Holiday Lists

As Thanksgiving is now behind us we all turn our attention to our holiday shopping which brings out the proverbial questions what to get family, friends and business associates as gifts.

Lets start with the "easiest" group, the family. My family, like many, is spread around the country so the idea of people making lists and keeping them in sync is always an issue. Over the years I have progressed from shared Word documents to Cozi Lists but this year I have moved to Google Docs as it gives me the ability to customize the lists and share them with my far flung family.

In this model, I create the original document, share it with my family members who then access the document and update it with their ideas and wishes.

The gift givers (and we are all gift givers) then review the list and have some ideas on what to buy the various recipients on our lists.

Nice benefits of this method:

• Single location that is always updated
• Auto Save function captures those quick updates without having to think about saving
• Easy to embed links, so each person can quickly provide a direct way for you to purchase the gift for them via on-line shopping (I do realize this takes some of the fun of gift giving away, but we are talking about efficiency here)
  
• Printable so you can take them with you when you still go physically shopping.
  

A couple of caveats on our road to the "perfect" holiday list:

• Sharing a Google Doc is easy as long as everyone has a Google account, so if everyone in your group doesn't have one this would be a good time to create one. Not only will this give them access to the holiday list, but will allow them access to the many other Google features (Gmail, iGoogle, Google Reader, Google Voice, Wave and many more).
• This method is great for creating the list, but not so great for managing what has been bought by whom, but I am still working on that part. If you have ideas on this part, please feel free to share them with the Technology Plumbing audience by commenting on this post.

We will talk about friends and business associates in another posting, but for now, get started on putting together your list (I will leave it to you to determine who is naughty and who is nice) and then get started on your shopping.

Disclaimer: I do not work for nor am I associated with Google in any manner, I just like their products and services and recommend them purely on that basis.