Digital gifts to save you from shopping stress

Depending on the type of person you are, gifting can be a fun or tedious chore. Either way, you’ll have to make time to think about what you’re giving, when you’ll buy, how you’ll wrap it — the usual gift-giver dilemmas. r

But what about opting for another solution? Something more convenient and stress-free solution? Gift digitally. From e-Books to Steam game cards, here are a couple of digital gifts you can give to save yourself from all the hectic shopping.

e-Books

Did you know that you can gift a Kindle book directly from Amazon? And no, you don’t have to have a Kindle to read one (though it is easier to access).

Just head over to the Amazon bookstore and choose the Buy for Others option instead of checking out normally. As long as the person you’re giving has the free Amazon app (or you can set up one as part of the gift), the book will be sent directly to their library.

All the Broken Places by John Boyne

All the Broken Places by John Boyne is a haunting and beautifully woven tale that shuttles between past and present. Imagine a world where the sins of the past refuse to stay buried, where guilt and bravery collide. Ninety-one-year-old Gretel Fernsby, once entangled in the horrors of Nazi Germany, now resides in her London mansion.

As her memories resurface, Gretel faces a crossroads—one that echoes the choices she made long ago. Prepare for a gripping exploration of secrets, redemption, and the indelible impact of history.

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

The Midnight Library tells the story of Nora, a thirty-something woman who, on the day she decides to die, finds herself in a library full of lives she could have lived.

Here, she discovers there’s a lot more to life, even her current one. Guided by a mysterious librarian, Nora goes through a cosmic choose-your-own-adventure, where regrets and possibilities collide, to find herself looking for a sense of purpose.

Yellowface by R.F. Kuang

Yellowface by R.F. Kuang, a New York Times bestselling novel, takes a detour from her usual fantasy realms. This contemporary title dives headfirst into the loneliness horror show of a cutthroat industry.

Kuang serves up a timely dish of racism, discrimination, and the unsettling side effects of social media. It’s like a literary cocktail with a twist — shaken, stirred, and garnished with cultural appropriation musings.

Scott Pilgrim Vol. 1: Precious Little Life! by Bryan Lee O’Malley

If the person you’re gifting is a pop culture fan, a Scott Pilgrim graphic novel should be right up their alley. Scott Pilgrim was also just recently adapted into a Netflix show which makes it a pretty current gift as well.

There are 6 volumes in total so if you’re feeling good and generous, why not gift the whole collection?

Gift cards

 

Amazon
Amazon is the store for everyone. And rather than sifting through hundreds, maybe thousands of products, make things a little bit easier by giving a Gift Card instead.

With different denominations and even designs available, you can send the card directly to the person you’re giving the gift to. You can also add a custom message and even schedule the delivery so it arrives when you need it!

Oh and by the way, Amazon already ships certain items straight to the Philippines so it’s definitely something you can give to anyone.

iTunes
If you have friends or family who have an iPhone or other Apple device, you can get them a gift card that they can use to purchase anything on the iTunes store. You can choose from as little as US$ 10 up to US$ 100 to gift.

Digital codes are available here and sent to your email but physical cards are available in certain stores and online.

Game cards

Nintendo Switch

Need to gift a gamer? There are quite a few choices of game cards you can opt to buy. All the cards operate similarly. All you have to do is choose the denomination or amount you’d want to give and it gets sent to their email just like the Amazon Gift Card.

You can also opt to give a subscription or service like Game Pass instead.

Here are some choices:

Search
-

realme Smart Cam 360 review: Making security smarter (and cuter)

11/09/2020

realme has recently become the number one smartphone vendor in the Philippines but that doesn’t mean they’re just limited to smartphones. The brand has since evolved to providing products to further make everyday lives easier and a bit more exciting (and dubbed it AIoT). But then, realme is already done with fitness trackers and TWS and is now moving on to tech for your home.

Included in the array of new products that realme has announced, what we have here is the Smart Cam 360. Despite sounding like an action camera, it’s a security camera that’s easily accessible by you while you’re away. It also comes with useful features that improve picture quality, efficiency of transmitted data, and stability of connection.

Design

The realme Smart Cam 360 comes in this robot-looking physique. Its black and white color combination almost reminds us of EVE from the movie WALL-E, although not as futuristic-looking. The entire black part rotates and acts like the eyeball of the camera when you look around the room. Roll it upwards, and the microSD slot for storage is then accessible with support up to 128GB.

As its name suggests, it provides a 360-degree panoramic vision using the included pedestal at the base that the camera rotates on.

At the back, the device has a speaker grille since it supports two-way voice calls (more on that later).

There are two ways of mounting the Smart Cam 360: One is simply placing it on top of a flat surface, while you can also choose to mount it upside down on the ceiling. If you choose to go with the latter, there are included screws for inverted mounting.

The package even comes with a set of stickers to personalize your own security camera.

Setup

It gets power via a micro-USB cable connected to a wall charger — both included in the box. Whether you choose to place it on a surface or mounted inverted, setup is pretty easy. It involves a three-step process that involves downloading the realme Link App, turning the camera on, and pairing the app to the camera.

Using a realme narzo 20, pairing between the two devices was fast with no hiccups. The app was able to detect the presence of the camera instantly and after following a couple of instructions, the camera was ready to go.

Image Quality

The Smart Cam 360 shoots at Full HD resolution or 1080p with a wide dynamic range to help in improving picture quality — especially to improve the dark and light areas of the image. Of course, images produced are not smartphone-level in terms of clarity, but they still remain decent.

Even at night and in pitch black rooms, the camera uses its infrared night vision that reveals images our naked eyes wouldn’t able to see. It even comes with 3D noise canceling to provide clearer images and an edge distortion correction so it doesn’t look like the images were captured with a fish-eye lens.

Of course, when you want to playback videos you would be streaming it from the device since it’s where the clips are stored. And depending on the stability of connectivity, online playback is notorious for lags and images breaking apart while playing. That was not the case with the Smart Cam 360. Playback was actually smooth and without issue with only minimal lags. The company says this is thanks to a new video encoding technology using an H.265 video format.

Performance

The app layout is simple and straightforward so functions are easily understandable. From the home screen, you can choose to control where the camera is looking, check the Alarms or Replay if you want to check for movements or disturbances in the room (yes, it can tell), activate a two-way call, and access saved images. Apart from the Settings tab, you can also access the Multi-channel page if you have more than one camera set up.

The ‘smart’ part of this AIoT device is the fact that it can log multiple disturbances even when you’re not actively monitoring the camera through the app. It can detect motion, humans, or sound — specifically, or altogether — and list down the date and timestamp when these were recorded. This way, it will be hard to miss any events happening back home while you’re away.

“You don’t watch me, hooman. I watch you.”

Additionally, the app even sends you notifications at the moment it records something. That alone is really helpful if you want to keep your home secure.

As mentioned, the Smart Cam 360 supports two-way voice calls. It’s not likely that this feature is for another human being since you can easily reach someone through a phone. We think this is specifically for your pets, if you have some left at home, so you can still somehow talk to them whenever you miss them. Either that or you can scare any trespassing fellow by talking through the speakers. Nevertheless, audio was clear when we tested using it, and it can definitely be used to check up on your pet at any time of the day.

For those worried about filling up the memory card’s capacity while they’re out for a long time, for example, you’d be happy to know that realme made sure that compression of files is efficient. With a 128GB memory card in, the company says you’ll be able to record Full HD video non-stop for 14 days.

In terms of the app’s compatibility, we tried pairing the camera using a non-realme phone and the performance is pretty much the same.

Creature Feature

In our review, The Modern Creatures aims to find special features in devices that make them worth having. Something that gives a device an edge from its peers. For the realme Smart Cam 360, it would have to be the real-time notification of disturbances happening back where the camera is set up plus the fact that it has a two-way voice call feature.

The real-time notification could mean saving your dog from eating something he’s not supposed to eat or calling the authorities when someone breaks inside your house. Its two-way voice calling is also something that could be useful for fur parents who just miss their babies or vice-versa.

Final thoughts

Having other smart devices apart from having a smartphone is something that we should be willing to adapt. After all, these are all mainly relying to our phones which are always with us anyway, and it improves lives even in small ways. Plus, with realme offering the Smart Cam 360 for just PhP 2,790, you don’t have to break the bank to get yourself a smart (and cute) security camera.

Additionally, the realme Smart Cam 360 could be yours for PhP 1,990 via Lazada and Shopee’s 11.11 sale. And, if you use the Lazada Wallet to pay for a minimum purchase of PhP 5,000, you may claim an additional discount of PhP 400.

REVIEWS