christmas

Following suit with other major holiday shopping days, Christmas Day also saw a jump in online traffic this year.

According to marketing firm Experian, the top 500 U.S. retail sites had 27 percent more online traffic on this year's Christmas Day compared with last year. A total of 115.5 million people in the U.S. visited sites like Target, BestBuy, Sears, and Apple's online store.

Looking at the past seven-week period, online retail traffic went up 10 percent over 2011, and each major shopping holiday had traffic increases this year, according to Experian. Thanksgiving had a … Read more

Every year there's always one or two gifts that prompt you to ask yourself "what were they thinking?" You know it's something you'll never use, and you're left with the question of what to do with it. This year, don't let it sit in your closet collecting dust, and most certainly don't throw it away. Turn that unwanted gift into something you do want, be it cash, a gift card, or another item you'll actually use. Here's a few different ways you can deal with the gift you loathe.

Sell … Read more

Santa is on the way. As of this writing, according to Google's new Santa Tracker, Kris Kringle and his reindeer are in Canberra, Australia, dishing out gifts and toys to the girls and boys down under faster than you can say, "Paul Hogan's your uncle."

Those lucky Aussies always get everything before the rest of us, whether it's making it through the Mayan apocalypse unscathed or landing some sweet Christmas swag earlier.

But wait, the long-standing NORAD Santa tracker (now powered by Microsoft's Bing maps) is also monitoring the fat man and his flying venison, too. The official U.S. government-sanctioned Santa tracker currently has him over Japan as I write this.… Read more

As much as new MacBook owners love to rave about their systems, no laptop -- even one with an Apple logo -- comes right out of the box ready to perform optimally.

And while it's certainly exciting to unwrap a new holiday MacBook, there are a handful of tweaks, tips, and fixes you should check out on day one that will make your MacBook easier to use. I've put together some of my personal favorites here.

There are many more I could list, and I'm sure I've left out some of your favorites, so feel free … Read more

There's a bigger danger this holiday season than ending up on Santa's naughty list. A lump of coal in a Christmas stocking is one thing. What can happen to you if you hear "Little Drummer Boy" is something else altogether.

You know the tune: "Come they told me/Pa rum pum pum pum/A newborn King to see/Pa rum pum pum pum." It's a Christmas standard, and in cities and small towns everywhere, it emanates from department store sound systems, TV commercials, Web sites -- you name it. To the average modern-day sophisticate, "Little Drummer Boy (note: read the story before clicking the link)" is nothing more than a song to love or hate, to endure or enjoy. But to the many players of the LDB Game, the song's aesthetic merits are hardly the point. … Read more

Last year, a scientist cracked the mystery of how Santa Claus manages his gift-delivery feats using futuristic technology. This year, dedicated scientists have finally revealed an explanation for how Rudolph, Santa's lead reindeer, got his red nose.

If you recall the legend, Rudolph was a bit of an outcast thanks to his bright and shiny red nose. All of the other reindeer might not laugh and call him names if they knew his nose was really the result of an issue with the microvascular flow in his nasal mucosa.

A collection of Dutch scientists contributed to a paper titled "Microcirculatory investigations of nasal mucosa in reindeer Rangifer tarandus (Mammalia, Artiodactyla, Cervidae): Rudolph's nose was overheated." … Read more

Let's say you just bought a 6-foot Christmas tree and want to decorate it just so. According to a quick treegonometric calculation, you should use approximately 30 feet of tinsel. (I got that number, incidentally, by multiplying pi by 13, dividing that number by 8, and then multiplying that figure by the tree's height in centimeters.)

Didn't study treegonometry in high school? That's because it just got invented by members of the University of Sheffield's SUMS math society. Two students at the U.K. school set out to calculate the amount of baubles, tinsel, and lights needed to give a tree just the right amount of decorative zing.

Their math might not add up to anything worthy of complex analysis, but it's a festive and amusing idea. "The formulas took us about two hours to complete," 20-year-old student Nicole Wrightham said in a release. "We hope the formulas will play a part in making Christmas that little bit easier for everyone." … Read more

If you thought the Grinch was bad news, you haven't yet met the Dalek Christmas tree, an alien entity so evil it wants to not only wipe out Christmas, but all of humanity as well. That's one chimney Santa Claus is going to regret sliding down.

Doctor Who's most famous villain has appeared in the abode of Dain Sandoval, a network admin in California. There have been no reports of casualties... yet.… Read more

Can't get enough of cameras this festive season? The folks at Photojojo have thought of a way to make photography a part of the holiday cheer with their very own Photojojo Tree Bling.

Made in Poland, these camera-inspired ornaments are made to look like miniature replicas of film-era single-lens reflex and Polaroid SX70 instant cameras. The trinkets are constructed from blown glass and furnished with a metallic top. Measuring just 3 inches tall, the ornaments are handpainted with glitter accents and topped off with silver trimmings. … Read more