Unless you’ve been under a rock the past 2 years or so, you’ll know that HTML5 is the next generation of the markup language that has been powering the Web since its inception. Tech publisher O’Reilly has been busy ensuring that they do their part to educate the Web developers and programmers of the world and they accordingly have a slew of books on HTML5, one of which is in their Head First series.

Head First HTML5 Programming is really that – a book about programming, specifically in JavaScript. It is expected that you already know HTML and CSS, and while some JavaScript would be good, it’s not a requirement. The book starts off with a quick intro to HTML5, but by page 20, you’ll already have seen some JavaScript code.

Next up, it gets into the DOM (Document Object Model) that modern browsers are based on, and then you’ll naturally learn how to manipulate the DOM to get those fancy effects that you see Web2.0 sites sporting. After that, it goes full steam through the highlights of HTML5/DHTML features, programming, and techniques that power today’s Web2.0. For example, Head First HTML5 does a good job of devoting entire chapters to discussing some of the compelling multimedia aspects of HTML5 including video, and the Canvas tag. And it also covers advanced topics such as Geolocation, JSON and even Web storage.

As with the other Head First book we’ve seen (Head First WordPress), this one has you interacting with images, photos, call-out boxes, cartoons, and much more to keep you engaged and active. I can’t say enough good things about it, and I’d like to see other publishers ‘steal’ the technique!

If you’re looking to learn HTML5, I can highly recommend this book, but keep in mind that this is not meant to be a reference or a cookbook but a learning book; there are lots of others out there that that fill that function.

While you’re at it, you should also consider getting an up-to-date CSS3 book like Gasston’s The Book of CSS3. While it’s more of a reference than this text, it covers the bulk of CSS3′s new features including new text styling, positioning, gradients and 2D & 3D transformations, and it includes enough examples to help you better understand the material.

(Disclaimer: Gizmos for Geeks received a complimentary review copy of this product.)

During the holiday season, many tech-oriented shoppers will be scrutinizing the market for the best valued tablet. While most analysts point to the iPad as the pinnacle of current tablet design and functionality, consumers have one big beef with the product: its price. The iPad 2 starts at a whopping $499, a price that most consumers simply can’t afford in this economy. So let’s set aside the iPad 2 and consider some of the more economical tablet options for the holiday shopping season. Of course there are the other most talked about tablets to consider, Barnes and Noble’s Nook Tablet and Amazon’s Kindle Fire. Now that both tablets have been released, analysts expect the competition between the two to be fierce since they come in at similar price points and offer comparable features. But which of these tablets would work best for you, dear consumer?

Amazon’s Kindle Fire

Amazon and tech bloggers did a good job of building up the hype behind the Kindle Fire prior to it’s release in mid November. Even before its formal release, millions of people had pre-ordered the tablet without ever personally seeing it work in real time, and for good reason—the tablet starts at $199.

Amazon was true to their word about the Kindle being a new kind of tablet. Shoppers should note that the Kindle Fire is unlike an iPad in a number of ways. For one, its specs are much more limited than those on the Apple tablet: the Kindle Fire has a 1GHz dual core processor with 512MB of RAM, and 8GB for storage of music, movies, etc. It’s the perfect tablet for consuming mass quantities of digital media—the tablet it built around the user’s ability to download songs, films, or books on Amazon—without too much effort. Silk, Amazon’s newly minted browser for the Kindle Fire, helps users surf the web without taking too much of a toll on the tablet’s functionality. And you’ll need Silk for all the tasks you put to the Kindle Fire. For instance, if you purchase Amazon Prime, you get access to unlimited streaming of the latest television shows, movies, and music for duration of your subscription. You’ll be able to toggle between watching the latest blockbuster, reading your favorite fantasy novel, and listening to a blues album with just a few simple taps. And rest assured, the interface on the Kindle Fire is very simple to understand.

On the downside, the Kindle Fire has been criticized as being too limited for tablet. True, you can’t do all the things on it that you can do on an iPad, but what do you expect in a $199 tablet? Maintenance on the Kindle Fire is another issue, as there isn’t a physical store where you can have your tablet serviced. Theoretically you’d have to ship the tablet to Amazon if you need it fixed. The device has also been cited as being a little bulky and aesthetically rougher than the iPad.

Barnes and Noble’s Nook Tablet

If you’re not sold by the Kindle Fire but you still want to save money on your tablet purchase, definitely consider the Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet. At $249 it’s a slightly more expensive machine, but you get more for your money. For starters, the specs are better than the Kindle’s; it has the same processor, but boasts 1GB of RAM and 16GB of storage space. What’s more, the Nook Tablet has a slot for portable memory cards up the 32GB in size, something lacking on the Kindle Fire.

On the hardware and functionality side of things, the Nook Tablet certainly has loads to offer. It features two screens, a large LCD screen for displaying content and a much smaller touch screen to interface with the tablet. This setup stands in contrast to the Kindle Fire’s all-in-one touch screen interface, but fans of the Nook Tablet don’t seem fazed by the difference in design.

The Nook Tablet similarly gobbles up eBooks, video content and music files with the same voracity as the Kindle Fire, but the dual screen feature may entice consumers looking for a more dynamic device. The Nook Tablet will also have the advantage in customer service, since people can go to their local Barnes and Noble store whenever they have a question about their tablet. Some analysts even speculate that the stores will install a type of Apple Genius Bar for Nook Tablet customers, built solely to accommodate their concerns.
While the Nook Tablet has plenty of enjoyable features, consumers won’t be able to tell much difference between it and the Kindle Fire after a quick comparison. It certainly stands alone as its own tablet, but the $50 price differential may sway more consumers to Amazon.

Amazon announced a new benefit for Kindle owners that have an Amazon Prime membership called the Kindle Owner’s Lending Library.

Those eligible can choose from thousands of books to borrow up to a book a month with no due dates and no additional cost as a value-add to the Amazon Prime membership.

The Amazon Prime membership remains $79 a year, which gives you free two-day shipping on millions of products, plus unlimited instant streaming of almost 13,000 movies and TV shows.

If you don’t mind having the ‘fun’ taken out of tuning up your guitar, then this little gizmo should save you a lot of time – a robotic guitar tuner. This isn’t just a simple device that tells you whether your current tuning is too flat or too sharp, it actually listens and then tunes your guitar automatically! The motor inside it knows exactly how far to turn your tuning peg to get the perfect sound.

More info in the video below:

Buy now!
Price: $49.95
(Please note prices are subject to change and the listed price is correct to the best of our knowledge at the time of posting)

One of the co-founders of Microsoft along with Bill Gates, Paul Allen is one of the richest men in the United States and the world, and he recently wrote an autobiography called Idea Man.

Over half the book is devoted to his early life and inevitably his time at Microsoft. The rest of the book is devoted to his life after Microsoft particularly his varied Investments and and contributions to arts and music and sports.

While other headlines blared that the book slammed Bill Gates, I don’t see it that way. From everything I’ve read about Gates’ personality, Allen was just recounting the same almost matter-of-factly. If anything, he was almost complimentary and in admiration of Gates’ living-on-the-edge personality, although he probably reacted in consternation more so than anything else.

While there was some mention of Gates continually restructuring their initial 6-40 split, I don’t feel that he dwelled on it, but that it was worth talking about in the context of his eventual wealth as well as it being one of the factors in his decision to leave Microsoft.

Inevitably, with Allen and Gates spending so much time together prior to and at Microsoft meant that a significant amount of the material would revolve around their interactions and relationship. And it is fascinating at times. Allen corroborates much of the folklore surrounding the Bill Gates persona, and casts himself as a staid, boring if you will, character.

If you’re into computers and history, then you’ll find at least the first half of the book chock full of interesting content. The second half of the book is mostly about life after Microsoft and his ensuing endeavors such as buying pro sports teams, investing in various companies and research and his ongoing health problems. Allen has certainly not sat around idly after resigning from Microsoft and has a diverse set of experiments and accomplishments to point to, yet strangely Bill Gates will still always be the one garnering the headlines.

This book, or anything of the genre (Hackers is a great book) is worth a read if you’re interested in how many of these uber-rich techno-geeks started out. I almost wished there were more code in it, but then again, what would I know about programs for the PDP-10 or an Altair! It can even be inspiring – makes you want to put the book down and get coding.

Addicted to Facebook? Can’t get enough? Perhaps wondering what happens to all of those interactions and photos and comments if one day Facebook goes away? Or would just like a more ‘permanent’ version of it all?

You’re in luck. A 3rd-party developer has created a Facebook app called EgoBook that creates a real hard-copy book based on your Facebook profile. I created my very own EgoBook (courtesy of the developer) to see how it turned out.

After placing my order, the my EgoBook showed up within a week nicely protected with bubble wrap. My first thoughts were that it was smaller and thinner than I had imagined it would be, but that was just my imagination as the order page really didn’t give me a good idea of how large it would be.

The EgoBook is a bit smaller than a standard 8.5×11″ page. It has a glossy cover and nice decently-thick matte pages. The avatars and reproduced photos within were of very good quality – better than I thought they would be.

The final 2 pages were dedicated to my top commenters and a photo collage of my friends’ profile pics.

I had a number of issues, however, with the order page and its interface. My recommendation to the developer is to just throw out what they have currently and start over with a rockstar Facebook UI developer.

For example, the choices on the order page were hard to understand (there should be pop-up examples of what each of them mean); the choose buttons didn’t seem to do anything.

There needs to be more consideration for both American and European audiences – for example, print the $ sign at the start and the dates using 3-letter shortened form for the month, instead of the sometimes ambiguous but definitely confusing mm/dd/yyyy OR dd/mm/yyyy!

There should be an option to automatically decide the features based on the price the user wants to pay. Ex: what do I get if I choose $35? Pricing is normally based on how many pages your book turns out to be.

For the cover photo, you should have the option to omit it or choose any picture from your photos, not only from your Profile pics.

Unfortunately, you can’t get any status updates prior to June 2009 (Facebook limitation).

And remember that if you’re paranoid about security, EgoBook needs access to your profile to pull down status messages and photos in order to put together the book.

For the most part, I was quite pleased with the finished product. My main complaints were with the ordering page and its interface. Overall, this is an idea that you would think that Facebook themselves would have come up with, and quite possibly still may, but until then, you can have an EgoBook.

(Disclaimer: Gizmos for Geeks received a complimentary review copy of this product.)

Ok, so perhaps a Harry Potter trailer wasn’t your speed. How about a video on the making of the Hobbit movie? This is the first of what we hope are many videos on the making of this much anticipated movie.

In case you didn’t know, The Hobbit is J.R.R. Tolkien’s book that precedes the events in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but I’m sure you already knew that!

Stay tuned to The Hobbit Blog for more news and videos.

Well, well, well. Looks like we might have an MP3 price war on our hands. I’m ok with that – it means lower prices for us music fans!

Amazon just lowered the price of bestselling new songs to just $0.69/song. Know what they cost on iTunes? $1.29. Ouch.

Gadget blog. Harry Potter. Huh? What? It’s kinda related, right? No? Eh, whatever. It looks pretty action-packed and of course filled with special effects. You know you’ll be there July 15th in line!

Or watch in HD.

A reader wrote in to ask our advice on whether they should buy a lesser-known eReader from a website selling directly from China and we felt the answer was worthy of sharing with everyone (you can ignore if you already have this subject covered).

Our reader wanted to know if they should consider buying an iBex tablet from a Chinese ‘sourcing’ company called ChinaGrabber. Sourcing companies essentially sell products made in China that are typically knock-offs or variations of popular items.

For starters, the iBex Flytouch 3 is an Android-based tablet computer (a la iPad or Xoom), and not strictly an eReader. Granted the $215 price tag is much cheaper than either an iPad or Motorola Xoom, but nothing in life is really that ‘cheap’ – there are always caveats. For starters, what happens if something goes wrong? Who do you call or send it back to? If you take one look at that website, all sorts of warning bells should sound. You may just be stuck with a dead piece of electronics. [I wrote a guide on safe shopping online that helps you avoid these types of issues.]

Let’s put aside the question of warranties and repair for a second and address our reader’s real concerns. They would like an eReader to replace all of those textbooks while they go to school and are concerned about the storage, in particular pointing to the Flytouch’s 8GB.

First of all, if you would simply like an eReader and are looking at this tablet as merely an eReader and not as a tablet computer, then you should look at the price tag and realize that you’re overpaying for an eReader as the top products in this category (Kindle, Nook, etc) are well under $200 now (Kindle 6″ is now $139, $114 with ads).

Second, even 1GB of storage can hold about 1000 ebooks. Perhaps textbooks may take up a bit more space, but if you had to plow through even 500 textbooks in school, you have bigger problems!

A related concern that has to be looked at on almost a case-by-case basis is whether or not the textbooks you must get are even available in eBook format.

And by the way, I’ve never heard of the iBex brand. Try doing a search for it – you won’t come up with much which is another warning sign, a non-existent or extremely small company/brand.

So our general advice is that if you’re in the market for an eReader, stick to the better-known brands. If you’re still confused about which to get, check out eReader Comparison Guide or just sign up below.