pack, Casey co-founded Squidoo, a community site that allows users to create pages about subjects that interest them. After working at Squidoo for seven years and getting “comfortable,” Casey relayed quite a few points to the audience that we should strive to be creative, create new and exciting things, and not allow ourselves to be bored with what we are doing. The last thing we should focus on, according to Casey, is making a profit. While we want to create something that is profitable, she said, that shouldn’t be our primary goal.

Peter Hudson

ITRIAGE

When there is a passionate story behind why an individual started a business, I’m always all ears. From a young age to his adult days, Hudson has witnessed his father have a grand mal seizure, attended an all-Spanish school in Guatemala, spent time as a rafting guide, ski coach and tree trimmer, practiced medicine in Africa and treated gang members in Oakland, CA. When he brought his wife in to the ER and experienced what it was like to be a clueless and frightened patient, Hudson found a need in the medical industry and created iTriage.

iTriage is an app that helps patients answer the questions, “What can I have?” and “Where should I go?” This helps lower the costs of healthcare and close the gap between patients and healthcare providers.

What is CISPA and how does it affect you?

SOPA had focused more on intellectual property infringement, while CISPA’s intended purpose is to look at user information to track potential cyber attacks in real-time. Bill sponsors argue that CISPA would protect the United States from foreign hackers as cyber-warfare concerns grow.

CISPA enables private sector firms, such as AT&T, Google, Reddit, and Dropbox to search through user information within documents stored on a cloud, in emails, and even text messages. These firms would then have the ability to share information with each other, as well as with federal agencies.

The debate here lies within how this process works. Firms and federal agencies are able to do this without a warrant, or let the individual know that their privacy is being infringed upon, as long as a cyber security threat has been breached, or believed to be. The legislation is vague as to what a “cyber threat” is, loosely defining it as “efforts to deny access to or degrade, disrupt, or destroy a system or network of a government or private entity”.

Essentially, any type of “threat” discussion would provide private firms and government entities with enough probable cause to move forward with looking into a user’s information and then sharing it. Although an amendment was added to the bill that required the anonymity of user data if the government were to turn information over to private firms, the same is not required of private companies when they communicate to federal agencies.

So now what?

Unlike SOPA, many tech giants are backing CISPA in hopes that the legislation will provide better regulation guidelines when dealing with cyber attacks. Annually, cyber attacks are incredibly costly, and of the 56 organizations reviewed in this study, experience an average of 102 attacks per week. So, it’s no surprise as to why tech companies are jumping on board. CISPA would essentially allow these organizations a better way to monitor, and communicate with government agencies, without having to go through other legal hoops to prevent these attacks.

The bill is currently on its way to be discussed in the Senate and users, as well as some tech firms such as Reddit, are taking another stand for users’ privacy rights.

We want to hear from you. Are you for or against CISPA? Why?

Not only was I concerned that my SxSW moustache wouldn’t be epic enough, I was worried it would be too focused on Social Media and entrepreneurship – after all, that’s mostly the news that comes out of it. After looking at the schedule of sessions, however, my trepidation quickly turned to excitement. Not only were there sessions on topics I was already fairly experienced in, there were sessions on topics I’d never gotten a chance to really dive into. Where else can you listen to a lecture about the 100 Year Starship and disruptive education techniques in Africa? Therein lies the biggest benefit of SxSW for a developer – access to experts in a huge range of topics.

If lectures given to big crowds aren’t your thing,  there are half-day workshops that dive much more deeply into technical topics, and even one on one mentoring opportunities that let you have a quick conversation with professionals from an eclectic mix of backgrounds. Just look at the official schedule and you’ll see how packed-full every day is.

That leads to my first tip for the first time visitor to SxSW, particularly the tech-minded ones. Pay attention not only to when sessions are, but also where they are. Many of the tech-heavy sessions, particularly the longer workshops, are located a couple miles from the main convention center. While the shuttle system provided by the event organizers works quite well, you’re fighting a losing battle if you’re trying to get into a session at the convention center that starts less than an hour after a session at the AT&T Conference Center.

My second recommendation is to make sure that you RSVP for any session that you’re interested in attending if it’s required. Unlike the party RSVPs, which simply get you on a list, RSVPs for sessions guarantee you a spot. If you don’t manage to get a spot, however, it’s still worth trying to get into a session. I know that I was able to walk in to at least two workshops at the AT&T Center even though the site claimed they were full. This might not be as successful at sessions at the convention center where lines can begin to form up to an hour before the start time.

Don’t feel like you have to book every hour of your trip. Some of the best conversations can happen at the little recharging stations scattered around the convention center. I learned quite a bit at the Mashery Circus Mashimus and also scored a free bloody mary. Along with free time during the day, be sure to hit as many of the parties at night as you can. Even if you’re not a social butterfly, the social lubrication of a little bit of alcohol makes conversations held at night just as, if not more, interesting than the structured ones during the day.

Have you been to SxSW? Do you have any tips for overcoming FOMO (fear of missing out), and just relaxing and absorbing as much as possible? Are you a developer that learned something new this year or in a previous trip to Austin? Leave a comment and share your knowledge.

Women today have it better than ever, right? I mean, just ask Oprah. Or Arianna Huffington. Or Sonia Sotomayor. Or Taylor Swift. (Sorry, fellow feminists, I can’t help it. I love her.)

But seriously. Each of these women is making history. And they’re doing it in male-dominated industries by simply being themselves. We, as women, are breaking barriers in almost every field.

So… why isn’t anyone marketing to us?

“Really?” you say. “I see ads with women in them literally all of the time.”

Yes, but as Kery Cooper, COO of ModCloth, stated in her most recent SXSW presentation, who are they really marketing to? When’s the last time you saw an ad targeting a 16 to 30 year old woman that wasn’t beauty or “mommy” related?  Cooper points out that if companies aren’t telling us to be prettier, better moms, or better wives, they aren’t telling us anything at all.

Consider the “Justin Bieber effect.” He’s made a killing off of teenage girls spending money at concerts, on perfume, on clothes. But these girls are never marketed to in their own right. They’re discounted as spending their parents’ money and by the time they turn 20, marketers have moved onto the next tween craze.

Then there’s the middle years. Pinterest has dominated the social media scene for 20-something women for the past three years. It’s the third-largest social platform after Facebook and Twitter and users spend more time on it per session than any other platform. Yet it’s largely dismissed by marketers as a “women’s platform.” In fact, there are a slew of recent start-ups like “Manterest” claiming to be “the male version of Pinterest.”

The point is, why are 16-30 year old women being discounted as having real buying power, when in reality, they make up one of the largest mainstream markets? Consider the following cases:

• Around one-third of people on Facebook and Twitter have made purchases based on recommendations made from these platforms. Compare that with the 80 percent of women who have made purchases based on blogs from other women (source: Blogher).
• Social location apps and online dating sites that fail do so largely because they ignore the comfort level that women inherently crave with in-person dating. Consider Tindr. It’s blowing up the online dating scene due to one factor: It was built women-first in its functionality, features, and location segmentation.

So why do these platforms work?

They allow women to advocate. Women are inherently sharers. They use products, date people, and buy merchandise their friends recommend. The most successful platforms today give women an opportunity to interact with one another person to person.

1. They welcome input. More brands are catching onto this, giving users the opportunity to comment and vote on new designs and products. (The trick with this? You have to actually follow through with new and discounted products.)
2. They let women define the product itself. The Internet has given women the capability to reinvent themselves every day. Bobbi Brown understands this and has incorporated it directly into their branding that make-up is self-expression rather than a corrective measure. The result is a community of frank, honest discussions between the brand and its users focused on empowerment.
3. They focus on story-telling. In other words, they allow their users to share content in both long and short form. Let’s look at two big hits within the past year. The Hunger Games used fan-made Instagram “movies.” The Lizzie Bennett Diaries is created a Tumblr account from Lizzie herself, giving fans insight and content into the character as a person. Both succeed because they gave their female fans insight and the authority to create.

So who’s doing it best? One word: ModCloth. Why? The fashion site allows users to upload photos of themselves (with their dress size and measurements) in reviews. The comments in those reviews? ModCloth takes them into account for future designs. They give shout-outs to their online community in offline advertising. They allow users to “be the buyer”, voting on dresses the site should or shouldn’t carry. “Bloggers of the Moment” get dresses named after them. Heck, ModCloth even allow users to create the dresses themselves.

The result? One-third of site visitors come to the site at least 10 times per day.

The point is that ModCloth has created an intensely-passionate community simply by giving them what they need – a space to share. You want a brand that will last through the next ten years? Follow their lead. After all, women aren’t anonymous anymore – and they’re going to reward the companies who realize this.

Make Every Word Count

No user wants to scroll through a large paragraph if they can help it and mobile devices easily turn what was a five-line paragraph on desktop into 15 lines on mobile. Get to the core of your message while maintaining an appropriate tone by trimming any superfluous introductory copy or words. The result should communicate your message without consuming large amount of vertical space.

Break Up Copy

Long paragraphs of text are always hard to read. Use the following techniques to visually break up blocks, making copy easier to navigate and read.

• Add clear, informative headings and subheadings frequently
• Provide spaces between paragraphs
• Use lists and/or bullets where possible

Integrate Keywords

Search Engine Optimization is a veritable tenant of web best practices – meta data, description tags, and keyword should be applied to all pages. However, the copy on a page also plays a role. Make efforts to weave powerful, important keywords into page copy to promote search engine rankings.

Move Content onto Separate Pages

While the ideal solution to long paragraphs of mobile copy is to condense and edit, this is not always possible. Some information simply must represented in its entirely. To avoid exhausting, long mobile pages, dedicate a separate page for each large section of content. Providing links to these pages via buttons or navigation will allow a use to see the full range of content and view only that which they are interested in.

Test

There is no better way to gauge the success of your mobile copy than to see it inaction. If possible, ensure time for internal audiences to preview your copy in site templates prior to launching the page. At minimum, try writing copy in a word editor window with a similar width to a mobile phone. The sooner you work within these restraints, the more likely you are to work with them.

So, as we embark on 2013, what innovations do we expect to make an impact for you or your business this year?  Here are our best predictions for what 2013 will bring.

In tech:

• Access keeps it rolling. Wifi availability is no longer a “value-add.” Consumers expect it at every turn. Driving this need is both the prevalence of smartphones and tablets (the majority of which are wifi-only devices), as well as the growth of public wifi as a utility of competition in the telecom industry. From Google fiber to 4G mobile broadband, we’ll see faster and broader web access abound in 2013, and in doing so, pave the way for all the advances that follow. – Ryan, Analyst
• Tap-based interfaces explode, as the line between tablets and traditional desktops continues to fade. As tap-enabled desktops such as the Dell XPS 12 continue to hit the market, designers of web-based interfaces can no longer assume these users operate with the accuracy of a mouse and pointer. Our tip to you? Embrace this evolution and make sure all instances of your web presence feature large, generously-spaced tap elements and support touch and swipe events. – Ryan, Lead UX Designer
• Apple falls from its tablet throne. In two years, Apple has lost more than 30 percent of its market share in the tablet arena. What’s more, Android-powered tablets have out-shipped Apple in the past six of eight quarters.  And, as the division between Apple and Google widens, the Cupertino-based tech giant will need a major boost from its next generation of iPads to climb its way back to the top. – Eric, Project Manager
• The “smart watch” gets real. Whether Apple is cooking up an iPod Nano-like device or something closer to the Pebble, 2013 will definitely see a low-energy consumption, wrist-worn smart device. For a cost similar to most modern watches (roughly $150) you’ll be able to view text messages, emails, incoming calls, a pedometer, music controls and a myriad of other apps on your wrist. If the Apple rumors prove true, we suspect that Siri® will also be wristwatch-enabled. Wearable computing devices are a critical area of future-tech to watch (pun intended). – Bryan, Developer
• NFC (near field communication) finally gains real traction in the States. Firms that have seen NFC success overseas are infiltrating the US (such as UK firm Proxama), and others are making international headway. Samsung and Google NFC-enabled devices are gaining market share. Developers and manufacturers have NFC applications poised for disruption.  All things considered, 2013 looks to be the year of the perfect storm in NFC. Sensor technology will continue to disrupt the learning and gaming industries. Leap, for example, has introduced a different way for developers and designers to create with its ability to bring gesture control to any computer. Microsoft is also expected to announce its Xbox 720 and Kinect 2.0 at E3 this year, with speculators noting major hardware and software upgrades, including better tracking (four players at once) and accuracy. – Kristi, Analyst

In business:

• You move to the cloud. That is, if you haven’t yet. Even with several, high-profile outages in 2012, 2013 will see more and more companies, especially startups, offloading their infrastructure needs to cloud solutions like Amazon Web Services. Is it right for you? Read up. Think about hedging your bets by spreading your sites and apps across multiple cloud solutions and taking a look at the services offered by companies like Rightscale to help manage these solutions for you. – Clint, Lead Developer
• You adopt an all-screens approach to digital marketing. While an excellent desktop website presence will still be crucial to any organization’s marketing mix, organizations will have to offer their customers a quality experience on whatever device they’re choosing to use. A multi-platform, multi-screen strategy will be essential to business success in 2013. Responsive websites will solidify their placement as the new standard. We also expect to see more companies diving head-first into building robust, native applications, however, seeking to hang their hat on their apps as the flagships of their digital presence, versus the web. – Dan, Developer
• Big data buries us this year, if we let it. The advent and rapid evolution of the web has allowed us to see new data sources come online in droves. Your organization is likely swimming in data that could help pave the way for a fruitful year. Start with the basics. Are you collecting your web and apps analytics data? Gather it. Any action that a customer takes with your organization should be captured if possible. Filter and prepare it. Determine what data is uniquely valuable to your business. Toss out the rest. Analyze what you’ve got left. Use the results to make decisions to improve your business. Put the resources behind this process to automate what you can and be ready to scale it. Repeat. Prosper. – Katie, Director
• The line between “advertising” and “engagement” disappears completely. Social advertising platforms have proven their worth in 2012. These platforms now clearly have a way to make money – and with it, they have the attention of investors. But in 2013, will they still have the attention of their users? This year, marketers will need to get creative in ensuring they’re part of the conversation, rather than interrupting it. Interruptions will be ignored. The most popular accounts will be those that realize advertising and engagement go hand-in-hand when it comes to social media. – Sarah, Analyst
• Executive leadership structures get a shakeup, as we see CMOs gain authority. Traditionally, the Chief Information Officer holds the technology purse strings within an organization, but in 2013, we’ll see a definitive shift in power and budget. You can expect less and less separation between the information technology and marketing spheres. As tech tools become increasingly easy to understand and implement, the Chief Marketing Officer will have to step up their game, and as a result, attain more decision-making authority in shaping their organization’s future. – Lawrence, Business Development
• And you can forget about “new” media. 2013 will be the year that we all come to the realization that people who open their mail also have Facebook accounts, and people who watch TV commercials also have mobile devices. It’s no longer “traditional” versus “new,” or “digital” versus “print.” The best companies will be those that embrace and champion a completely integrated marketing message, and seek to deliver that message across multiple platforms (complementing each other), as the most effective and efficient way to communicate with their customers. – Jon, Founder & Managing Partner

Do you agree with our predictions? Is there something you think will have a major impact in 2013 that we’ve completely missed the boat on? Let us know in the comments below.

Although this is the “happiest” season, it is also the most stressful.  Long checkout lines, the worry of being able to please, and high price tags for the latest high tech toy can be overwhelming.

Yes, iPads, Nexus, Kindles, Suface tablets, and Lytro cameras will be amongst the most sought-out products this season. But just in case those products are out of stock as you approach the shelf, we have compiled our top 11 tech gadgets for the 2012 holiday season – at every price point.

The Practical Gift

Stress Ball – $19.99

A deadline is approaching and nothing seems to be going the right way. No worries. Plug this stress ball into the computer and take out your anger from that project without really damaging anything.

USB Wall Plug – $16 – $21

Nothing seems to charge directly from an outlet anymore – and outlet converters are so small that they can easily be misplaced. This plug may not be the most extravagant of gifts, but it’s extremely pragmatic for everyday use.

USB Negative Scanner – $35

In a world before Instagram, there was film. It was difficult to develop – and the only way of transferring the image into a digital format was by scanning a developed image. This USB Negative Scanner allows you to take previously-developed film strips and turn them into digital files immediately, preserving memories before the days of Instagram.

Seagate GoFlex Satellite Mobile Wireless – $180

Finding a way to preserve the information from your phone or tablet before it crashes is imperative… and syncing with clouds might not always provide the best solution. The Seagate GoFlex Satellite Mobile Wireless hard drive lets you connect with your external hard drive over a secure wireless network, backing up all your files automatically.

Cisco Linksys E4200 – $169

Not all routers are the same. Typical routers can leave dead or weak zones with slow Internet connectivity in certain areas of a house. Cisco Linksys E4200 holds a wider range and withstands continuous heavy data transfers without disconnecting. The entire router was designed to maximize streaming, file transfers and wireless gaming through a smooth network by limiting interference with the data. The router also includes the Cisco Connect Desktop Software that enables the router’s admin to control and secure the network in an easy-to-understand format.

Nest Thermostat – $249

Smart homes are not only becoming realistic, they’re becoming more affordable. This Nest Thermostat enables you to control your home’s temperature via your phone. Not only that, but the Nest remembers temperature patterns of the home and automatically sets the preferences after a few weeks to create the prefect temperate environment throughout the day.

Robotic Lawn Mower – $2699.95

For the extremely hot days where going outside to mow the lawn seems unbearable, power up the Robotic Lawn Mower, sit back, and relax. The bot is programmed to the landscape around your house and just needs a full charge to manicure your lawn.

For The Tech-A-Holics

Lumia 920 & Nexus 4 – $99 & $299

Looking for phones that aren’t under the Apple brand? Look no further. Nokia’s Lumia 920 runs on Windows 8’s sleek tile design and is made from scratch-resistant Gorilla glass that has been tempered to read easily even under sunlight. The Lumia 920 syncs with Sky Drive to back up all your files, features NFC connectivity and hosts wireless charging abilities.

Google’s Nexus 4, on the other hand, utilizes Android’s powerful Jellybean operating system. This allows for seamless integration with Google for instant answers, as well as top-notch security features such as face recognition and movement. In the Nexus’ core is a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro processor with 2GB of RAM that allows a user to play a game while having various apps open – without having anything crash or slow down.

Lego Mindstorm – $279

Computer programming is becoming an essential basic knowledge. This Lego set not only allows kids to build their own mini robot, but teaches them how to program different movements through the Lego program.

Parrot AR Drone Quadricopter 2.0- $299

When this toy helicopter was revealed at CES this year, it was love at first sight. The Parrot AR Drone is controlled via a smart phone or tablet and is enabled with an HD camera that’s able to stream footage right onto the device that’s controlling it. The Drone also has a stabilization system that takes into consideration the environment that it’s flying in. To top it all off, the Drone is also equipped to play augmented reality games using targets included in the kit.

MakerBot – $2,199

3D printing at your fingertips! Want to recreate the toy car on your desk to give to your office mate? MakerBot has widely become one of the “best quality meets price point” 3D printers in the market. The best part about MakerBot? The 3D printer is compact and can easily fit on any desk.

These are just some of the products that we’re the most excited about this season. Of course there are other products that we’re daydreaming about, like Neiman Marcus’ Jet Pack or Google’s self-driving car, or even these key-board embedded pants.  We’ll save those for our list of daydreams-come-true items.

Let us know what products you’re excited for this year or what item you’re dreaming about!