Steve Jacobs, RIT associate professor of information technology, discusses technology gift ideas for the holidays during 13WHAM News This Morning.

Anchor: Holly Maynard had a sweet assignment this week, she got to go shopping. Yesterday afternoon she went looking for some of this years most popular and affordable tech gifts.

Holly: So this year it seems like everybody is on a tight budget. But the problem is those technology related gifts are still so popular, and they are often still so expensive. So this morning what were trying to do is get the big bang for the small buck , at least thats what Steve Jacobs is saying this morning. He is our tech expert that weve talked to many times on this broadcast. Actually an RIT professor, what kind of classes do you teach at RIT?
Steve: I teach game design and I run the lab for technological literacy.
Holly: Basically you know everything tech related
Steve: Geek boy is probably appropriate, yeah.
Holly: Hes no longer our tech expert; hes our geek boy. And Steve said, hes the expert so I had him pick put things he really liked here, were at best buy this morning, and he said we had to devote an entire segment to this. What is this?
Steve: This is the Zoom H2. Its part of a category of things that have evolved over the past couple of years called digital audio recorders or personal digital audio recorders.
Holly: So who would use something like this?
Steve: Anyone from reporters to musicians to podcasters. This is really a whole audio studio in a little box. It looks like an old fashioned microphone and you have four different microphones in here for two different stereo, recording front and back in two different ranges, so you can get a whole musical group sitting around it in a circle and sing and play at it and it will record it.
Holly: Is this the first of its kind or you think its the best value for its kind?
Steve: Best value, its 200 bucks, it records straight to an SD card, it will go ahead and connect up to your computer as a USB slot connection if you want to use it as an external microphone. If youre mixing your audio in your computer or if your podcasting from your computer, it will take a line in, it will put an external mic out. It even comes for the musician with a metronome and a guitar tuner in it. All for 200 bucks. Generally when you find something like this that has so many different functions in a tiny little package, you find they cut a lot of corners. But youll find in the reviews on the websites for these things by professional audio engineers, theyre amazed at the quality of the sound they can get out of this.
Holly: In terms of a Christmas gift, for a lot of people 200 dollar is still a lot to spend on one person. Are you reading in the publications that you read that people are still willing to spend that much for a gift for something like this?
Steve: Were seeing people willing to spend two to five or so for an individual gift for a close family member. So if youve got a son, a husband, a daughter, or a wife whos a semi-pro musician or someone whose really getting into podcasting big time this is a great, great buy.
Holly: Ok, really interesting, thanks Steve. Coming up the next half hour, were saving money once again.

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