Inventions for Mother's Day
Trophy Tech
When spring's Hallmark holidays hit, America airs out its gender stereotypes. Moms get heart-shaped baubles and pink stuff; dads get gadgets and tools.
This year, fight the status quo for Mother's Day. The odds are good she'll like it: Sixty-four percent of women polled by the Consumer Electronics Association said they'd prefer a digital camera over half-carat stud earrings. What do women want? "Anything that keeps them connected," says Karen Chupka of CEA.
Kids and dads are catching on, and retailers are falling in line. In the past two years, Amazon.com has seen a spike in electronics sales at Mother's Day. Now the holiday is front and center on the electronics home page. But why rely on retailers when my formerly technophobic mom, Cathy, can critique our list of mom-friendly items?
NOKIA 3650 PHONE (sold by AT&T, T-Mobile, and Cingular; $150 to $200 after rebate). Stats show that women favor digital cameras and cellphones above other gadgetry. How about both? Snap and send straight from the phone via E-mail or to other gadgets via infrared or Bluetooth. While most cellphone buttons are squishy, these are clicky, so thumbing in text is easy for novices.
Mom says: "They're too expensive, but they're cool."
OCTOPUS LAPTOP CASE ($76, www.casauri.com). Most laptop bags look like carry-on luggage. Casauri's are bright and beautiful, in colors like red, grape, and kiwi. Soft vinyl wipes clean; mesh pockets hold lots of extras. Matching PDA cases are $32.
Mom says: Liked the kiwi because it "looked taupe-ish."
ADOBE PHOTOSHOP ALBUM ($50, www.adobe.com). Moms tend to be the keepers of photos, digital or otherwise. This software sucks digital images out of everything short of your brain and lets you sort, cross-reference, edit, and display them. Generate online albums, calendars, and musical slide shows with a few clicks. The best feature: a timeline that lets you navigate swiftly through the years.
Mom says: "I don't like to fool around with that stuff."
DIGITAL ELPH COACH EDITION ($600, www.usa.canon.com). We didn't get a working test model from Canon, but it hardly matters. The gimmick here is the limited-edition Coach bag--a wristlet, of course; neck straps are so passe. The camera, a PowerShot S400, is a catch as well: 4 megapixels, 3x optical zoom, and a superhard, scratch-resistant finish.
Mom says: "Ostentatious."
PANASONIC SV-AV20 ($300, www.panasonic.com). It has the look and heft of a make-up compact, but what's inside is more versatile than beige eye shadow: a digital camera for stills or short videos, an MP3 player, and an audio recorder. The $400 AV30 model has a cradle that lets the device record an hour of TV for playback at leisure. And it couldn't be any cuter--even if it were heart shaped.
Mom says: "Wow. I tell you, the future, it's going to be really strange."
This story appears in the May 12, 2003 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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