I haven't blogged a lot. 2017 is likely my slimmest volume of posts I've had since I started blogging seven years ago. It's been a weird and crazy year. 

But that's not what this post is about. 

Over the Christmas break, I got a few new pieces of personal tech that I'm really excited about having. Eventually, I'll write individual posts about how I like each gadget but here's what I'm looking forward to testing out. 

Moleskine Smart Writing Set

This was a Christmas gift from Megan and it is awesome so far from what little testing that I've done. I always have a tension of taking digital notes versus handwritten. Digital notes make things easier to archive, find and read (I write sloppy sometimes). On the flip side, just taking a notebook into a meeting eliminates more potential distractions. Plus, there's that hand-to-brain connection when you write something down. 

The smart writing set from Moleskine should help me meet in the middle. The smart pen connects to my page and transcribes my notes to my phone in real-time. It also syncs up with Evernote to save all of my notes on the fly in my organizer of choice. It looks really cool. 

I plan on only using this for meetings and not random one-off notes (replacement notebooks are $30 a pop after all). Looking forward to putting this to use over the next month or so. 

Fitbit Ionic

This is my second stab at a smartwatch. I used to have a Pebble a couple of years, which really suited my needs quite well at the time. The Ionic appears to stand up to most smartwatches and fitness trackers out there at the moment. I just got it in the mail today and haven't gotten a chance to use all the bells and whistles yet but can't wait to dive in. I used it to buy a cup of coffee at Starbucks today, so that was a first for me. 

Amazon Fire Stick (with Hulu Live)

Okay, so this isn't the newest piece of tech, or the flashiest, but I'm excited nonetheless. We've adopted Alexa as our voice assistant of choice and have a couple in the house. Having a Fire Stick seemed to be the best replacement for the Chromecast that our cat chewed up. 

I am excited to be able to search both Netflix and Amazon movie libraries from one spot without switching. We're also using it to give Hulu Live a run and trim down the overspending we do with Comcast. I'll throw some more detailed thoughts on that experience in a later post. 

What about you? Get any fun gadgets over the holiday? What are you excited about using for the first time?