Most year-end top gadget lists include the most advanced products and the most ground-breaking technologies. For me, the products of the year are those that have become an indispensible part of my everyday life. And so, in alphabetical order (until my top pick) here are my Top 10 Gadgets of 2011.
I've got the two pieces of iTwin ($99) semi-permanently stuck in my home PC and my laptop so I can work wherever I am and not have to worry about reconciling two sets of files. You stick the whole iTwin USB stick into your home or office desktop PC. You drag files – or even the entire contents of your internal hard drive – onto it. What gets copied are actually shortcuts to these files, not the actual files, so there's no capacity ceiling. You then separate the second half of the stick, leaving the first half in your desktop PC or Mac and sticking the other half in your laptop. You can now access all your desktop PC files on your laptop and vice versa, and any additions or changes made at either end are saved as if you made them at your desktop PC – you're essentially accessing one set of centralized files. A must for anyone working on two PCs.