All of what happened in 2012 sets up next year to be even more important for the company, as Tim Cook and Co. must figure out how to continue dazzling customers with new have-to-have devices and investors with promising returns. Here’s some of what we’ll be watching for from Apple as the calendar flips to 2013.

iPhones for all my carrier friends!

2013 won’t just be the year we see a T-Mobile iPhone. We’re likely to see a China Mobile iPhone and maybe even an NTT DoCoMo iPhone as well. Fragmentation in global LTE bands has already forced Apple to produce three different versions of the iPhone 5, breaking its long tradition of making a single device that works globally. As more European and Asian operators launch LTE in their own regional configurations and frequencies, Apple will have to start tweaking its devices further if it hopes to reach the same addressable market of its previous iPhone generations. So if Apple is optimizing iPhones specifically for Verizon and AT&Ts’ bands, there’s no reason it can’t create a special TD-SCDMA device for the China Mobile, the world’s largest carrier by subscribers. For that matter there would be nothing standing in the way of capturing other global operators that have previously been left out of Apple’s smartphone party.  –  Kevin Fitchard

The patent wars wind down

This should be the year that Apple winds down the distracting legal battles it’s waged since early 2010. To protect the design of its mobile devices, Apple has stationed expensive lawyers in courts all over the world. But it’s not clear these tactics are having any significant effect. Instead, Apple’s been forced to divulge closely held proprietary information about its process and culture. And despite a jury awarding Apple a billion dollars from Samsung after ruling that it deliberately copied the iPhone and iPad, Apple’s biggest and most important hardware competitor continues to churn out popular and well-received devices. And there’s still a chance the award could be reduced. CEO Tim Cook has repeatedly signaled his distaste for these legal entanglements and under his watch Apple has begun to defuse the full-on “thermonuclear war” Steve Jobs began against Android. The company reached an important settlement with HTC this year, and Motorola could be next. 2013 could be the year that Apple and Samsung both decide that, while the stakes are high, this is a battle that should be fought in stores, not in courts. – Erica Ogg

Jony Ive’s new human interface in iOS 7

One of the most significant shifts at Apple in 2012 should result in a bigger one next year: the design of the software that powers your iPhone and iPad. Longtime head of iOS Software Scott Forstall was ousted from Apple, while his duties were distributed among other executives. Jony Ive, Apple’s industrial design guru, was bequeathed responsibility for iOS software design as part of his duties heading up the new Human Interface group. When iOS 7 is released sometime next fall, it’s a good bet we’ll see some changes in the design of the software. Ive has reportedly been lobbying against the gaudy skeuomorphic details that Forstall had championed — the linen textures, green felt, stitched leather trim, wooden bookcases, etc. — and with him in charge, we should start to see a cleaner, more modern look develop. And since the same person is now in charge of the hardware and the software design, iOS should more elegantly reflect the iPhone hardware’s capabilities. –Erica Ogg

A smart watch for the masses

A number of watches that work with or use Apple products have hit the market, but none have actually been delivered by Apple itself. Instead, we’ve seen watch straps for the iPod nano and several third-party smart watches that work with iOS: the Pebble and MetaWatch Strata come to mind. While mainstream consumers aren’t exactly clamoring for such devices, these two generated more than $10.5 million in funding on Kickstarter, the bulk of that total coming from Pebble buyers. That’s no small dollar figure for what’s generally considered a niche device. Right now, Apple finally has everything it needs to create its own smart watch as a complement to its mobile devices and computers. The iOS platform is already more than capable enough for an intelligent Apple-designed wristwatch, and Apple has plenty of experience with touchscreens and communications hardware. A small iOS watch with Bluetooth 4.0, GPS and Wi-Fi could be created with support for companion apps such as exercise or health trackers as well as iTunes support for wireless music listening. I wouldn’t expect touch input to be supplemented with Siri for voice control on a smart watch as the device would need an always-on internet connection, but I’m not counting that possibility out either. In 2013, the time is right for Apple to enter, and possibly own, the smart watch industry. –Kevin Tofel

An evolving iTunes music experience

Apple has long been investigating alternative iTunes music listening model, and 2013 might be the year it makes a big move. Apple just recently integrated iTunes with iCloud and has been tinkering with the user interface, but the way people are listening to music — and their attitudes toward ownership of content — are changing. It’s been reported that Apple is working to develop a “Spotify-like” streaming web radio service that would be interspersed with its own iAds. While iTunes still sells the vast majority of individual tracks, the experience is lacking when compared to more seamless and popular subscription music services like Pandora and Spotify. Apple’s problem is that iTunes has become clunky software that encompasses so much more than music: there are also videos, apps, podcasts, iTunes U and books. Next year could be when Apple gets back to its digital music roots and appeals to users looking for a simple, streaming, music-focused app customized to their listening preferences. –Erica Ogg (Image courtesy Shutterstock / Elaine Barker)

More experimentation in mobile payments

Apple has dipped it its toe into mobile payments and commerce with Passbook, which allows people to hold on to their coupons, tickets and loyalty cards in a single app that presents information on the iPhone’s lock screen. But the potential is there for Apple to go even further: by using its millions of credit cards on file to create a Passbook-enabled payment system that can work at retail locations. Passbook already allows Starbucks Card users to pay with their iPhone when they get to a store. Apple has so far declined to include NFC in the iPhone and it may never integrate the technology. But it doesn’t need to if it relies on geo-fencing, barcodes or other possible mobile payment methods. Apple could also integrate payments with iAds to help deliver local offers or even allow people to pay directly for a product from an iAd, helping make mobile ads more attractive. This would be a big step for Apple and would require a lot of collaboration with merchants online and in stores. Apple might just start with a digital wallet approach, making it easy to pay for online goods first with an iTunes log-in and password. That would compete with PayPal, Google Wallet and offerings from credit cards like V.me from Visa. Eventually, Apple could move in-store using Passbook. – Ryan Kim

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1: Proving the public cloud can handle enterprise apps

Anecdotally speaking, most Fortune 1000 companies have at least some test and development running in Amazon’s public cloud. And a subset of those companies run actual applications there; heck, even NASDAQ is an AWS customer. Yet, when it comes to truly mission-critical applications in the heavily regulated finance and healthcare sectors, many companies will not put any data or applications in a public cloud. Companies like Diebold and the big banks won’t even allow staff to use AWS for development, let alone deployment.

That’s a huge hurdle for Amazon (and Microsoft Azure). AWS cut a deal with Eucalyptus last year to make it easier for companies to run Eucalyptus private clouds that interoperate with AWS on certain jobs in a hybrid model. Startups like CloudVelocity claim they can “clone” on-premise workloads onto AWS without modification and provide complete security. That’s a big promise — and one that needs to be vetted. But look for many more such announcements next year. Any company that can successfully make the public cloud a safe and secure repository for even regulated applications will be able to print money.

Meanwhile, enterprise software giants VMware and Microsoft likewise have to prove that their cloud technologies are up to snuff for their legacy customers as well as new prospects.

2: Make-or-break for HP

For the past few years, all the legacy hardware powers — Dell, EMC, Hewlett-Packard and IBM– scrambled to prove their relevance in a new world where cloud computing makes hardware branding irrelevant.

But HP is in the hottest seat this coming year, with CEO Meg Whitman pleading with investors to wait out a “multiyear turnaround.” It’s by no means clear that they will. HP is in the cross hairs after years of management turmoil and questionable acquisitions — most recently of Autonomy. That $11.1 billion purchase was meant to build HP’s credibility both in big data and in cloud computing. It’s safe to say it has not done so.

Now that HP has launched its OpenStack-based compute cloud,we’ll see if HP’ s enterprise customer base — which is still huge — has enough confidence to move into an HP-branded cloud. Otherwise it will move elsewhere.

3: It’s time for OpenStack to stand (or not) on its own

Now that Rackspace has stepped back from its paternal role as OpenStack backer and turned governance over to a multivendor body, it’s time to see if OpenStack has what it takes to compete with Amazon Web Services on the public cloud side as well as with other open-source options CloudStack, Eucalyptus, and OpenNebula.

2012 was a big year for OpenStack with HP, Internap, Red Hat, and Rackspace itself all standing up OpenStack-based clouds. Nebula is getting close to general availability on its OpenStack appliance. And there are other options coming soon including Cloudscaling’s Amazon and Google API-compliant private cloud. Watch for more services companies to build services around OpenStack as well. Mirantis just launched its own BYO OpenStack service, for example.

While many have said that OpenStack is late to the party, it’s important to remember that despite all the hype and all the cloud washing of last year, we’re still very much in early days of cloud computing. Anything can happen. Some new company and perhaps even a legacy player could rise up and give even Amazon a run for its money.

4: Infrastructure now extends beyond the four walls of the data center

Back in 2008 Google pushed the idea that the data center was the computer, but with the launch of its Spanner database that syncs content across five data centers, we’re clearly moving into a new realm of infrastructure designed to support our favorite web services. Now the data center isn’t the computers, the data centers plus the network connecting them are.

It’s not just Google thinking this way. Netflix, a heavy user of Amazon’s cloud and one of the biggest broadband traffic drivers, has extended its network as close to the edge as carriers will let it by building out a content delivery network (CDN).  Facebook has a similar effort in the works, and it is also making deals with carriers to lease fiber so it can extend its infrastructure closer to the edge. We’re going to see more deals where data center operators will have to become more comfortable stretching their infrastructure outside the data center discovering how to keep things in sync over massively distributed networks.

5: Software defined everything doesn’t get easier

Software-defined networking was the big buzz word of 2012 but we also saw the emergence of software-defined storage and the software defined data center. Basically the idea here is to bring the same flexibility to networking, storage and the data center that virtualization brought to computing. You can’t free your applications from the server without bringing along the networking and storage for them too.

But like any new field that could disrupt established vendors, there’s a lot of marketers throwing shade, especially around software defined networking. While we expect to see a lot of production deployments showing of network virtualization, we don’t think we’ll see much headway when it comes to commoditizing the router or effectively linking the applications to the networking gear in an open and standardized way.

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Stacey Higginbotham

Chip wars intensify as more gain LTE integration

Qualcomm has experienced a phenomenal run as the provider of integration applications processors and radios for smartphones this past year. The application processor is the brains for the smartphone, while the radios allow them to communicate. Qualcomm’s longstanding practice is to combine those chips onto one system on a chip to save space inside the handset, which has helped it lead the pack in terms of market share.

Now others are finally following its lead with Nvidia, which purchased radio maker Icera, and Intel, which purchased Infineon’s wireless business; both are set to release integrated chips next year. Nvidia’s Grey and Wayne chips will combine its Tegra processor and should hit devices in the second half of the year

Intel on the other hand has released an integrated modem and application processor that found its way into a handful of handsets this year, but didn’t support LTE. The chip giant plans to release an Atom-based application processor that supports the 4G standard early next year. Qualcomm is going to get some competition with good tech and competition with deep pockets as handset makers will have more chip options for the onslaught of LTE handsets expected in 2013.

Kevin Fitchard

The incredibly shrinking network

Next year networks are going to get smaller — or at least the cells within them are. The major U.S. operators led by AT&T and Sprint plan to begin their first small cell launches in 2013, paving the way for far denser networks and big increases in mobile data capacity.

Why are small cells important? Each cell in a network only has a finite amount of capacity, so if you increase the number of cells in a given area you increase the overall amount of shared bandwidth available to a carrier’s subscribers. Radio network analytics and optimization firm Actix estimates that today the typical square kilometer in a busy urban area contains five to seven macrocells, but in 2015 that same area will be augmented with a layer of 40 or more micro and picocells. Such an architecture could support 3,000 GB of traffic a day within a single square-kilometer, a 10X increase in capacity over what our networks support today.

The big cell mounted on rooftops and towers isn’t going away. Instead it will be incorporated into the heterogeneous network, allowing our smartphones and tablets to choose among many connection options and eventually to establish multiple connections simultaneously. Mobile bandwidth will become more plentiful and hopefully much cheaper. This won’t happen overnight, but we’ll see the precursors of these hetnets next year.

The resurgence of the MVNO

The independent mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) all but died in the last decade. But in 2012 the MVNO made a big comeback. Dozens of new virtual carriers emerged, but instead of focusing on a specific demographic or a media brand like the defunct Amp’d Mobile or Disney Mobile, this new breed of MVNO is targeting the industry’s traditional business models.

There are dozens of virtual operators led by Straight Talk that are now undercutting the big operators in price, but a few of them have gone further, upturning the usual minutes/bucket of megabytes plans. Republic Wireless is tapping into public, readily available Wi-Fi to offer unlimited data and voice plans at sub-$40 rates. Ting is offering what amounts to metered pricing, charging customers only for what they use. Karma and FreedomPop are using social networking principles to distribute 4G bandwidth.

Most of these MVNOs are just getting off the ground and many of them may get culled by the market. But 2013 could be the year for those MVNOs to flourish. There’s growing discontent in the market with the major carriers’ pricing models, sending consumers searching for alternatives. But there’s also greater willingness among carriers to work with MVNOs. They’re lifting many of the old restrictions such as limited access to networks and device that previously kept MVNOs from thriving.

Kevin Tofel

Wi-Fi gets better both in and out of the home

As carriers continue moving towards tiered and shared mobile broadband data plans, look for reliance on Wi-Fi networks to continue to increase. The one-time barrier of hotspot availability has diminished, but hasn’t solved a key problem: seamless connection to Wi-Fi networks. That’s where Passpoint and Hotspot 2.0 initiatives come into play. These services add new capabilities to Wi-Fi devices, primarily allowing certified products to automatically sign in and use a Wi-Fi network.

Asus 80211ac router

That’s just the first step, however; the idea is that smartphones, tablets and laptops will roam from one Wi-Fi hotspot to another without any user intervention. Not only will that help consumers and enterprise workers out in the field, but it also benefits cellular operators, making it even easier to offload data traffic from 3G and 4G networks to hotspots.

Home Wi-Fi use will improve as well thanks to the new 802.11ac standard, which boosts throughput over today’s 802.11n networks. Supporting up to eight antennas and wider bandwidth on a 5 GHz channel, 802.11ac devices deliver a wider coverage range with throughput speeds over a gigabit per second. Although the standard is still in draft form, expect to see some mobile devices support early versions of 802.11ac mainly for traditional networking activities and video sharing in the home.

Digital assistance and contextual smarts improve on smartphones… and beyond.

Siri, Google Now and various third-party assistants set the stage for contextual software in smartphones, but there’s more work to be done. Expect to see these and other related services mature by taking advantage of more mobile device sensors combined with deeper access to personal information such as schedules, contacts, locations, and your historical smartphone usage. More apps will arrive to help our handsets become more effective, and the successful apps will be eyed by platform vendors for integration at the operating system level.

This coming year will also see such contextual services appear in other objects. Think televisions that learn your viewing habits and automatically record shows you may be interested in, for example. How about a smart desk chair sets your online IM status to “available” thanks to a pressure sensor that “sees” when you’re sitting at your desk and back to “away” when you leave?

The possibilities are limitless thanks to the advances in apps and small hardware pioneered by smartphones. Helping to drive this movement are the hacker and tinkerer communities. These have long created their own solutions, but will drive change this year through open-source hardware and software projects such as Arduino.

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• Mobile 2012 and beyond
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But what makes content worth paying for? Certainly part of the answer is what your interests are — whether you’re a fan of football, or the opera or old movies. But there’s more to it than that: Which content services create a really compelling experience for users and how have they done it? With that question in mind, we gave our media reporters—Robert Andrews, Laura Hazard Owen, Jeff John Roberts and Janko Roettgers—a hypothetical allowance of $100 and asked them to tell us how they’d spend it on digital content. Here’s what they said. Note: We offered the same $100 to Mathew Ingram, another of our media reporters — but he insisted he almost never pays for content and wouldn’t know what to spend the $100 on!

Robert Andrews

What: Spotify subscription (three months)

Cost: $30

Value proposition: Owning stuff is so last-millennium. Except when it comes to real estate, renting is now far better value. For the same cost of just three albums from iTunes Store, a Spotify subscription offers 18 million tracks, playable on multiple devices and in my car. Rental services will succeed with people who want to discover lots of great new music — but, for folks who like to play all their familiar favorite classics, download stores remain the key to music heaven.

What: Soma FM (recurring donation)

Cost: $2.99 per month

Gustav H

Value proposition: Music this good does not come free. With 25 niche channels of streams hand-picked by savvy curators, the pioneering online radio service, which began in 1999, sits proudly in my TuneIn app presets. It’s a sonic friend during my work day and a beacon of digital taste in a radio business that focuses ever more myopically on pop hits.

But founder Rusty Hodges’ refusal to sell advertising means only donations keep the lights on at Soma FM’s converted San Francisco warehouse-based business, which has had to fight royalty rate hikes several times and costs $40,000 per month.

What: Ancestry.co.uk subscription (three months)

Cost: £38.85 (US$62.71)

Value proposition: Facebook’s fine for “friends” in the here and now – but, to me, the next big thing is social networking with dead people. Ancestry lets me reacquaint myself with the family I never knew by creating genealogical profiles based on solid research. I can see the my connections to the deceased, complete with avatars, as though they were my historical “social graph.” Ancestry shows that when you appeal to consumers’ deeper emotions, you can make a mint from selling access to centuries-old content — birth certificates, censuses, military service records, newspaper archives, and more. Like Spotify, it cannily locks customers in by letting them build up trees they care deeply about, available only as long as they continue subscribing.

Laura Hazard Owen

What: New York Times Saturday-Sunday subscription (three months)

Cost: $39.60

Value proposition: Despite the debates over the future of newspapers and paywalls, I still think the NYT is the best overall news source out there and well worth paying for. Home delivery includes unlimited digital access across PCs and tablet and smartphone apps — a better deal than purchasing a digital-only plan, which is $0.99 for the first four weeks but $8.75 a week thereafter.

What: Next Issue subscription (for three months)

Cost: $29.98 (first month free)

Value proposition: This year I cut back on print subscriptions to save trees and money (and my apartment from a towering stack of unread mags). Next Issue lets me browse through up to 80 digital titles (like Wired, People, Bon Appetit, the New Yorker, Esquirer and New York), and provides access to back issues through iPad and Android apps. I’m not sure I’d want a Next Issue subscription indefinitely, but three months is enough time to test it out and see how much use I get from it. That said, I plan to be a lifelong print subscriber to The New Yorker.

What: Byliner Plus subscription (three months)

Cost: $7.99 (first 60 days free)

Value proposition: Byliner Plus offers access to dozens of Byliner Originals (e-singles) by authors like Mark Bittman, Ann Patchett and Margaret Atwood. They sell for $1.99 to $2.99 a pop in digital bookstores, and I’m usually intrigued by the topics, so this is a good way to read more longform journalism while saving a little money. There are other e-singles programs out there — Kindle Singles and Atavist, for example — but the combination of business model and variety of content is what intrigues me here. One caveat: Byliner Plus offers access to Byliner Originals through an HTML5 site — you can’t download them to an e-reader. However, you can save them for offline reading.

What: Eat Your Books subscription (three months)

Cost: $7.50

Value proposition: I have a giant print cookbook collection and I don’t make enough use of it. Eat Your Books lets me keep track of all the cookbooks I own on a virtual bookshelf and search their indexes online. If I want to make gingerbread cookies, for instance, I can just do a search for that phrase to see the recipes in books I already own, then go to the physical cookbook to make the cookies. Eat Your Books also indexes cooking magazines and blogs.

What: Worldreader donation

Cost: $14.93

Value proposition: Tis the season to give to others, so I’ll donate my final $14.93 to this nonprofit that brings Kindles and ebooks to children in sub-Saharan Africa. Worldreader is also digitizing many African books for the first time, and you can see all the titles here.

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• Survey: How apps can solve photo management
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• Sector RoadMap: Social customer service in 2013

What will next year bring? Everyone loves to look into their crystal ball, and we’re no different. So here are our collective predictions for 2013, from books and video to newspapers and advertising.

This is one of a handful of pieces over the next week that looks at what’s coming down the road next year in the various sectors we cover.

Laura Owen

Jeff Roberts

Robert Andrews

Janko Roettgers

Mathew Ingram

Go to page 2 (of 6) on GigaOM .

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• Content monetization: News licensing and syndication still need marketplaces and infrastructure
• Connected consumer first-quarter 2013: Analysis and outlook
• How to navigate the new world of digital advertising

Show notes for this episode:

• Roku is available starting at $50. Check out Roku’s website for more info, or take a look at our review of the current-generation Roku hardware.
• Apple TV costs $99. More info on Apple’s website, or check out our recent Apple TV coverage.
• Boxee TV is available for $98. Check out Boxee’s site for more info, and make sure to read our first impressions of the device.
• The Vizio CoStar costs $99. More info on Vizio’s website, or check out our video review of the device.
• The Mohu leaf costs $40. Here’s Mohu’s website, and don’t forget to activate your antenna once you bought it!
• One last tip: Our e-book Cut the Cord: All You Need to Know to Drop Cable is just $5. Give it as a gift, or buy it yourself if you want to get ready to save some money and have more fun watching TV next year. The book is available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and iTunes.

What kind of cord cutting gear is on your wish list this year, and what kind of gifts are you getting your loved ones?Please share your thoughts in the comments, get in touch with us on Twitter (@cordcutters) or email us at cordcutters @ gigaom.com.

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• Connected Consumer Wrap-up: Q1 2009
• Where the next-generation console fits in today’s video game market
• How consumer media will change in 2013

Enter Tie Society, a startup that follows pretty much the same distribution model as Netflix, just with men’s ties instead of DVDs. The company is a year old as of this month, and is growing (among primarily East Coast) customers looking to expand their tie collections without making any big purchases.

Tie Society also represents part of a growing trend of online fashion retailers that are building brand loyalty by exchanging brick and mortar stores for speedy shipping options, and in-person assistance with online photo galleries and information. It also joins the legion of digital fashion startups like Bombfell or Trunkclub.com that are aimed specifically at men who are short on time and shopping patience, but who want to look good.

Tie Society members can choose ties from an online inventory of ties, pick a monthly plan that lets them keep several ties at their house at once (starting at $10.95 per month for 1 tie at a time, up to $49.95 for 10 ties), and wait for the ties to ship. Shipping is free, and members can exchange as many ties per month as they want. The company has a full FAQ answering all your questions, from what to do if you stain your tie (generally they can fix it for you, free of charge), to whether you can purchase ties you really like (you can, for the price listed on the site.)

CEO and co-founder Zac Gittens pointed out that ties are an easy way to add fashion and style to a guy’s outfit, and they’re pretty interchangeable. No worries about finding a perfect fit. He said their membership centers in Washington, but they have a strong user base in New York as well. And while the majority of the company’s users are between 25-40 years old, the company has seen a 72 year-old pick out ties for dates with his wife and trips to church, and a 14-year-old boy required to wear uniforms to school pick out ties to look good for class.

“It runs such a gamut,” Gittens said.

While the company participated in the 500 Startups program this summer, it actually launched about a year ago, and has seen consistent growth since then. A spokeswoman for the company said they’ve now shipped several thousand ties to more than 30 U.S. states, and holiday sales last year crashed the company’s site. Gittens said the most popular membership tier is the three ties at a time option for $19.95 per month.

And as for plans for expansion?

“We’ve started branching out into pocket squares or tie bars,” he said. “We never expected it to be as big as it is already.” Gittens said they’ll consider expansion, but are focusing on moving ties at the moment, and possible partnerships to give styling tips for when the ties arrive.

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Here are some of the suggestions from Emile Patrone, the founder of DIY project sales site Tindie, Scott Miller, the founder of product design consulting firm Dragon Innovation, and William Hurley, the co-founder of design firm Chaotic Moon Studios. And yes, all of them recommended some sort of 3D printer, either the Form-1 that began as a Kickstarter campaign and will sell for $3,299 in April, or the MakerBot Replicator for $2,199 (because of Hurricane Sandy it looks like that won’t arrive in time for the holidays though). But like a soldering iron, I’m going to assume if your hacker recipient wants a 3D printer they already have one.

Product: Simon Says
Cost: $12.95
What you need to know: The Simon Says board is a beginner board kit that plays a light and sound-based memory game. The board plays a series of sounds and you play it back in sequence. The kit aims to teach people how to solder, and is also uses open source hardware so you can program your own light and sound combinations after you’ve maxed out the ones already programmed on the board.

Product: The Rascal
Cost: $175
What you need to know: This is a somewhat hard-to-buy gift, since they are batch-made, but the boards are basically portable (if you include a Wi-Fi radio and a battery) web servers that you can program using Python. People have used them to control any electronic device from the web. You can hook your electronic device into the board (you will probably need a shield of some sorts) and then write some code to build a web site from which you can now control the device. With the right board and shield I may be able to figure out how to control my oven from the web (yes, this is a dream of mine).

Product: Stirling Engine Model
Cost: $129
What you need to know: The product description says this is beautiful as well as a lesson in thermodynamics, and who wouldn’t want a desk-side sculpture that also doubles as a physics experiment? Plus you have to make it! As paperweights go the replica of a Stirling Engine, (there’s one inside a Segway) shows you how to convert an external heat source into motion via a fan, car and generator experiment. Outrage your steampunk friends with a more alternative engine.

Product: Electric Imp Breakout
Cost: $19.95
What you need to know: The Electric Imp guys have the ambitious goal of bringing Wi-Fi to everything using an SD-style card that you can plug into a variety of gadgets, appliances or even lamps. then you program those elements via a web-based service. You can’t get the easy-to-use version of the products yet, but you can buy a breakout board and build your own connected product if you’re so inclined.

Product: ExtraCore
Cost: $10.50
What you need to know: A lot of people buy Arduino boards and share them between projects. This makes sense because those boards containing the logic processors can be expensive. The downside is that you may have a lot of half-complete projects waiting around for a board to make it work. ExtraCore is a kit that can power your project for a third of the cost of an Arduino board. The key to this board is that it’s small and Looks just like Arduino Uno to the integrated developer environment.

Product: Twine
Cost: $99
What you need to know: Connecting stuff to the Internet is pretty much an essential step in many DIY projects, and Twine makes is easy enough that I can do it. The product is a rubberized self-contained sensor pack that also has a Wi-Fi radio that outputs to a web site. The Twine web app reflects what the sensors see in real time, so you can than write a little program telling Twine that when X happens it should take an action that might send info to a web page, to an email, to Twitter or to the Pebble Smart watch.

Product: The 2WD Rovera Arduino Robot Kit
Cost: $174.99
What you need to know: Who doesn’t want to build a friendly little robot to play with and/or help you in your plans for world domination. The kit includes everything you need to build a two-wheeled robot including the motor shield board, wheels and wires. It’s unclear if you can add a sensor that would allow you to program the robot to look soulfully at you and say, “No disassemble.”

Product: MiniStylophone Kit
Cost: $9:50
What you need to know: This is a kit for beginners that will allow them to play music and record sounds for later playback. The kit requires the recipient to solder 24 resistors to the board, so make sure your recipient has a soldering iron. When done you use a stylus to play the music on the stylophone. You can hook it into other projects or annoy your friends and parents.

Product: Membership to a hack space
Cost: It varies, but can range from $99 to $175 per month.
What you need to know: There are myriad places where like-minded DIYers can get together and take classes, use equipment and store their projects from the Artisan’s Asylum in Boston to TechShop which has spaces in the Bay Area, Austin, Detroit and Raleigh-Durham, N.C. For a listing of other popular places check out the Hackerspaces Wiki.

Product: Gamby
Cost: $25
What you need to know: This is a limited edition Arduino shield to combine with an Arduino board to make a mobile gaming console. It has a monochrome LCD screen and four-way directional pad for that up-up-down-down gameplay. The games are already in your head, so get coding and start playing them on your very own hardware. Great gift for a special proposal or an awesome product to make with your kids.

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