I've been promoting Kelly's Cool Tools to friends and family for years. It is filled with gadgets and tips and such. Here are some of the things I've told people about, and a fair number of the items have become gifts I've given.
Guide to world's best festivals
All the world is a party; you just have to know where to look. My favorite
"big happys" are traditional religious festivals, which can't be beat
for color, intensity and otherness. This Rough Guide serves as a good
guide to some of the world's most interesting celebrations. Besides the
famous (Mardi Gras, Kuhm Mela), and the infamous (full moon in Hat Rin,
Thailand, Love Parade in Berlin), it also lists a hundred smaller
lesser known, but still incredible festivals. It's crammed with color
photos, history, reviews, and tips. You could map out a pretty good
journey trying to keep up with the possibilities here.
-- KK
World Party: The Rough Guide to the World's Best Festivals
Rough Guides 2006, 400 pages
$17
Available from Amazon
No-car roads
Rails-to-Trails (or rail trails) are roads without cars. They are where railways go when they die. Bicycles love them.
Every year 2,000 miles of railways in the US are abandoned. So far, about
half of the 300,000 miles railways built by 1916 (the railroad peak)
have been taken out of service. Some 13,000 of those miles have been
repurposed into bike/hike trails.
Why they're great: 1) You get paths with flat to gentle slopes, 2) no cars,
3) no strip development, and 4) often passing through small towns.
These wide, sculpted, relaxing paths are perfect for hiking, horseback,
cross-country skiing, skates and particularly bicycles. While most of
the rails-to-trails are less than 5 miles long, there are 10 in the
country stretching over 100 miles and at least one that is 225
continuous miles. These longer trails are a big hit -- easy, civilized
bicycle tours: gentle rides without having to compete with cars. As far
as I am concerned, riding bicycles on rail trails is the way to go.
Ultra-loud, all-weather noisemaker
I found this incredibly loud whistle while putting together a disaster
preparedness kit for my car. I did some non-scientific testing against
my Fox 40 (rated 115 decibels) by having my son blow into each of them
across a soccer field. The Storm (rated 118-120db) definitely sounded
louder (decibels are based on a logarithmic scale with a base of 10, so
the Storm's decibel intensity is almost 3 times the Fox 40). It is also
advertised as working underwater (the chambers clear as you blow). I
haven't tried it underwater yet, but regardless, this is the loudest
whistle I have ever heard.
-- Mark Chow-Young
Storm Whistle
$6
Available from Amazon (limited stock)
Classic urban survival multi-tool
I'm a computer geek, both by trade and by lifestyle, so I've accumulated
several boxes full of tools for disassembling and reassembling all
sorts of obscure computer stuff. Since I found the Micra, most of
what's in those boxes sits unused in my office. Smaller than most
pocket knives, and with the ability to unfold into a completely handy
pair of snips, the stainless steel Micra contains two functional
flat-blade drivers (micro and "regular") and a #2 Phillips-equivalent
screwdriver, so I can achieve most anything I need to do inside a
server closet or at a customer's desk. You could opt for the Wave,
which features more tools. However, the less expensive Micra is lighter
(1.75 vs. 8.5 ounces) and smaller (2.5" vs. 4"), and overall it's much
more of an urban survival tool. It comes with tweezers, scissors, nail
file, and a bottle opener, but the features that make it the most
valuable to me are the "Phillips" blade (a flat blade shaped to fit
into a Phillips head) and the micro flat driver blade. I'm constantly
opening stuff - packages from FedEx (knife,) packages of sunflower
kernels (scissors), laptops (micro screwdriver,) data racks (Phillips)
and the like. This tool has everything I use on a daily basis in a
simple, little package.
-- Steve Sussex
Leatherman Micra
$16
Available from Amazon
Super-brightest flashlights
By far the brightest pocketable flashlights these days are powered by a
pair of 3-volt lithium batteries (the kind used in cameras -- 123A).
Smaller than your hand they throw out four times more light than huge
D-cell monsters. Lithium beacons were pioneered by the law enforcement
and military supplier Surefire. They are issued in deluxe $200 plus
anodized versions.
Now catering to the rest of us, Surefire puts the same innards into this cheap(er)
indestructible plastic version -- the G2 Nitrolon for $34. Like the
other Surefires, its xenon bulb is so blindingly bright that it's hot
to the touch after a few minutes. It WILL temporarily blind someone
closeup in the dark. These torches are the opposite of nifty LED lights
which supply a cool light that keeps going forever. Instead these
bright xenon lights exhale the sun while inhaling lithium batteries at
shocking rate; a pair of lithiums will last only one hour uninterrupted.
I was doing a crossword puzzle this afternoon and needed some Shakespeare quotes to complete the clues. (Sometimes, I can't get the answer from the clue alone. I need help.) So I googled for a specific Shakespeare play, act, and scene, and it came up with
I traded for:
Firefox addin: 
Here are the circulated state quarters that I am willing to trade:
A big coin collecting day: I found Denver mint quarters for
Technically, I think that 
