In a post on JavaLobby, Meera presents her TOP5 of technical books published in 2008.
I definitely agree with the first three:  a new book from Robert C.  Martin, the second edition of the great Effective Java and a collection of articles from ThoughtWorks.
I haven’t read yet the first one but i liked his “Agile Software Development” and the initial reviews are quite good.
The new edition of Effective Java contains 21 new items and presents 1.5 language features such as enum, generics and annotations and also updates items related to improved features e.g.  items in the concurrency section.
An interesting reading is also the ThoughtWorks Anthology, a collection of essays on various IT topics, ranging from software methodology advices to ant build files optimization tips.
If you are a software developer or if you know one, this time of the year is the right time to buy one of these books.
Let me add a few more titles, that even if not published in 2008 (or not technical) could be good gift ideas:

	Java Puzzlers: Traps, Pitfalls and corner cases Another book from the great Joshua Bloch based on the JavaOne’s serie of presentations, full of thought-provoking “puzzles”  related to details or known bug of the Java language. Here is a video of one of the Joshua’s presentations:
	C++ Common Knowledge: Essential Intermediate Programming As the cover says : “What Every Professional C++ Programmer Needs to Know—Pared to Its Essentials So It Can Be Efficiently and Accurately Absorbed”. As an Effective Java for the  C++ language,  it uses the same itemized approach and it describes very clearly and with many examples what every C++ programmer should know. Perfect for anyone who needs to review the language skipping the basics.
	My job went to India In this book published in 2005 , Chad Fowler takes his experience with outsourcing in India as a starting point to give reasonable advices about IT carer development. Even if some of these could sound obvious (as reasonable advices usually are), the book is still an enjoyable reading and give you the opportunity to review the way you approach your job in IT and think about what could be improved. Highly recommended.
	Permutation City A post-cyberpunk sci-fi book by Greg Egan, full of clever ideas about AIs, future post-death scenarios and virtual reality.

Here is a brief recap of the new packages i built for the DNS-323/321/343/CH3SNAS and available here (fonz funplug 0.5 is required):

• Lynx 2.8.6: The textual web browser;
• Alpine 2.0: Successor of Pine, textual mail reader;
• Aria2 1.0: Multi-threaded file download, it should support also bittorrent.

UPDATE: Added Htop 0.8.3 , a nice top-like process manager with tree view and other goodies (simpler arrow navigation , easily accessible kill/nice).

As usual, you can install it using:
funpkg -i htop-0.8.3.tgz

If you are looking for a low cost NAS you surely will come across with three devices: the Linksys NSLU2, the Iomega MyBook WE and the D-Link DNS-323 (or its sibling CH3SNAS pitcured on left).
Devices with similar functionality (all of them support Samba/FTP/ITunesServer/UPNPAVServer/etc…) and that in a similar fashion have been greatly extended thanks to the community. The NSLU2 with its custom firmware, linux distributions and the optware package repository, the MyBook WE with a first customized firmware and now with a full fledged community and the DNS-323/CH3SNAS with the fonz’s fun_plug and the huge amount of modifications that came after that.
Something similar to what always happens to devices based on FOSS and when the opportunity to enhance them is given to the community and something,  in my opinion, that always boosts the “saleability” of such products, just think to the famous Linksys WRT54G.
I got my own Conceptronic CH3SNAS last year, and since then i enjoyed the progress made by the community and contributed my little share when possible.
You can now find all my DNS323/CH3SNAS binaries here. Feel free to try them and call for support if needed.

After this long preamble about opensource and NASes, let’s talk briefly about Linux and embedded development.
There are many ways to start learning Linux for those who come from a MSWindows background such as installing a random distribution, maybe on a virtual machine, and so on…
But what the DNS323 and similar devices give you is the opportunity to get a taste of what embedded development is.
The hardware platform reminds what you could find in your average pocket-pc and is good enough for this use:  a Marvell SoC with an ARM926Tj at 500Mhz and 64Mb of RAM.
Don’t limit your experience to installing a different UPnP AV Server or the latest Transmission/mldonkey, try to compile some software yourself and experiment.
Browse the WIKI to discover what a toolchain is, how you can cross-compile software for different CPUs (in this case an ARM926) on a x86 host and which are the main differences among glibc and libraries like uclibc, eglibc, etc…
This post should contain enough pointers for you to start .