The 2021 Gift Guides Episode!

Joe Casabona: If you are looking for the perfect gift for the small business owner, creator, podcaster, or just a loved one who works from home, or let’s be honest, if you’re looking to get some stuff for yourself over the Black Friday, Cyber Monday weekend, this episode is for you. We’re going to go through my gift guides. We’ll get into all of that in a second. But first, I want to tell you about a new free resource I have.

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Okay. So as I teased at the beginning of the episode, we are going to be talking about my 2021 gift guides. This has become a bit of an annual thing for me. I’ve been creating gift guides since shortly after college. And I was doing a, you know… usually, it was like a back to school gift guide. And then as I got older, I started to realize that I don’t really know what kids need for school anymore or what students in college need because I’m so far away from it.

But you know what? I work from home, I’m a web developer, I know what those people need. So I started making those gift guides. They used to be standalone blog posts each year, and then I realized that it would probably be better to make them as pages.

Now, in Build Something More, we’ll talk about how I built those pages. And I’ll reference some members-only content where you can see me putting them together. But for this episode, we’re going to walk through the 2021 Gift Guides. All of the show notes will be over at streamlined.fm/242, including links to each of the guides I mentioned here.

Today’s episode is brought to you by Nexcess, TextExpander, and Accessibility Checker by Equalize Digital. You’ll hear about them later on in the show. But for now, without further ado, let’s get to the gift guides.

So it’s become a bit of a time-honored tradition for me to do the guides around the holidays. I often get asked for recommendations on office, podcasts, and pen gear. So those are the three gift guides I have put together.

Let’s start with the gift guides for people who work from home. Now, I’ll also mentioned here that I do a video walkthrough of the first two where I demo some of the things I mentioned. But if you’re not into YouTube, if you’re just kind of looking for a list of stuff, well, this is it for you. So this is my most popular gifts guide, the work from home gift guides because more people are working from home today than ever before, especially from when I first started this guide.

So I’ve tried to put together a broad scope of helpful items for anybody who’s working from home and not just, say, web developers who are working from home, which is what I was when I first started these gift guides.

So first, a good webcam. If you’re going to be working from home, you’re going to be meeting with a lot of people. And I know that lots of people bought new webcams last year during the pandemic. If you didn’t get a new webcam and you’re looking… there was like a crazy shortage. So maybe you didn’t get one. But there are a couple I recommend.

If you’re looking for a really good HD camera, the Elgato Facecam is one I recently picked up and love. I use it as a secondary camera for my live streams. It’s $199. But it is a really well-made camera. So even if you’re, say, looking to do more video work and you don’t want to spend the money on a 4k camera, the Elgato Facecam does a really good job. It has a lot of good settings for color temperature and zooming in. I’m a big fan of basically everything Elgato has been doing lately.

If you want something a bit more affordable, the Logitech C920 has been around for years. It’s less than 100 bucks. And it’s tried and true. It was my first external webcam as a professional. So I’m a big fan of that.

And if you do want a 4k camera webcam, the Logitech Brio I think is probably the best webcam out there for 4k quality. That’s $199. It’s not as flexible as the Elgato Facecam as far as settings go. But you will get that clean, crisp 4k quality. Now, I also linked to my live stream setup on this guide if you want just like a banana setup. But I’m a YouTuber, I make online courses, so I don’t recommend my setup for the general public.

Now, along with a good webcam should be a good microphone. And so I think that if you’re not podcasting… we’ll talk about podcast mics in a little bit. But if you’re not podcasting, if you just want a decent microphone, Sennheiser makes this USB headset called the Sennheiser PC 8 USB headset. It is affordable. It is of good quality. I think the folks at LinkedIn Learning, this is similar to the one that they use. And it’s $24.

The benefit of this is that it attaches to your head. So it’s a mic that’s close to you. So it’s not picking up a bunch of environmental noise. But it also moves with your face. So if you tend to turn your head a lot and you turn away from the microphone, the mic will turn with you.

Now, if you are looking for a good quality microphone, if you want to sound better than everybody else on the call, the ATR2100x is perfect. It’s less than 100 bucks, which is a great price. It’s a USB microphone, but it’s also an XLR microphone. And spoiler alert, this is the one I recommend for most beginner podcasters. And it sounds fantastic. Again, I’ll link in the show notes over at streamlined.fm/242. I will link to a video where I test out this microphone.

So if you’re looking for something that sounds really good, not studio quality… I mean, actually, you know, it sounds really good. I recommend it to beginner podcaster. So if you’re looking for something like that, I think the ATR2100 is perfect. The Blue Yeti is another popular one. But again, we’ll talk about microphones soon.

On top of a good camera, I think that’s something that people don’t think about with just a camera is the darker it is in your environment, the harder the camera is going to have to work and the lower the picture quality is. So I have a couple of recommendations for some lighting that will make you look better.

Now I have Philips Hue lights. They are smart lights, so I can control them with my stream deck. So that’s a little bit of home automation. There’s the Elgato Key Light and Key Light Air. These are $129 and $199, respectively. So again, these are smart lights that you can adjust color temperature and brightness on.

But if you’re looking for just a simple solution to lighting, the Loom Cube for video conferencing is a good solution. It’s a light box that is $70. And it connects directly to your computer. So it’ll light your face and give you that nice, even lighting. So, again, the Loom Cube is something that I will recommend.

They have a couple of other options too. A smaller lighting kit for 50 bucks. But if you’re going to be on video a lot, you know, it’s something worth exploring because again, it’s going to make you look better. So I think lighting is something that’s overlooked by a lot of people. That’s the end of the digital media section of the gift guide.

Moving into productivity tools. Again, we’ll talk a little bit more about this for the pen gift guide. But the productivity tools section is… I talk about analog and digital. So digital tools. We’ll talk about those first. I basically just mentioned the ones that I’m using right now.

Todoist this just my task manager, MindNode is what I use for Mind Mapping, Craft is what I use for note-taking, and Ulysses is what I use for writing. Now, Todoist is Craft’s platform. Craft is Apple platform, but they also have a web edition. Ulysses and MindNode, as far as I know, are only on Apple platforms. So for mind mapping software I thought is one that’s on everything I believe. And iA Writer is a writing app that’s everywhere. But those are the app that I use and that I like to use.

For analog tools, the Theme System Journal is my daily journal. I’m a big fan of that. There is something called the Tomoe River journal. Now, this has changed a little bit. The paper has changed, but it’s a nice lay flat journal. And actually, it looks like it’s hard to come by. So I’m going to have to update this link to the new one. But it’s a really fantastic notebook. On top of that, there’s also the subtle notebook. So I will be sure to add that into the analog section here too because I’ve been using that a lot more.

I also have an analog planner. I use the William Hannah A5 classic notebook. This is a ring binder, so you can get the refills that you want. And I currently use the one-week two-page refill. So I have the days of the week on one side and a blank page on the other. So I can plan out my appointment and then write down my tasks and other notes for the week on the other side.

The thing that I’ve been using the most this year, though, is the Analog to-do system from Ugmonk. I’m an analog guy through and through despite my pension for technology. And there’s just nothing like writing out a to-do list and then checking off items.

I already mentioned I use Todoist on the digital side. That’s for capturing tasks way more than my brain can handle. But I will consult to do it and then write my tasks for the day on Analog. It’s a three-card system. There are three cards for today, next, and Sunday. Now what I use these for is today, the current month, and the current quarter. So that’s how I’m using these cards for planning. It’s beautifully made. It’s easy storage. I feel like it was made just for me. So I’m a big fan of the Analog to do system from Ugmonk.

Moving outside of the productivity tools. Coffee. Everybody has their own opinions on coffee, so I won’t spend too much time here. But if you know somebody who works from home, you probably know somebody who drinks a lot of coffee at home. So something like a coffee grinder would be good or an espresso won’t let you down.

If you’re looking for coffee recommendations, Rook is a local coffee roaster to me. I’m a big fan of them. And then there’s YES PLZ Coffee please coffee which is out in Los Angeles. Full disclosure they did sponsor the podcast last year. They are no longer a sponsor but they still make good coffee.

And then office ergonomics. So if we’re talking about being comfortable at home, you need a good desk chair is something I talked about here. I have Steelcase is Steelcase gesture. It’s very expensive, but I spend 8 to 10 hours a day in it so it has to be comfortable.

But if you’re looking for something more affordable HON, H-O-N, Chairs are popular and they’re available at Staples. No matter what chair you have, I strongly recommend getting rollerblade wheels for office chairs. This is wild I didn’t even know these existed until I saw Wes Bos tweet it. But these wheels make the chair sturdier, easier to roll on carpets a lot smoother. I’m a huge, huge fan.

If you have an office chair on wheels, I would recommend getting these rollerblade wheels. And then of course if you are in the market for a new desk, you can check out standing desk. I have the Jarvis by Fully. I’m a big fan of it. Or if you’re looking for something more affordable, Fully also offers a converter that sits on top of a desk that allows you to make the desk standing.

Other ergonomic advancements, I guess, improvements for the desk, something to elevate your monitor and your laptop or monitor so you’re not hunched over especially if you have a laptop, Twelve South makes a lot of really good stuff for that. A good mouse goes a long way. I have the Logitech MX Master 3. It’s really well made. There’s an ergonomic design for comfort. It’s also programmable based on the app. So I can keep my hand on the mouse longer and I don’t have to switch as much.

And then as far as keyboards, I don’t have an ergonomic keyboard. I use Apple’s keyboard. But the one that seems to be recommended the most often is one from Microsoft that I link to in the gift guide. And then if you want to go the extra mile and you have an external monitor, get a monitor arm. Again, Fully makes one. I had one from Amazon that served me really well until I no longer needed a monitor arm.

So all of these things will kind of help you with your posture, prevent you from having aches and pains more… you or the loved one you’re shopping for. And it’ll just help you or them be more comfortable at the desk.

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Joe Casabona: Now if someone’s working from home, they’re going to need a backup system, right? If you work in an office, hopefully they have something for you. But at home, it’s all up to you. So here’s what I recommend.

An external hard drive, absolutely. Western Digital My Book is one that I’ve used for as long as I can remember. I think I have the eight terabyte model now. But the 12 terabyte model will serve you well. So an external hard drive.

Offsite or cloud backups is also important. You know, you want that three, two, one system: three copies of your data, two different locations, one offsite. Backblaze is the one and only recommendation I have for this I’m a big fan of Backblaze.

And then I also have an SSD, a Portable SSD hard drive, the Samsung T7’s. I have that attached to my main computer because this computer only has one terabyte only. Sounds like a crazy thing to say. But I create a lot of mixed media and that takes up a lot of space.

So my entire photos Library is on this Samsung T7 Portable SSD. I trust my Photos Library. Now it’s also an iCloud. But as far as the main copy, the canonical copy that’s on this hard drive. So that’s how much I trust it. And if you have a heavy duty portable hard drive, you know, you can bring it around with you if you’re going to be someplace without an internet connection and need a backup.

The other thing that I talked about here is network area storage so you can get a NAS. I have one I actually need to update this copy. I’m just really because I said I’ve been considering one. I have one in my home office. This is a storage solution that connects to your network so you can send data across the network.

I use it for cold storage. So essentially I have an automation setup that looks at a couple of folders. And if these files haven’t been touched in 30 days, it copies those files over to the NAS and then delete them from my computer. So they kind of move into cold storage. But just a heads up with a NAS if you’re going to buy, I recommend the Synology 2 or 4 Bay storage. You’ll also need to get some hard drives.

The thing that you have to keep in mind with a NAS is that each hard drive is essentially it’s two have the same hard drive. It’ll make a redundant copy so that if one goes you still have the data. So just keep that in mind.

Other hardware I recommend is headphones. So I have the AirPods Pro. I absolutely love them. I have the Bose something sevens. I don’t recommend those. I recommend the Bose QuietComfort 45. They just came out this year. They’re the predecessor to the… or the successor, I should say, to the Bose QuietComfort 35 which I absolutely loved. So whether you work from home or in an office or in a co-working space, these will help you focus.

If you don’t want to get the AirPods Pro or noise-canceling headphones, the AirPods are good. The third generation just came out. They’re shaped more like the AirPods Pro. But you can still buy the AirPods second generation which has a longer stem.

Then there’s also… I link to I think it’s these JBL air buds if you don’t want to get AirPods. Oh, Brainwave is… oh right, Brainwave. So they’re okay. But I’ll update that link as well because… I kind of recommend the things I use. If you’re looking for wired headphones, we’ll talk about that more in the podcast gift guide as well. But the Audio-Technica ATH-M50X are great and served me well for a long time.

As we kind of round out the guide here other helpful tech. I just recommend some vendors here essentially. For power-charging bricks or hubs, I recommend Anker. For stands and holders and cases, I recommend Twelve South. For hubs and other really nice-looking accessories for your Apple devices, I recommend Satechi. I say Apple devices but it can be any device. I recommend Satechi.

Then there’s the grab bag I have over here, miscellaneous stuff. If you have a phone and you’re looking for a good case for it, I recommend Caudable. They have really nice-looking ones. They have super thin ones which are appealing to me. I have a HomePod Mini and love it. I have AirTags and love them. And if you’re looking for a good portable tripod for your phone, no matter what phone you have, I have a SwitchPod and I love it.

Now, I will also recommend, if you are looking for a big gift for that loved one or for you, the iPad Mini. I just did a whole livestream on this. I’ll be doing a video on it. But the iPad Mini is perfect especially for somebody spending time at home. It’s really portable. It’s versatile. I read take notes and write on it. Huge fan. Could not say enough nice things about the new iPad Mini. And it works with the Apple Pencil too now. So just absolutely love it.

And then again, getting outside of tech, making home more relaxing. Good clothes, nice shirts, T-shirts, unmentionables, some of the brands I’ll just rattle off here. I recommend UNTUCKit for shirts, Ugmonk for T-shirts, Mack Weldon or meUndies for unmentionables.

And then getting out of the house. So people who spend a lot of time at home are going to want to get out of the house. And they can now. So dinner gift cards, movie gift cards, trying an escape room. I got my wife a bed and breakfast for her birthday one year so she was her at a bed and breakfast without me or the kids. But there’s also cigar lounge, wine tasting, museum tour, or even just a gym or club membership, co-working space, something to get the person out of the house.

So that’s a quick run-through of my work from home gift guide. Hopefully, you’ve got some good ideas there. I think now’s a good time to take a break for our first sponsor.

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And now let’s get back to it.

Joe Casabona: All right, and we’re back. So now that we just ran through the work from home gift guide, let’s talk about the podcasting gift guides. A lot of this stuff I already cover. So I will just mention the important things.

This gift guide is broken into kind of different sections. One is for the beginner who is looking to start a podcast. The other is for the podcaster who has been doing it for a while who is looking to upgrade their setup. So if you’re starting out, again, I recommend the Audio-Technica ATR2100x. I think this is the best first microphone. Or the Blue Yeti if you are dead set on that. That’s fine. Just be mindful of the settings there.

Other improvements that you should make to the microphone. A Pop Filter to prevent those hard ‘P’ sound. They’re called plosives. And they make your recording hard to listen to. A Shock Mount which prevents shakes from hitting your desk, and other small vibrations from making those into the recording. So I’m hitting my desk but because I have a Shock Mount, you’re not hearing those vibrations in the microphone.

And then a Boom Arm will keep the mic out of your way. So if you talk with your hands or whatever, you won’t accidentally knock the microphone over. Those three things. I think we’ll make some big improvements to your microphone setup. I’m not going to say specific ones here because it depends on the mic you get. I’m using the SHURE SM7B which I’ll talk about later, but that has a shockmount built into it.

Headphones: you need headphones to sound good. Your guest also needs headphones. But you can’t really buy your guest headphones. again, I recommend the ATH-M50X. They are a great price and they’re best in class. They are wired so they’re not going to interfere with accidentally switching the microphone or anything like that. You’ll get a clean feed and you’ll generally be able to monitor yourself through them as well.

I like to monitor my voice. I can hear my voice in my headphones and that tells me that I am recording and my mic hasn’t cut out or anything like that. So that’s what I like.

And then finally acoustic foam. The name of the game with sound quality or soundproofing maybe is reducing echo by absorbing and deflecting. And one great way to do that is with acoustic foam panels. I link to these hexagonal ones that look like you can just kind of stick them to your wall and unstick them. Easy to install, easy to use. I’m going to pick up some from my office.

But Auralex is considered the industry leader. Installation can be a hassle but if you’re in a basement and you can make some slightly more permanent changes, Auralex is the way to go. They also have these panels that are movable on the stands that you can check out. But anything to help absorb and deflect to the sound will reduce echo and will make you sound a lot better.

And then as far as uploading your podcast, I think you should have two different hosts. One is the audio host. I recommend Castos for that. And one is the web host and I recommend Cloudways for that. Cloudways is new this year. I’ve spoken to Robert Jacobi, a friend of mine who works there now. I am a bit disenchanted with SiteGround.

Now I will say Nexcess is the current and future sponsor of the show. I use Nexcess for my podcast. But if someone’s cost-conscious, and are looking for maybe more affordable hosting, Cloudways I think is a good way to go. Plus, I’m working with them to have a one-click setup for podcasting websites. So keep a lookout for that. But Cloudways is a good affordable host. If you are looking for a more managed solution, it’s a little more expensive, but Nexcess does offer good hosting. You’ll hear about them later.

And then let’s talk about upgrading your kit. So if you are a podcast and you’re looking for an upgrade, the mic that I’m always going to recommend for the upgrade is the SHURE SM7B. That’s the one that I use. It’s an XLR microphone. You can hear that it sounds amazing. It’s a go-to for podcasters looking to upgrade.

Alternatives include the Rode Podmic, which is cheaper, or the Stellar X2, which is around the same price. If you’re looking to go upmarket from the SHURE SM7B, you probably know what you’re looking for. Because now you’re getting into $$600, 700, $1,000 microphones. I recommend the SHURE SM7B. A lot of podcasters will use that. I’m not saying it’s the best. You got to get what’s good for your voice. So it’s good to go into a store and test them. But I think that the SHURE SM7B is good for a lot of people.

Now, if you do get an XLR microphone, you’re going to need an interface. This is a thing that allows you to connect analog microphone to your digital computer. The one that I recommend to everybody starting out is The Focusrite Scarlett Solo. It’s around 120 bucks. It’s a really simple little red box that sits on your computer. It sit on your desk, you plug it into your computer, you plug the microphone into it, you now have a system for you to record audio through a really nice microphone.

If you’re looking to upgrade that, the Rodecaster Pro. I’ll have a video on my YouTube channel about this at some point. But the Rodecaster Pro is a full on board and mixer specifically for podcasters. It accepts four microphones and a bunch of other inputs. At 600 bucks, I use it. It’s a lifesaver. It’s amazing.

I do have some kits. If you’re just saying like, what exactly do I need to buy? I have a beginner kit and upgrade kit and my setup kit that you can just go and click and add everything to your Amazon cart. So that’s there.

Rounding out this guide is helpful and crucial software for scheduling, recording, and editing. This is new in this section. I only used to focus on hardware because the recording setup was so different for a lot of people or maybe it was the same, everybody just use Skype. But now there’s a lot of tools out there. So for scheduling, I recommend Calendly. It’s easy to set up pre-interview reminders and post-interview follow-ups. SavvyCal is a popular alternative.

Recording: I use Zencastr. It makes it really easy to get the local and best-sounding recording from your guests without them having to do anything. It can also handle video. I am, as I record this, considering Riverside. It’s also popular. I plan on testing it with my next round of recordings. But Riverside.fm. Both of those are going to allow you to record and get high-quality audio from you and your guests even if there is a poor internet connection.

And then editing I recommend Descript. I used to recommend a lot of different tools over the years. Descript is just the best. If you want to remove words, you can highlight those words in the transcript and delete them and the audio changes. You can even have Descript remove filler words or dub your voice and it’s free to start but I quickly upgraded to the Pro Plan. So that’s the software I recommend.

If we’re looking at just what I use, Calendly for scheduling, Zencastr for recording, and Descript if I’m editing my own episodes. I hire an editor, hi, Joel, most of the time. But if I’m editing my own quick episodes, then I will use Descript for that.

Before we get into the pen guide, let’s hear from our second sponsor, which is, as promised, Nexcess.

Sponsor: This episode is brought to you by Nexcess. Look, I know what it’s like to spend too much time managing your website instead of your business. In fact, the previous host for this very show made it harder for me to focus on creating content, because I was always trying to fix some problem with my website, especially on new episode days. And that’s why I switched to Nexcess.

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Joe Casabona: Okay. Now, this next guide is a little bit niche or niche or whatever. I made this because I get a lot of questions about pens in general because I’m a bit of a pen nerd. So I created a pen buyer’s gift guides. So I won’t go through this whole thing but I will mention a couple that I really like.

First, I buy most of my pens from Pen Chalet. There’s a link that will get you five bucks off your first order. It’ll also give me five bucks—full disclosure. I give full disclosure all around these guides, use affiliate links when I can use them.

So I won’t point out the basic pens but I will point out my favorite rollerball pen, which is the Mark One. And it’s for this reason. You’ll be able to hear it. It’s got a really loud knock which is a click sound. It’s really satisfying to me. I’m a huge fan of everything Studio Neat does. I have to with a third one on the way. Big fan. Retro 51 has long made ballpoint or rollerball pens that I love as well. Big variety of those.

For the fountain pen. I think your first fountain pen should be either the Lamy Safari or the TWSBI Eco. The Lamy Safari just edges out for first fountain pen because it accepts cartridges. So you don’t need to buy ink. You just stick the cartridges in there and then you can start using it.

If you want to buy your own ink, the TWSBI Eco is best because it has what’s called a piston filler. So you don’t need a converter or a cartridge, you just stick the nib in the inkwell and twist, and ink gets sucked into the body. So those are the two easiest fountain pens in my opinion to use.

And if you are looking for ink, I’ll just rattle off a couple I really like. Robert Oster Dragon’s Night, Robert Oster African Gold, Pilot Iroshizuku Fuyu-gaki, and Sailor Mayno, which is a purple-pink. The Fuyu-gaki is orange, Dragon’s Night is like a deep purple, African Gold is gold, Fuyu-gaki is orange, and the Mayno Akebi is like this purple-pink. So those are the inks and the beginner fountain pens.

Upgraded fountain pen picks. My current favorite is the Leonardo Momento Zero. I have the Momento Zero Magico and the Momento Zero Grande. Love both of those. The Lamy 2000 has long been one of my favorite pens. It’s really nice. It’s sub 200 bucks with a gold nib, and it’s crafted beautifully. It’s really light and a pleasure to write with.

And then the Pilot Vanishing Point which is a clicky fountain pen. So that’s just a really interesting one to have in your collection.

And then I talked about notebooks earlier. Field Notes are my favorite pocket notebooks. I mentioned the Subtle notebook as a good standard notebook. And if you’re looking for variety that works with fountain pens, fountain pen-friendly paper, Rhodia makes a bunch of notebooks and all shapes and sizes.

So if you’re interested in this one specifically, I’ll just tell you go to Cosabona.org/pens. But all of that, everything we talked about will be over in the show notes, which you can find at streamlined.fm/242. As a reminder, if you want to get that automation opt-in, that automation template, and resource, there’ll be an email box over there.

Now in Build Something More, I’m going to be talking about how I put these gift guides together, and specifically my transition from Beaver Builder to Gutenberg. So if you’re interested in hearing that, you need to be a member. you can sign up where? Howibuilt.it/242.

Thanks so much to Nexcess and TextExpander for sponsoring this episode of How I Built It. Thank you so much for listening. And until next time, get out there and build something.

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