I did this last year and the year before, so why not make a habit of it? I get no commissions; these are mostly places I’ve shopped or plan to shop. It’s based on “This would be SO COOL to have”, and nothing else.
General:
Nerditry: Newegg, ThinkGeek, Leatherman Wave, ISC.org (see 9-layer OSI model shirt).
Science: American Science and Surplus, Ward’s Scientific, Carolina, and United Nuclear.
Creepy: Bone Room, Skulls Unlimited, or Skullduggery.
BSDs:
There are FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD stores, where money goes back to the project.
Bookwise, Jeremy C. Reed publishes a number of BSD–related books. Buy his stuff through Amazon. There’s also No Starch Press, which has a number of BSD publications. (and LEGO, too?) And of course O’Reilly, for a bunch of things.
Nice things to do:
The FreeBSD Foundation is having an end-of-year appeal for funds, so you can donate in someone’s name. The NetBSD Foundation probably accepts donations, though I don’t have a specific page to link to for that.
Donations to the Itojun Service Award fund are also a good thing.
Everything else I could think of:
- MAKE Magazine subscriptions
- SparkFun Electronics (I want one of their Port-O-Rotary phones),
- Topatoco shirts and books
- Klein bottles
- RLT.com (check out the many subsites linked there)
Further suggestions welcome, especially for European shoppers. I’ve been slowly growing this list year-to-year, and I can always use more interesting and unique places.
Update: George Rosamond pointed at DealExtreme.com. There are some crazy cheap prices there.
Also, and I can’t believe I didn’t link to this before: Brando. If you’re looking for something with a USB port, Brando has it. Even if it’s a jeweled scorpion necklace… USB drive.
NetBSD donations: http://www.netbsd.org/donations/
There is also BSD Fund worth mentioning: http://bsdfund.org/