Christmas has come and gone, and although you enjoyed the time with family and friends and gifts excahnged, there's something you craved that no one gave you. If you're feeling like there's something you wanted but didn't get, take matters into your own hands and get it yourself. And what better venue to find those techie treasures than the tech site InfoWorld.com?

To help you fill any holiday holes, InfoWorld.com has looked beyond the obvious to uncover 10 seriously cool new gadgets and 24 must-read tech books that will appeal to the geek in all of us. You won't find the iPhone or Droid here, nor will you light upon the latest home media server; more likely than not, you already has those. Instead, you'll find items aimed at satisfying every geek's innermost desire: to explore.

[ Discover the 10 best gifts for techies in the InfoWorld.com’s "2009 geek gadget gift guide" slideshow. | Discover the 24 best new books for techies in the InfoWorld.com’s "2009 geek book gift guide" slideshow. ]

Because if there's one thing we geeks all love to do, no matter what type of science, engineering, or tech discipline floats our boat, it's to play with technology that is both cool and useful. Sometimes that means toying around with a somewhat esoteric gadget. Other times that means soaking up new tech know-how we can apply at home or at work.

This year's geek gadget gift guide includes the 55-cent Animal Clips for budding young geeks to the seriously useful and cool personal Pogoplug cloud storage device to a touch-based laptop that could show the way for real tablet computing.

This year's geek book gift guide has recommendations in seven categories: "something different" explorations, personal tech guides, hands-on deep technology how-tos, cloud and architecture expositions, business management primers for IT people, IT management how-tos, and tech best-practices "rethink" books.

This article, "2009 geek gift guide: The best toys and books for techies," was originally published at InfoWorld.com.