Electronics
Point-and-Shoot Camera
This tiny Canon Powershot Elph 300 HS camera is fantastic for traveling. It is great in low light and can record HD video as well. Works best with an Eye-fi SD card!
See this camera compared to other Powershot models: Digital Camera Comparison
Eye-Fi Wireless SD Card
The Eye-Fi Wireless SD card can automatically upload your photos to a number of online services including Flickr! Any time you are near a wifi hotspot your photos will automatically sync. This is by far the easiest way to handle photos, it saves you from having to manually copy and edit files from the card. The "pro" model can also geo-tag photos!
- 4GB Standard Model ($29.99)
- 8GB Model with Geo-tagging ($89.09)
Backup Mobile Phone Battery
If you are a frequent traveler, or like to log a lot of GPS data, then you might find this external battery pack useful. Works with iPhone, Android and Blackberry, and probably every other phone. Comes with a set of adapters for other phones.
Mophie Juice Pack
The Mophie Juice Pack is a fantastic backup battery for the iPhone 4 and 4S. It's a case for your iPhone which has a battery in the back so it makes the whole phone a bit thicker. It will charge your phone back up plus a little bit more! It's a light-weight way to double your battery life instead of lugging around the larger Trent battery pack.
Services
Linode
Most of my websites are hosted on VPSs provided by Linode. Starting at $20/month you can get a server with 512mb RAM, which is most likely good enough to run most websites. It's also incredibly easy to add new servers as needed.
Dropbox
Dropbox is a great way to keep files in sync between multiple computers, or for collaborating with multiple people on a project. It seamlessly syncs files and integrates with your OS's filesystem so it doesn't feel like a separate program that's running.
Sticker Mule
Sticker Mule is a fantastic sticker printing company. My favorite are the die cut stickers, which they will cut to any shape. They are also quite affordable, and very quick.
Dreamhost
Dreamhost is an affordable web host which provides a lot of software available using their "one-click-install" method including Wordpress 3.0, Moodle, MediaWiki, OpenVBX, StatusNet and more. I also register domains through them, as they provide free whois privacy.
Books
Beginning iPad Application Development
Beginning iPad Application Development gives a decent overview of the differences between the iPhone and iPad platforms. However, my favorite part of this book is the appendix which gives a crash course in Objective C. This is where you should start reading, in my opinion, if you have had any programming experience in some other language before.
Programming Ruby 1.9
Programming Ruby 1.9 is the reference manual for Ruby. {{clear}}
Founders at Work
Stories of Startups' Early Days
Other
iPhone Stand
A nice stand for iPhone/iPods. Doesn't include a cable, you attach the cable to the stand to set it up.
Optoma Pico Projector
Not only does the Optoma PK320 Pico Pocket Projector have a model number that begins with PK, it's also the tiniest projector that is actually bright enough! It's obviously not going to be as bright as the larger ones, but it's actually bright enough to be seen in a room with some lamps on. In a dark room it's certainly bright enough too!
