Many popular science and technology magazine writers have been pushing over the last few weeks to call 2006 to a close and start looking ahead to 2007. As is true for almost every year, 2006 has had its fair share of new technology that is fun, useful or simply cool.

Rather than imitate the “Best of 2006” articles that have popped up this month, I would like to submit to you my “Christmas Wish List of Tech.” No, it isn’t just because I want you to all go out and buy me stuff: these products are practical and most are fun. Besides, who knows what to get their nerdy significant other these days anyway?

Best of all, all five of these tech gadgets are available from thinkgeek.com!

The PowerSquid Surge Protector ($24.99) is an ingenious way to manage electricity needs for multiple appliances and devices. The power supply is essentially a power strip with tentacles (flexible outlets) which allows users to plug in A/C adapters that normally take up two outlets on a side-by-side power strip. The surge protector is capable of handling a maximum surge of 6,000 volts which may not be as great as some power strips but is a definite improvement over the original, unprotected PowerSquid.

The Firepod ($19.99) is a power adapter for use with 12 volt outlets in vehicles similar to A/C adapters that provide a standard three prong outlet for charging laptops or other high powered devices. The Firepod is different in that instead of an outlet, power is supplied through USB and FireWire ports for charging smaller devices such as cell phones, PDAs, iPods, etc.) The Firepod is protected from surges the vehicle may make with a fuse and is great for long road trips.

The Swiss Memory USB Knife ($69.99-119.99) makes my list based more on how cool the concept is more than its (im)practicality as a knife. Anyone who has seen a miniature Swiss Army Knife knows that the knife blade is inadequate for any significant cutting job. That’s why the Swiss Army people include other handy tools like the LED light, pen and scissors. Now that we’ve left the age of floppy disks and (for the most part) burnt CDs, Victorinox has released their small Swiss Army knife with a USB flash drive. The USB knife comes in 256 MB, 512 MB and 1 GB models, as well as a 1 GB aluminum cased model that doesn’t have the LED light or pen.

Having a USB Data Link Transfer Cable ($19.99) around a couple months ago would have saved me a headache. I switched from an old Gateway 2000 machine at work to a newer Gateway E series computer. The problem was moving several gigabytes of project files, email, music, etc. off a computer with USB 1.1 ports (older, slower USB) to the new machine. In the end, I used an external hard drive to move everything painstakingly off the old computer, onto the external hard drive and then finally to the zippy new (USB 2.0) computer. I should have bought a USB Data Link Transfer Cable to hook up the two computers via USB (both 1.1 and 2.0 compliant) and ‘drag and drop’ my files at 25MB per second transfer speeds. That is the only purpose I can think of for the cable, but I’m sure it would have saved me (and could save you during your next computer switch) a lot of time and lost productivity.

Finally, we can all tell that winter is coming and the warm coffee mugs are about to start occupying more desks than normal. A USB Mug Warmer and Hub ($12.99) may be just the device you need to heat your coffee throughout the day – up to 80 degrees Celsius – and provide four additional USB ports to straighten some of the USB cables lying on your desktop. The benefits are obvious to me: no one likes cold coffee or cluttered desks!