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Ring in the New Year With a Little High-Tech Help

by Terrence O'Brien on December 31, 2010 at 08:30 AM

Ring in the New Year With Tech
As we're sure you know, tomorrow is New Year's Eve: a night when people from all over gather together to celebrate the completion of one revolution of the Earth around the Sun starting at an arbitrary point in space as determined by the Gregorian calendar. People celebrate in various ways, but here in the U.S. we do it by dropping a crystal "ball" (it's really a geodesic sphere made up of thousands of triangles), kissing our significant other and getting tanked on whatever alcohol happens to be handy. This year, revelers will also be able to turn to various technologies to help them make the switch from 2010 to 2011. Read on to discover what technological innovations are best suited to bring in your new year.

The simplest and most obvious tool for ringing in the new year with a little help from your gadgets is a nice countdown app for your smartphone or tablet. There are plenty of New Year's countdown apps out there, but there is only one official Times Square Ball App. This free app for the iPhone, iPod touch, iPad and Android offers plenty of ways to enjoy the throngs of celebrants in Times Square from the comfort of your own home. In addition to offering a live, commercial-free stream of the ball drop, along with a few musical performances, you can use the app to snap and share photos of you and your friends celebrating, with the possibility that they'll be shown on the Toshiba jumbotron in Times Square. You can, of course, then post those images to Twitter and Facebook directly from the app. You can also check in on Foursquare and share just how far away from Time Square you are (though we're not exactly sure why you'd want to). You'll also have access to a basic countdown clock in case you just want to know exactly when it's time to change the calendar. You can also send customized "kisses" to people, which are really just e-cards. For the masochists in Times Square, you can use the app to look up maps of the area, find venues for food and drinks, check the weather, and read about the history of Times Square and the ball.

If you've got a TV, don't put away those iPhones just yet. If you or your host runs out of noise makers to twirl or pots and pans to bang, you can download the New Year Noise Maker app ($0.99), which produces a cacophony of ratcheting noise and blaring horns. If you're out of champagne glasses, you can download the free Waterford Clink Clink app that lets you toast others with one of five different glasses, and offers over 100 predetermined salutations. You can even post the toasts to Facebook. For fans of Swedish apartment furniture Ikea also has a toast app that, in addition to making clinking sounds, adds Bump-like functionality for exchanging contact information and photos.

Those who prefer real alcohol have tons of gadgetry to pick from when it comes time to get wasted. MSNBC has a roundup of the best booze-related tech for getting drunk with the help of the high-tech. A number of the entries are items we've covered before (like the RC Cooler, the bottoms up beer dispenser and the iBottleopener) as well as a few we haven't, like the Bosch IXO Vino Screwdriver: a cordless power-screwdriver with a corkscrew attachment. And there are more beer pouring and keg monitoring robots than you can shake a stick at.

Lastly, we know that a big part of ringing in the new year is promising yourself to be better for the next 365 days. ResolutionTweets.com has been collecting people's resolutions as they tweet them. Making your promise public may make you more likely to keep it. Of course, you can always use a good app like Remember the Milk, Mint, RunKeeper or The Daily Plate to help keep you on track if your resolution is to get in shape, stick to that diet, keep a budget or just generally become more organized.

Lastly, don't forget to have fun and connect with your fellow man. After all, what's the point of ringing in the New Year with loved ones if you spend the whole time staring at your phone?

Tags: android, apps, facebook, hgg, ios, ipad, iphone, ipod, new years, new years eve, NewYears, NewYearsEve, social networking, SocialNetworking, times square, times square ball app, TimesSquare, TimesSquareBallApp, top, twitter

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