How cool is this? - a wall mounted 3-D lunar landscape that can display the 12 phases of the moon? Make's a great gift for the little astronaut in your life!

You can't go wrong with a book on mvc from four of the most active programmers and contributors to the project in the community: Phil Haack, Jon Galloway, Brad Wilson, and K. Scott Allen. This book provides all the information you need to be productive with MVC version 3 including in-depth reviews of the plumbing that drives the framework. Buy it today. 'Nuff said.

Here's a great gift idea for the budding astronomer: The IOptron G-Series. Part of IOptron's line of beginner scopes, this model features the Alt-Azimuth Mount which after some initial configuration, will point the scope at one of 50,000 celestial objects stored in its database. The mount will also keep pace with the earths rotation to keep the pointed at object in view for long periods of time. Comes with a 32 Channel GPS module as well.

Neve Maslakovic makes her fiction writing debut with this new book that follows the exploits of main protaganist Felix Sayers as he seeks to find his 'Alter', Felix B to answer the question of who has lived their life better. It is in that pursuit that our hero comes to find out the part he played in helping Universe B spring to life. Maslakovic creates a world where shuttling between universes is as common as a surburbanite commuting to the big city and where a group of college students and their professor have targeted Felix to explore the Butterfly Effect of his actions as a child came to affect the Universes. This is not a hard sci-fi read but a story with an interesting plot and evokes the question of What If?. A promising debut from this new author.

Who wouldn't want a great introduction to the fundamentals of astronomy written by the SpaceLady? This book is equally geared towards the amateur adult as well as the school age student. Concepts are explained with simple to understand diagrams and language that will get you up to speed quickly on everything from telescopes to quasars. Each chapter includes a quiz to test your understandings of the concepts discussed. A great gift idea!

In many ways this book is the anti-The Baroque Cycle. Instead of a tale that spans decades, this yarn spans just a few days. Stephenson made it clear he wanted to write a thriller and this novel is a fast paced page turner. This may not be the sci-fi/cyberpunk material Stephenson is known for, however the idea of a software billionaire going toe to toe with an international terrorist should appeal to any nerd's inner-geek.

Yet another tome in the SOA series from Thomas Erl. This one will deals with mapping Erls' service oriented patterns and principles onto .NET technologies, primarily WCF and Azure. Erls first book on SOA set the standard for SOA literature and this book follows in that tradition. Here is part one in a series of interviews on SOA certification for your viewing pleasure.

This is a must have for any ASP.NET developer creating consumer apps on the web. Author Richard Kiessig has been an active contributor to the asp.net forums. The lesson here is every byte counts - this overarching principle is timeless. We can't stress enough what an important read this book is. We don't know of another book that explores these concepts for the ASP.NET developer.

Are you a weather geek? Check this weather station out. Tracks Wind, Rain, Temps and includes a forecast feature!. Awesome.