Weekly Tech Roundup is a recurring segment in which each week, Jamie Boudreaux will share a gadget, app, and web service or website that grabbed his attention. All of this great, intriguing tech will be in the average college student’s price range or, at the very least, worthy of this year’s Christmas list. Don’t worry about any vaporware, either; everything featured on this segment will be available for sale or in the final development and production phases. Enjoy.
 

Day Maker

I use my toaster every day. It’s great for Pop-Tarts, frozen waffles, and even grilled cheese sandwiches. Plus, toasting things is kind of fun and scary– like a practical jack-in-the-box. Habitco, a New York-based design company, sees the opportunity to bring more of this whimsy to our daily lives and is doing so with the Day Maker.

The Day Maker is a bedside morning station/iPhone charger made to help you “pop” out of bed the right way, everyday. It works with the native iOS alarm clock app but Habitco has also developed an app of their own:

“With the Day Maker app, you can customize your play list, see today’s weather and schedule at first pop; even create your own wake sequence which you can share with other Day Maker owners. You can even compare the average sleep cycles (or snooze hits) from around the globe, be it in the US or Japan.”

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It’s so literal and cute that I almost don’t believe it really exists. You can help fund the development by donating or even preordering one at its Kickstarter page.

Coming to a bedside table near you: February 2013.

 

ShareMyPlaylists.com

Spotify coming stateside last year really helped change the way many Americans listen to music. It showed how streaming music is cheaper than owning it by giving listeners access to over 15 million songs for free with some ads mixed in or a small, monthly fee for an ad-free, portable experience. Spotify also made music more social with Facebook integration for painless shareability, allowing users to recommend tracks, albums, and artists to others with just a couple of clicks.

Organically discovering new music should be easy with Spotify; unfortunately, outside of friends’ suggestions, it’s not, which is where ShareMyPlaylists comes in. ShareMyPlaylists is a community of music lovers who love building themed playlists for better music discovery.

    

You can subscribe to any playlist-for when it’s updated to include the next best hit, for instance, or you can exclude certain Indie tracks that hit the Top 40. My favorite aspect of SMP is how topical the playlists get. Upon learning of the passing of the great MC, director and activist, Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys, users were building tribute playlists to honor him.

You can log in with Facebook, Twitter, or just browse as a guest, and it’s as easy as hitting play.

 

Pulse News

If you’re like me, you spend the majority of your time on your phone, and pinching-and-zooming on all of your favorite news sites can get pretty tiring. Luckily, there’s a fantastic app called Pulse, which aggregates all of your favorite news feeds into one place for quick and fun-to-use consumption.  Pulse allows you to add streams of your favorite news sites, blogs, and even your Facebook newsfeed and Twitter timeline.

The gestures and swipes that Pulse implements make using Pulse an absolute pleasure. The ad-ridden articles that you might be used to actually conform to your device’s screen in an exceptionally readable way. Pulse is extremely polished and very free. It’s available on iPhone, iPad, Android, Kindle Fire and Nook.