We always bang on about how it’s possible to be a digital nomad and lead a very normal, structured and – if you’re anything like us – routine-heavy kinda life. And we’re also open about how much utter crap we’ve lugged around with us in the past (three laptops, kettles, cold-brew kits, you name it), in order to maintain our structure and feel at home wherever we are.

Yet despite the occasional huge ridiculous item we take a shine to (the microwave was a real low point), we’re pretty good at keeping our “stuff” to a minimum. And as you’ll have seen in our latest newsletter, we’re moving ever closer the mindset that life is about experiences rather than things.

Most digital nomads feel the same way. Which makes Christmas/holiday presents a tricky one.

We try very hard to tell our families that we don’t want anything except cuddles for Christmas. But – despite my side being Jewish and Rob’s side having no religion at all – they still feel the need to get us something. The problem with physical things is that they take up valuable suitcase space. What we’d really like is digital/non-physical gifts instead.

So, to help out our fellow digital nomads who’re in the same position, we bring to you:

THE DIGITAL NOMAD HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE THAT YOU CAN SUBTLY SEND TO YOUR FRIENDS/FAMILY MEMBERS IN THE HOPE THEY’LL GET YOU SOMETHING ON IT.

(Note: None of these are affiliate links – we can’t be scalping money from your nearest and dearest at this time of year, can we?)

Tools/software

Tout (from $12 a month)

Confession time: we’re spying on you. If you reply to our email a week later and say you “just saw it”, inside we’re screaming “LIES! You opened it twice from San Jose last Tuesday, then again from Columbus on Friday, but didn’t even click on any of the links!”

Such is the power of Tout – a tool that lets you track whether people have opened and clicked on the emails you sent them. It’s a boon for having one-way fallings out with friends and family, but – more important for the hustling digital nomad – you can tell if your cold emails are working. Lots of opens but no replies? Your subject line’s working, but the contents aren’t matching up.

Tripit ($49 a year)

You already know about Tripit, right? To nutshellise, it makes travel fun (and easier): you get to put all your travel plans into one mega online itinerary (syncable with your phone app, of course), share it with your travelmates, and add maps, directions and weather info. The utterly fantastic bit is that you can forward on hotel confirmations, flight details, etc. straight from your email to Tripit, and it automatically organises everything for you.

But Tripit Pro is even better. With it, you get instant alerts about flight delays, cancellations and gate changes; you’ll get help with finding alternative flights (and seats) if your flight’s cancelled; you can keep track of your frequent travel information; and you get lots of car-rental perks and privileges.

Planscope (from $24 a month)

If you work for clients, scope creep is even worse than their incessant demands to “make the logo bigger” (we’re pretty sure they say that even if you’re their accountant).

Planscope is here to help – with both scope creep and a number of other client-related things. Use it to track your time, invoice your clients, have all correspondence in one place, make cashflow a doddle, send daily updates, and heaps (HEAPS) more.

Evernote ($45 a year)

We pride ourselves on being early adopters, but holy cow – by the time we arrived at the Evernote party they’d run out of punch, the neighbours had complained twice and there were ominous noises coming from the bedrooms.

We’d always just used Evernote for those scrappy little things you always need to have to hand – booking confirmations, addresses and world-changing ideas that turn out to be a cafe with cats and ping pong when you look at them sober. Get deeper into it though, and it’s also a bookmarking tool, a way to collaborate with other people on projects, and a place where you can dump your entire brain for searching later.

We might not be the first to champion its virtues, but let’s add our voices to the chorus anyway – Evernote is awesome, and you should definitely get a person who likes you to shell out $45 for premium access (because you get loads of cool extras, like supersized uploads, offline notebooks, PDF search and faster image recognition).

Memberships

Tropical MBA’s Dynamite Circle ($97 every 3 months)

Dan and Ian from Tropical MBA are our heroes: not only do they have a million-dollar lifestyle business (selling cat furniture, among other things), but they also have the most useful weekly podcast of all the ones we’ve listened to. Also, they’re FUN!

They’ve created a private forum called the Dynamite Circle (DC), where you can share business ideas and information with a group of 450+ location independent entrepreneurs. We’ve mentioned in a previous post how we’re going to join asap to get out of our isolation rut, and we can’t wait to hang out with a bunch of like-minded people.

James Schramko’s Fast Web Formula ($67 a month)

James Schramko has made millions from online marketing, because he’s way smarter than you. For the price of $67 a month though, you can give someone access to the contents of his brain – all the training products he releases are in there, and new ones are being added all the time.

If I were you, I’d attach a (santa) clause saying they have to cut you in on their future earnings. It’s only fair.

Travelhacking Cartel (from $15 a month)

When it comes to Frequent Flyer Miles, we don’t have a bloomin’ clue: all the confusing information fuzzes up our brains and then we have to lie down. So we’re thinking of signing up to the Travelhacking Cartel, which promises to show us exactly how to accumulate the Miles and then go about redeeming them.

If someone gets this as a gift for you, they can rest assured you’ll get their money’s worth: the Art of Non-Conformity guru himself - Chris Guillebeau - is behind the whole thing.

Fancy Hands (from $25 a month)

So busy that you’ve got no time to check SeatGuru for the best seats on your next flight? Overloaded to the extent that you can’t even consult Yelp for local hairdressers? Dropping so many balls that throwing one for the dog every day seems like torture? You need a virtual assistant, pal. And because it can be quite pricey, someone else should pay for it (and fancy handily, Fancy Hands has gift subscriptions on offer).

Fancy Hands is all about taking care of the tasks you don’t want to do/don’t have time to do. For $25 a month, you get to request five tasks each month. For $45 a month, you get 15 tasks and for $65 a month, you get 25 tasks. That’s it: there are no hourly rates or other hidden costs.

Here are some examples of tasks people have requested through the site:

“Set up a meeting with my accountant (CCed), if she’s paying let’s go to Balthazar, otherwise our office.”

“Find me a dog walker in SE Portland. I’m looking to have my two dachshunds walked 3 times a week. What are the prices like?”

“Call Katz Deli in NYC, find out what they put on a Reuben and where they get their bread.”

“What are the top 3 ranked books about inbound marketing on amazon?”

“Can you arrange for us to hear music from the following bands?”

“I’m moving from Miami to San Diego. Can you obtain quotes for 5 movers? (I’ve attached a breakdown of the rooms, furniture, etc.)”

Online courses

Team Treehouse (from $25 a month)

Want your Christmas present and New Year’s Resolution rolled into one? Take a look at Team Treehouse if you want to learn to build websites, create iPhone and Android apps, code with Ruby on Rails and PHP, or start a business. Everything is taught via step-by-step video courses and training exercises.

Team Treehouse offers two subscription models: Silver and Gold. You can pay for each monthly or yearly: Silver is $25 a month/$250 a year; Gold is $49 a month/$490 a year. You’ll have to check out the pricing page for more on what each model includes. There are also heaps of free, starter-esque courses.

Udemy (from free)

Want to learn something new/improve your skills? Want to learn from the best (we’re talking Mark Zuckerberg, Marissa Mayer, Steve Blank, MIT, Yale, etc.)? Udemy has online video courses in categories as varied as art/photography, crafts/hobbies, business, design, lifestyle, maths, social sciences and more.

Courses provided by the big guns tend to be free, and they’re quite “macro”. For more detailed, specific training, it’s better to take a course from some of the less-known instructors – sometimes for a small fee (the star ratings and number of students will help inform your decision on whether to pay for a course).

At the moment, it isn’t possible for courses to be bought as gifts, so you might just have to ask your friend for the cash instead…

Digital magazine subscriptions

Inc. magazine

Unlike all the other business magazines, Inc. is actually fun, lighthearted and easy to read – as well as packed full of business news, insights, interviews and tips.

There are lots of different, confusing ways to get hold of the digital version of the magazine:

New Yorker magazine

OK, so the New Yorker occasionally gets on my nerves for being so darn hipsterish with its outdated versions of certain words (“uncoöperative” being a famous example). But it’s still one of the best magazines out there.

Subscription to the digital edition on the New Yorker website costs $29.99 for six months (23 issues) or $59.99 for a year (47 issues). There are loads of other ways to get the New Yorker onto your Kindle, iPhone, iPad, Android, etc. Check them all out on the New Yorker magazine app page.

Smashing Magazine Library

Ah Smashing Magazine – the go-to site for web designers and developers looking for inspiration. They never seem to run out of angles (favourite articles include: Showcase of Sweet Chocolate Websites; 30 Beautiful Real Estate Websites (oxymoron?); and What If Oscars Were Given To Movie Websites?).

They’ve now introduced the Smashing eBook Library – an annual subscription for Smashing Magazine’s eBooks (at least 24 are created each year), plus access to all the Smashing eBooks they’ve produced so far. It costs $79 each year, and you can subscribe on the eBook Library page.

Kindle/eBooks

A few things to mention first:

1) These are books we’ve either read and enjoyed, or books we think we’ll really enjoy when we get round to reading them.

2) The links are usually to the Amazon.com site, but most of them can also be bought on the Amazon UK store as well as occasionally in other digital formats.

3) Some of these authors really don’t need any more promotion (we’re looking at you, Seth Godin, Chris Guillebeau and Smashing Magazine), but this blog post is about resources we think are great rather than gems we’re trying to unearth for others.

Business/work-related

• Getting Things Done: How to achieve stress-free productivity by David Allen ($11.41)
• The Startup Owner’s Manual: The Step-by-Step Guide for Building a Great Company by Steve Blank ($7.99)
•  Permission Marketing by Seth Godin (release date: 11 December 2012)
• Survival Is Not Enough by Seth Godin (release date: 11 December 2012)
• Make Your Idea Matter by Bernadette Jiwa ($3.11)
• Confessions of a Serial Entrepreneur: Why I Can’t Stop Starting Over by Stuart Skorman ($19.58)
• Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World by Michael Hyatt ($16.48)
• Pitch Anything by Oren Klaff ($13.67)
• The $100 Startup by Chris Guillebeau ($9.64)
• Double Your Freelancing Rate by Brennan Dunn ($49)

Travel/life-hacking

• Head In The Clouds: The Location Independent Office – How to take your business or job online and work remotely from wherever you please! by Phil Byrne ($5.09)
• Sell Your Crap by Man vs Debt ($47!)
• Speak from Day 1 – Language Hacking Guide by Benny Lewis ($97 – includes videos and worksheets)
• Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel by Rolf Potts ($11.90)

Design

• Bootstrapping Design by Jarrod Drysdale ($39)
• Step by Step UI Design by Sacha Greif (regular edition: $5.99; deluxe eduction: $11.99)
• Thinking Like A Designer: Principles and Tools for Effective Web Design by Sacha Grief ($5.99)
• Smashing Book #3: Redesign The Web (eBook Bundle) by Smashing Magazine ($18.39) – Note: this book is also part of the Smashing eBook Library mentioned above.

PS. If your friend REALLY loves you…

You can’t do better than get a ticket to the 2013 World Domination Summit in Portland, Oregon. The next batch of tickets don’t go on sale until January though, so it’ll be a bit of a late present. Oh yes, and each ticket costs $500. Like I said… if your friend REALLY loves you.

Now watch the slideshow!