The following post is part of Julie’s “Guide to Geek Gifts 2009“, during which she highlights 20 gifts that she’s deemed geek-worthy. Check back to see what other gadgets and tech goodies will make her list. And be sure to contact Julie or leave a comment below if you have a suggestion of your own!

DOTS Gloves

Why they’re geek-worthy: By now every geek – and beyond – has an iPhone or similar smartphone. And although many may have forgotten since we haven’t yet pulled out the gloves this season, it’s impossible to use a touch screen while gloved. DOTS Gloves have the perfect solution – the fingers of the gloves have little balls of threads (I think that’s how it works, at least) that enable you to reclaim use of your phone during winter months. AND they keep you warm, to boot. The D105 (picture below on the left) are already sold out, giving an indication just how geektastic of a gift this is, but you can can snag the D110 (pictured below on the right) for $20, and the even more solid D200 for $25.

If I have my history correct, DOTS Gloves were the first to create these types of gloves, making me like them even more, but since the D105 is sold out and the D110 is only available in Medium, I’d like to point you to a variety of other brands available on Amazon.

I was recently interviewed by Alexa Lee of The Daily Universe, Brigham Young University’s student newspaper, for an article she was writing about twentysomethings who are successful at using new media as business ventures. I have provided a sneak peak of the article below.

(Please note: This is the second in a three part series – Read part one and come back next week to read two more questions that I was asked along with my answers.)

What do consumers want from new media?

New media has without a doubt shifted the consumer to corporation relationship. Before the emergence and, now, the continuing widespread adoption of new media, consumers were not empowered to speak about their experiences with different companies and their respective brands. Now, everyone is a journalist, a food critic, a photographer… Consumers want to be, as a whole, more active in their relationships with brands. If they don’t like something, they now expect that the company will listen to their complaint and do something about it.

A recent example of this was AT&T’s pricing structure when the new iPhone 3GS was released. AT&T customers thought the proposed prices were unfair and protested – through Twitter and blog posts. In the end, AT&T relented and modified its structure. That sort of interaction would not have been possible in the pre-new media era. (An example of the Twitter petition I referenced can be found here: http://twitition.com/f96aq.)

How is today’s communications environment different from even a year ago?

A year ago, the general public was becoming increasingly more aware that these new online tools existed, but I think the overall consensus was that it was just for the “youngsters”. There are a number of reasons why new media has exploded recently, but I think that the role of President Obama’s campaign in this revolution cannot be underestimated. The campaign did a great job of leveraging these new tools to create a community of active and vocal supporters. The resulting tangible, quantifiable success forced those working in marketing and PR roles to stop and consider integrating new media into their overall strategy.

Before, an online communications strategy most likely included creating content for a website and sending out periodic e-mails to an organization’s customers or constituents. It was very much just a “push strategy”, the thinking being, “we’re putting out the information we want and we think is valuable”. Now, it’s much more of a two-way street. The organizations that are seeing results from new media are those that are actively engaging their supporters – and even their critics.

**The following is a guest post by David, a good friend and former colleague, who loves finding hidden features of the technology he uses. Below, he reveals a few iPhone features you may have missed. (The original post can be found here.)**

Okay, that’s a bit too Penn & Telller perhaps, but there are some fun little nuggets somewhat buried in the iPhone that I’ve slowly been discovering.  I feel like in the past month especially I’ve dug up some good stuff.  I’ll start off with the stuff that most folks know.  If you didn’t, great.  If you did, I never said I was the great Houdini

Special Characters
We all know that you can find some add’l characters by tapping the 123 then the #+= button on the keyboard.  This provides us with some European currency characters, as well as the important hash tag for twitter.  But what about the eñe in spanish?  Or the upside down exclamation point for spanish?  If you simply tap and hold the “n” on the keyboard, the ñ will appear.  Same with the accented letter “e” or the exclamation point.  If you play around, you’ll find other fun hidden characters lurking above the letters (ooh, m-dash!).

Keyboard Settings: Periods & Caps Lock
I’ll admit it.  I never really got into the whole text speak.  Sure I LOL and might wonder WTF occasionally.  I am also a fan of FML – makes me laugh when I see it.   But I don’t write “Wr U @? C U L8r.”  With full keyboards, the inner English Major in me just can’t stomach it.  I write things out.  I tend to still use proper sentence structure.  Call me fusty, but I can’t help it.

So I like that if I double-space after a word, I get a period.  That makes it nice and easy.  And while I’m not a big YELLER when it comes to texting, there are times when you want to write a bit in Caps.  And hitting the shift key each time is tedious.  There are settings for both these features.

Go to Settings>General>Keyboard.  Toggle “Enable Caps Lock” and “‘.’ Shortcut” to On.  Now when you double-space after a word, the period pops in.  And if you quickly double-tap the shift key, it’ll turn blue and Caps Lock is on.  Pretty nifty.

Contacts View
I mentioned I’m a little old-fashioned.  I can also be a little OCD too.  I have set up my iPhone Contacts to sync with my Google Contacts.  I like having a back-up and over-air syncing is still pretty cool to me.  But the other day I realized I had 6 more contacts in my iPhone than I did in my Google Contacts.  Quite frankly, I’m still confused how this happened.  But to make matters worse, Google Contacts are sorted by first name.  My iPhone Contacts were sorted by last name.  Trying to eyeball over 400 contacts is tough enough, but when the lists aren’t apples to apples, it’s even harder.  Enter Settings.  Settings>Mail, Contacts, Calendar.  If you scroll to the Contacts section (near the bottom), you’ll see that you can change both the Sort Order and Display Order.  While I prefer to sort by last name, it’s nice to be able to toggle this when comparing to Google.  I’m sure there are other benefits to this toggle as well.

Screenshot
I’d seen plenty of people showing their Weather app image on Facebook to indicate a crappy/fantastic week of weather ahead.  I just presumed they had purchased some app that enabled this.  Nope.  The iPhone has a built-in screenshot feature.  Which I think is pretty cool. When you have what you want on your screen, simply push the top button and the bottom home button on your iPhone quickly at the same time.  The screen will quickly fade and come back.  That image is now saved in your Photos.  Pretty nifty.  It is great when you happen to be in 1st place in foursquare or something and you might want to share that with your friends

I heard at&t will finally be supporting the updated MMS features on September 25th.  I’m looking forward to that.  I’ll be happy if I never see the following screen againg – scribbling down those ridiculous message ids and passwords – only to open a picture of someone’s dog.

Any hidden secrets that you’d like to share?

This post is a third in a series which outlines the iPhone applications that I find most useful. Check out “My Favorite iPhone Apps” (October 14, 2008) and “5 iPhone Apps That Rocked My World” (February 3, 2009) to see my previous recommendations.

CardStar	My wallet is filled with membership cards, which is super annoying. It means that I either have to make sure to bring it out or risk not having a specific card (and getting the membership benefits). With Cardstar, you simply enter in the number on your membership card and it creats a scanable barcode, effectively allowing you to leave the clunky cards at home and ensuring that you’ll always have the informatin (and the discounts) with you.
foursquare	My friends frequently ask me why I would share my whereabouts with the world (through Twitter, mostly). Now I have an answer: To unlock badges, become mayor and beat my friends at “nights out”.In Foursquare, I get “points” for checking in at different restaurants, bars, attractions, etc. Each Foursquare user starts out with just a “newbie” badge but things like 4 nights out in a row, checking in at three places in one night, checking in past 2am on a school night, will “unlock” other badges. I can “compete” with my friends (which can be added by scaning an address book, looking up someone by phone number, or finding Twitter friends who are using the service) to see who has the most check-ins or just as a way to see where they are.If you are a big going-out person and are maybe a tad competitive, you will be HOOKED on this app! (Add me on Foursquare!)
Photogene	Photogene brings photo-editing capabilities to the iPhone. I snap and upload pictures (to Twitter, to Facebook, to Flickr, etc.) on the go all the time so I think this app is completely worth its $2.99 pricetag. I use it mostly for cropping my pictures, but it has many more capabilities like adding special effects, straightening tilted pictures and correctiong the color.
PPB (Photo Phonebook)	This app is simple yet genius. Download up the app, create a user account and when someone calls you who you are Facebook friends with, their Facebook profile picture will come up. Did I mention it’s simple yet genius?
SnapTell	See a book (or CD or movie, for that matter) that you are interesting in buying but not ready to buy it at the moment and/or don’t want to overpay? Simply “snap” a picture of the cover and SnapTell will not only show you prices at other stores, but it will also save your query, effectively creating a wishlist on your iPhone that you can come back to later. For indecisive folks like me, this is great (or dangerous since it means I can put off making the decision)!
TweetDeck	I was a big, big fan of Twitterfon — until TweetDeck came out with an iPhone app earlier this month. Anyone using Twitter who has a smartphone needs an app to Tweet on the go. Tweetdeck originated as a robust desktop application in which users can create “groups” of Twitter contacts, searches by keywords and otherwise segment Tweets. Using the iPhone app, users get all that functionality on their mobile phones and it syncs to a user’s desktop instance of the application.
Yelp	Yelp is a phonebook, a map, and a guide book all in one. If I’m out somewhere and need to find the closest sushi restaurant, let’s say, Yelp will locate me and with a simple search provide me with nearby sushi restaurants, complete with reviews, addresses pinpointed on a map and phone numbers to call ahead. And after I’ve eaten, I can pull the app back out and write a review right then and there. In my opinion, its the reviews and other helpful information (like business hours) that helps Yelp trump other location-based restaurant/services apps like AroundMe and Urbanspoon.
DC Bonus: inauguration	This app was created to help visitors navigate around DC for Barak Obama’s Presidential Inauguration. Five months later, it’s still installed on my phone. I use it primarily to find out which Metro station is closest and the upcoming train schedule (Do I have 2 or 20 minutes to catch the Red Line train to Glenmont?). I know other Metro apps do exist, but whether it’s laziness or an unwillingness to pay for an app when I already have one for free that will do the trick, I’m sticking with this one for now.