Holiday Gift Exchanges aren't just for High School

Hey all, Sarah here again. With my Dad's recent post about the holidays upon us, I figured I'd let you in on what I was up to with the holiday season.

Let's start back in high school. Every year, my friends and I gathered one day in November after school and pulled names with their lockers out of hat. We then had about a month to leave notes, hints or whatever we wanted in their locker and the day before Christmas Break, we left a gift in the locker with our final hint. After school on that last day, we met to accuse who we thought was our Secret Santa. It was a tradition.

But then last year, we went to college. We were all sad to realize the Secret Santa couldn't continue if we were all in different states. But then one of my friends found a site called Elfster. On Elfster, you can register as many people as you want through email invites and the site assigns each person a Secret Santa. You can then create a wish list, ask questions to anyone or everyone in the group, and generally just mess with people, which is the best part. Then when we all came home for Christmas Break, we met and exchanged the gifts, each guessing who had them once again. It was just like old times. I'm so glad that technology has helped us carry out the holiday cheer even though we're miles apart (and don't have lockers anymore).

We're doing it again this year, and I thought I'd share so maybe you could too. So check out Elfster yourself, the set up is ridiculously easy (they even prompt you for a spending limit, you can't forget anything) and registration is free.

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.

Different Airline Yields New Ideas

I normally fly United for my travels, but on this trip I ended up on US Airways via United's code sharing program. For the most part the flight the US Air flight process was similar to United's and other then the fact that the gates listed by United and US Air didn't match (and no one at US Air seem to care about this discrepancy) it was a normal flight.

One small thing that did vary between US Air and United was the in-flight magazine. Both magazines are fine at what they do, but because I hadn't read the US Airways magazine I took the opportunity to read through it.

So why have a shared this seemingly non-technology news to the Technology Plumbing audience? Well mainly, because there were some very interesting articles and ads in the magazine that I want to share with you, so lets get our journey off the ground:

Jabra's new HALO bluetooth headset looks to provide a beautifully designed, very light weight set of headphones that promise a great listening experience up to 30 feet away from the source for around $130. While I can't give you any first hand feedback (though I would if Jabra wants to lend me the headphones) the picture and accompanying story makes me want to look at them as a possible replacement for my current Bose headphones.

Next up in "The Gist" section of the magazine was a new palm-sized projector from Cinemin called the Swivel. As you might surmise from the name of the projector that one of its features is that it can swivel up to 90-degrees allow the images to be projected in any direction for around $350. It provides compatibility with iPods, iPhones and laptops so it is nice way to project images without having to worry about carrying or finding a more "full-size" projector. Now it should be mentioned that at this size, you will need a darkened room to clearly see the image and the image resolution is limited to 480 x 320 so don't expect the same type of results you will get from larger projectors.

As we make our approach to landing this blog post, let me next bring up the relatively new Link product from long time lockset manufacturer Schlage. This remotely controlled lock set lets you open and lock Link controlled doors. This type of functionality is designed to allow you to deal with folks who need access to your home or business without having to give them a key or any access codes. The idea is the contractor contacts the owner when they are at the building and the owner remotely opens the door for the contractor. When the work is complete, the contractor leaves and the owner locks up the property. It is a nice example of using technology to deal with an age-old issue.

To bring this post to a final landing I hope that not only have I provided some new ideas for my readers to consider, but also suggest that sometimes breaking a routine can lead to some new insight for some new sources of information.