3 Gadgets Worth Wasting Your Money On (Maybe)

What are you going to do with your cut of that massive settlement you just negotiated? Or your tax refund? Vacation? Investment? How about blowing it on a useless yet fun gadget? Stimulate the new economy! And if you don't already have a wish list, we've got a few suggestions:

Lumo Lift: Posture Fixed for $69

Proper posture is huge. It reduces back pain and makes you appear confident. And as lawyers, hunched over keyboards, our posture can quickly suffer. Eventually, we'll all look like this. You don't want to be a hunchback. Neither do we. If you slouch, the Lumo Lift vibrates. It attaches to your clothes via a magnet. An app on your smartphone tracks your posture. Bonus: it works as an activity tracker to count your steps, calories burned, etc. It'll also nag you when you've been inactive for too long.

Pebble Steel: A Smartwatch That Doesn't Suck

If you're a regular around here, you know how I feel about smartwatches. They look stupid. They're bulky. And from others' reports, they don't actually do a whole heck of a lot. Pebble was the first to market with their plasticy first iteration. At CES, they revealed the Pebble Steel, a metal watch that actually looks like a watch, yet has smartwatch functionality. And because they were the first to market, their developer community is quite active, which bodes well for the watch actually being useful for something other than telling time. At $250, it's not much of a steal, but at least it'll go well with a suit.

Tabletop PC/Tablets

Okay, even as a geek, I can't make a credible case for these, even if they do look like a heck of a lot of fun. Picture a tablet with elephantitis -- 20-inch, 27-inch, or bigger tablets. What the heck would you use these for? I got to pay with Lenovo's 27-incher at last year's ABA Annual Meeting in San Francisco, and while it seemed like a heck of a lot of fun, especially for board games, I couldn't think of a single pragmatic purpose for a tabletop PC. Collaboration? Picture four people slouching (see, the Lumo is coming in handy already) over a single huge screen. Are they all working on a single document? Why not just use a collaborative document editor, like Google Docs or Microsoft Office's Web Apps, and let everyone have their own screen? Presentations? Maybe a PowerPoint could be more interesting if it was interactive, but I'd think four people swiping away would be more disruptive than helpful. Maybe the right software will come along and turn these from toys to tools. Until then, how about a digital game of air hockey? Planning on splurging on a ridiculous gadget? Help us figure out how to waste our tax refunds by telling us about it on Facebook. Related Resources:

• CES: 5 Things We Couldn't Care Less About (FindLaw's Technologist Blog)
• Tablet Buyers' Guide; Free Tablet Data Plans (FindLaw's Technologist Blog)
• Microsoft's Tablets Re-Surface With Hardware Bump; Same OS Issues (FindLaw's Technologist Blog)