I have always maintained that an eBook reader makes a lot of economical and ecological sense. Reading books in their electronic form means that you are buying and creating that much less demand for paper and ink books, saving trees and other resources used in the manufacturing process.

Then there is the fact that an eBook can be cheaper to buy and always easier to carry than the hundreds of books it can contain! Also the benefit of being able to not just read books but, magazines, broadsheets and tabloids on there; and being able to refer to the dictionary and encyclopedia while you’re at it!

The top recommended eBook readers are the Amazon Kindle Touch, the Amazon Kindle Fire, the Barnes & Noble Nook Simple, the Kobo and the Sony eBook readers.

Features to look for I am looking for something that has a lot of content available from the dedicated service that the reader is available from. Then I have to figure out whether I want the e-ink technology (lets you read easily in the sunlight) or the LCD screen. Then I have to figure out whether it is a touch screen that I want or not. Battery life is another crucial factor to look at. Another thing to look at is the additional features that the reader has: does it have audio? Does it support 3G? Browsing? Can I listen to music as well?

The Amazon Kindle has three versions: The Basic Kindle (or Kindle Keyboard for $79), Kindle Touch ($99) and Kindle Fire ($199). The basic Kindle doesn’t have the touch screen, but when you look at the price you are able to forgive quite a lot. The Kindle Touch has text to speech, audio books and mp3 support. You can also look up historical references, difficult words and phrases, and a whole lot besides.

Kindle fire has web browsing, a lot of apps including games access to movies and a lot else such as graphic novels and magazines in full color.

If you don’t want ads you have to pay extra with Kindle.

The Barnes and Noble eBook Reader and Kobo are also competitively priced at $99, but they do not have 3G or audio support. They do have an expandable memory slot however.

The Sony costs $129 and has audio support. All the eBook readers have battery life of more than one month (except fire, which is actually a fully fledged tablet and not just a reader).

So clearly there are plusses and minuses in each case. As of now I am genuinely confused. Thoughts?

Here are some eco friendly gadgets that recently caught my eye:

I liked this solar power flashlight cum radio that has a list price of $40 but is down to $22 99 after a 43% discount. A flash light is always a useful thing to have around. If you charge the device using solar light for about 3 hours, you get about 3 hours of light from the LED light bulbs or about 2 hours of radio play, if you want to use both at once, you can use it for about an hour. And just in case there’s no sun, you can still recharge it from a wall outlet.

The Bedol Water Power Clock is, as the name suggests, actually powered by water! Sounds rather unbelievable, but this amazing little gadget claims to use no batteries or electricity. You simply open the cap, fill in water and you’re ready to go! The water ions are converted into clean energy for powering the clock. No wires needed and it’s recyclable as well!

The premium solar charger is a device that all gadget geeks should have: a solar powered backup battery and charger for cell phones, iPhones, iPods, and most USB powered devices which includes built-in led reading light and window / windshield suction cups so that you never have to run out of juice again, even when you’re on the move. The sale price is $27.99 down from 60 dollars, netting you a discount of over 50%.

The Robomower is an electric cordless, automatic lawnmower that does its job without you in attendance. It uses no gas or oil and so there are no fumes, emissions or smell, making this a great non-polluting gadget. Now this item is not cheap at over 1600 dollars but this is down from the list price of 2000 at a 19% discount and does save you a lot of time, effort and since the cuttings are evenly distributed onto the land, it is that much more environment friendly.

The Shop Savvy app allows you to easily compare the price of an item at every store it is available. To get the prices of an item, you must use the app to take a picture of the bar code. Shop Savvy uses the picture of the bar code to determine what item you are scanning. After the bar code picture is taken, Shop Savvy will display the price of that item all of the major stores in the area. Using Shop Savvy will allow you to never overpay for anything ever again.

Coupon Sherpa

Coupon Sherpa allows you to find if there are any coupons available for an item that you are about to buy. Coupon Sherpa lets you search for coupons at just about every major store. Once you find the appropriate store on Coupon Sherpa, the app will display all of the stores current coupons. The apps pulls coupons from several different sources and even has several coupons that are exclusive to Coupon Sherpa. All of the coupons on the app can be scanned at the cash register of every store. Using Coupon Sherpa allows you to take advantage of the deals at every store, without having to spend hours cutting coupons.

If you use the GasBuddy app, then you will never over pay for gas again. GasBuddy uses the GPS in your smart phone to determine your location. Once your location is determined, GasBuddy will display the price of gas at every gas station near you. This allows you to be able to find the cheapest gas in the area before you leave the house. If you are not sure where the gas station is located, GasBuddy will even give you directions to the gas station from your location. With the rising prices of gas, the ability to save a few cents is very important.

Groupon

While the previous apps allowed you to save money on gas and retail items, Groupon allows you to save on just about everything else. Groupon displays all of the great deals on all of the various restaurants, hotels, spas and other services in your area. None of the deals featured on Groupon can be used as coupons, but they allow you to buy the services at a discounted price. Gift certificates to restaurants and hotel rooms can be purchased for over 50% the normal price. Groupon constantly updates with new deals, and the good deals can go quickly. Having Groupon on your smart phone allows you to constantly search for great deals to make sure that you never miss out on something special.

Kayak

Kayak is one of the most popular travel reservation websites, and you can now get all of the deals from your phone. Kayak finds you the cheapest price on flights, hotels and car rentals for any destination. Kayak searches every travel site to find you the best deal possible, and everything can be booked on the phone through the app. If you plan on traveling, then Kayak will save you a lot of money. You can even track the status of your flight using the Kayak application.

Sim only contracts are great way to reduce the cost of using a smart phone. Why pay the high costs of a regular contract if you do not have to? Combining the contract with these apps allows for your smart phone to pay for itself, and allow you to have more money for your other expenses.

This is a guest article by Ruben Corbo, a freelance writer for technology, travel, and music production topics. When he’s not writing or making music, he’s enjoying a good post-apocalyptic novel or playing RTS Strategy online game. Ruben’s writing resume includes websites like SIM Only where you can get the best Sim Only contracts as well as other websites that help you save on your tech purchases.

Images courtesy of Todd Barnard, sarahintampa, smgoller, Sean MacEntee and Rob Enslin

Now ever since I saw and experienced one of these at some mall somewhere, it have coveted them and wanted them and desired what they could do for a pair of aching and suffering feet. It is a calf and foot massager that I speak so covetously of. Now this one massages your calves and feet, squeezing and vibrating like a pair of loving hands and feels wonderful! I can vouch for this. The intensity and the speed of the massage can be varied as one wants. I found that the foot and calf massager was cheapest on Amazon, where it was down from the list price of 300 dollars to just $163. A 46% discount always sounds good to me!

Something else that sounds wonderful is a neck & shoulder massager – just imagine what it can do for you after a hard day hunched over a PC! Now this shoulder and neck massager comes equipped not only with the usual massaging and vibrating options, it heats up to offer even more relief. This is not a very big or bulky object so it may make sense to take it to office and use it there too.

If you are not content with treating individual body parts to such massage treats, then you want one of these massage chairs – they can be heavenly I tell you – each part of the body is massaged and looked after and some of these chairs even have this wave like effect that undulates below your back that feels quite amazing!

There are plenty of options for a full body massage chair at next tag, some of which are basic; some which offer the works! Also some are refurbished because these whole body massage chairs can be prohibitively expensive – they cost about three thousand dollars and up. So pre-owned may be a good idea or one may well think it prudent to simply use the one at the gym!

This waterproof MP3 player I found is on sale at a 25% discount. Down from $80 it is now available for just 60 dollars. It fastens to a belt or a buckle with the help of its clip and the twist and lock earphones jack seals out water completely.  With a 6 to 8 hour play time, and weight of less than an ounce, this one has a visible multi colored LED mode control, which makes it a fairly desirable gadget in my view.

Now if you are an Apple fan (I confess I am a diehard iPod fan) you may want to look at this Waterproof iPod Shuffle 4^th generation.  Come rain, sweat or chlorinated water, this one promises to let you keep your music playing on. This one is down from the list price of 180 dollars and costs 160 dollars offering a modest 11% discount and clips to the goggles and has a 15 hour battery life and 2 GB memory. But be warned – the earphones are not included in the deal and you have to buy those separately.

Now supposing you already have a fine music player and for reasons best known to you (you may well have spent ages organizing your music and don’t want to undergo the hassle again, for instance) you don’t want another. Well in that case you can get yourself Waterproof iPod Case and Headphones Pack. The case protects your iPod against the water and still lets you operate your music player through the player. There is an aqua clip that acts as the closure system and it fits all MP3 players.

So you can buy a whole new system, or just the phones or the phones and water proof pack – take your pick!

The Canon Powershot is an excellent brand of user friendly camera – this one is 12 megapixel and the cheapest I could find it was at $185. It shoots movie and sound, and has fun features like miniature effect, fish eye effect and so on. And it has free shipping as well.

The GE – 14.1-Megapixel Zoom Digital Camera is available for $149.99 from Amazon, which also offers free shipping for this item. The product has been rated “excellent camera for the money” by one user and “Really Lovin’ This Camera So Far!” by another, even though GE is not the brand that comes instantly to mind when it comes to cameras.

Nikon Coolpix is a good basic point and shoot kind of camera, that doesn’t require a geek to figure out. It has a 3 inch screen this with a 12 megapixel camera that can shoot videos with sound as well. At  $76.95, I thought it was a good deal too, since you get an instant discount of $43 on this particular site.

Now if you want something really economical then you may want to explore options such as the Vivitar ViviCam, a 7.1 mega pixel camera that costs just $34.99.

As with all technology, digital camera technology just keeps getting better, the cameras smaller, and with more great features and the cameras keep getting cheaper as well. So if you buy a camera today, it will probably be replaced with a cheaper, smaller, smarter camera within a year or less. I wonder if this is really a good thing?

So basically I am looking to upgrade our DVD player.

I found this Samsung – Internet Connectable/Wi-Fi Built-In Blu-ray Disc Player which I thought was a good deal  at 188 dollars, which is down from 250 dollars. This one is internet connectable with Wi Fi. This gives access to streaming content, firmware updates, and so that you can connects to Youtube, Netflix, Twitter, Cinema Now, Facebook, Blockbuster and so on. A variety of media choices and playable formats are available on here. Also there are Dolby Digital and DTS decoders.

Now this one is a DVD player with comparable features as the one on the top, but with the addition of a viewing screen along with it, so that it becomes portable for you to take along wherever you go. This Samsung – Internet Connectable/Wi-Fi Built-In Portable Blu-ray Disc Player is basically possessed of all of the great features, but is also has the screen and also costs a lot more – this one costs $449 which is down from $ 499. But really this is much like watching things on a laptop, which if I was OK with watching things on the laptop, would make this DVD player hunt quite superfluous!

This Sony BDP-S580 Blu-Ray Disc Player is also an attractive choice, at $199, which offers the streaming option, lets you connect your camera, and so on. Also has built in wifi, and is 3D enabled and has support for mobile device control (iPhone, iPad, android phone etc).

Now if you can get used to the whole idea of reading comics on the phone, then this one is for you. The Comics App for iPhone and iPad and has lots of free downloadable comics and you can buy more to read if you so wish.

Now this one is for the creative soul in you and at a pinch will keep the kids busy as well. Tone Pad has a musical grid set up that lets you create your own ringtones and loops. You can make melody by touching the screen and seeing notes light up. You can also share the tunes with others.

The social networking and chat applications are a must IMHO, so you should have the Facebook app which has a unique grid interface and is actually better designed than the browser version according to many. Then there is the Twitter app which offers real time top tweets, trending topics and maps. Skype is I think the best chat service and the Skype app lets you make international calls, send and receive instant messages and do all the usual skype stuff.

Around Me is a useful app for getting all sorts of information about services around where you are – ATMs, gas stations, coffee shops, bars, hotels, hospitals, movie theaters and at the top of the list is the Apple retail stores because you know that’s more important than hospitals. It tells you the location of the nearest one and then gives out the map for how to get there.

Words and language I find fascinating, so this Dictionary and thesaurus app is a must for someone like me.  And just in case you have a problem with a pronouncing a word (everyone has to look up soigné, don’t they?) you can hear the word as well.

For some fun edit options for pictures you take with your phone, you can try the Photoshop Express App. Be warned this is not the fully loaded version, but it gets a lot done.

So have fun with these and share some of your fave apps as well.

This 10 piece non stick cookware set is available from Amazon for $74.12 which is down from $99.99; pretty good deal I thought. Six pans of different sizes and four of them have lids.

I found this omelet pan cum egg poacher really interesting, mostly because of its novelty value rather than because of any particular liking for poached eggs and for $14.99, not too expensive I thought.

I am a big fan of non stick cookware, however Teflon has got a bad rap recently, so many people prefer other alternatives to Teflon such as hard anodized, cast iron, stainless steel etc. so if I had to pick non-non-stick, I would pick this 12 anodized cook set which I saw on Target, and which is available for 79.99, down from 99.99. Just a word though, about it being a 12 piece set: 12 piece includes 6 pans, 4 lids and two serving spoons.

Now who doesn’t like the smell of fresh baked cakes in the house? Part of the reason I like to do my own baking is so that the lovely smell of baking lingers in my kitchen most of the day. So I liked this five piece baking set in different sizes and shapes, for just $15.99!

A must have for any kitchen is one of those bake and serve sets: check out this 17 piece bake and store set for just $49,99. These things are really useful when you want to cook up a storm when you have the time and then freeze portions for later.

Time was it was the Japanese who were seen in every nook and cranny of a tourist spot, sporting the latest, the tiniest, the most sophisticated cameras ever, wide smile unwaveringly fixed in place, but now pretty much everyone seems to have one, so why not me, I say! Let’s explore the possibilities shall we?

I don’t want anything too fancy (or complicated), just something that will help me capture when the kids do or say something really funny or something to shoot the animals at the zoo with; you know the kind of thing? OK now I looked for ‘Handycam’ and all I came up with is Sony models; how perplexing I thought! Then the penny dropped, Handycam is a trade mark name, much like ‘Walkman’ both of which are now pretty much generic. Duh!

Now this Panasonic 40 GB Hybrid Hard Drive Camcorder model I liked a lot for $351.66. Sounds really neat: “The 40GB internal hard disk drive lets you record continuously for up to 36 hours (in LP mode) without changing a disc, tape or other recording media. But if you run out of room, there’s a slot for your SD/SDHC memory so you can keep taking home movies or pictures without worry.“

Then this Samsung SC-D372 MiniDV Camcorder I thought was very reasonable for $149.99, but it turns out this one records on those little tape things. And that’s like outdated right? So let’s plough right on.

One of the commentators here, J David, made a mention that as a person who worked with cameras he was of the opinion that Canon was the best bet for cameras, so this Canon DC310 option I liked for $249.99 where you use a DVD for recording.

Also this JVC Camcorder GR-D850 is pretty good for $198.85 which uses the Mini DV as recorder.

And what of the Handycams? No electronics list is compete without mention of Sony, which has such a brand loyalty that it can have an advert that simply but effectively just says “It’s a Sony”, this one was one of the lowest prices I could find: $222.90 for this Sony Handycam DCR-HC52 MiniDV Camcorder.

So taking the sage advice of my significant other, I have to quickly get myself one of these and as quickly thereafter take a holiday!