gifts

Act2 GreenSmart laptop jackets are an ecofriendly spin-off from the people who make Shoreline laptop cases. Each jacket is made from the remains of 17 PET beverage bottles, with padding that reuses industrial waste and recycled paper tags printed with soy ink. They come in seven sizes, with a shoulder strap and extra pockets enabling access to the innards while on the go. You can open the laptop on a desk and access the ports without removing the jacket. Each black, blue, or brown jacket costs $40, and sleeves are $25. The StuffBak return policy offers protection should you leave … Read more

If a holiday season free of wrapping paper and ribbons is on your wish list, there are many options for giving presents without touching anything but a computer and credit card. Services that can be ordered and received online also can be more eco-friendly than physical presents. Of course, you could always funnel funds directly into someone's PayPal account, but where's the fun (for you) in that?

That's entertainment

Netflix offers gift subscriptions from $9 for one month of movie rentals to $108 for one year. GreenCine's rental certificates for indie film buffs start at $44 … Read more

On Monday, November 26, Leverage will open up its gift card management service. It will be the place for you to register all those plastic cash cards you get from people who want to give you a gift but don't want to give you a gift. The service will track all your cards and the balances you have on them, let you buy and swap cards, send offers your way from the retailers whose cards you're holding, and pay you interest on the unused balance on your cards--which is weird, when you think about it for half a … Read more

Lots of kids expect to score video game gifts this holiday season, but they also expect to be highly disappointed by said gifts, according to a new nationwide survey.

While 80 percent of 8- to 17-year-olds polled by video game specialty retailer Game Crazy say they'll ask for a video game for the holidays, 60 percent anticipate getting a game they don't want, getting a game for the wrong system, or not getting any or all of the games on their holiday wish list. It's tough being a misunderstood young game aficionado in today's title- and … Read more

For readers who remember the classic Father of the Bride scene where the wedding is almost called off because the groom bought a blender for the bride-to-be, there's a new service called Gift Girl, which might put an end to such mistakes. The site is designed to help men buy gifts for their female significant others by offering up a small, targeted selection of items for womenfolk, hand picked by the site's creators, one of whom, incidentally, has that newfangled XX chromosome.

Gifts are broken down into basic categories like jewelry, clothing, and "accessories." You can … Read more

Facebook's Senior Platform Manager Ami Vora took the stage at this morning's SNAP Summit in San Francisco to talk about "the state of the platform" from Facebook's perspective. Besides a rehash of the social graph spiel from the launch of the applications platform earlier this year, several interesting numbers were thrown around, including one that noted that 1 in 4 people in Toronto are on Facebook, and that each Facebook user turns about 50 pages a day. The most impressive, however, is that 85 percent of users on Facebook have added at least one application … Read more

Though it's only July, Samsung decked out the Clift Hotel in downtown San Francisco this week with its holiday lineup of gadget gifts.

Pictured here, for example, is a camera that's compact but also packs a nice punch. Not only does it have touch-screen controls and a nice swivel handle, which allows easy, lower shooting angles, but it shoots video in 720p. Samsung says it went with progressive (the "p" in 720p) instead of interlaced (720i) for its first high-definition camcorder to allow better slow-motion replay of home movies. The camera also has 8GB of flash … Read more

It's always those little things spotted in a foreign country that I wish I'd grabbed more of to bring back home, like $2 cartoon-print chopsticks from Tokyo, a $3 sack of paprika from Budapest, or $1 bottles of local lavender oil from Zagreb. I may not revisit those places, but I could ask for someone going there to snag some stuff for me. If you're my friend, however, that could interfere with your carefree vacation. Why not ask a stranger instead?

Bringsome is built just for that. Travelers on the site offer to bring back goodies from … Read more

I'll be the first to admit that I have, on various occasions, called chocolates passé. But what do I know? Besides, I love chocolate. (Indeed, I'm pretty keen on anything edible.) However, I'm not a mommy--and we all know how I feel about iPods--so I doubt I'll be a recipient of BestBuy's special Apple iPod Nano and Chocolate Gift Set. Regardless of my parental status or personal player preferences, I still think this is a cute gift. After all, it combines two of my favorite things: music and food. If your mom shares … Read more