gifts

Audio gifts are always a great idea for anyone who likes music or home theater. Here's a quick round up of affordable goodies, priced from $100 or less!

Logitech Mini Boombox First thing, the "Boombox" name might be a little misleading; this tiny thing can't boom, but the Logitech Mini Boombox does sound better than I could have imagined for its size, and price, $100. I'm not of fan micro speakers, but this one ain't bad.

The Zoom H1 Handy Portable Digital Recorder The Zoom H1 Handy Portable Digital Recorder ($100) is exactly what … Read more

Nearly everyone has that one relative on their holiday shopping list who's hard to buy for. When imagination fails, we turn to gift cards.

While most gift cards these days are of the physical variety, there are at least a handful of companies starting to offer gift cards you can store on your smartphone. SmartPlanet's Sumi Das finds out how mobile gift cards work and what the caveats are when it comes to using them.

This video originally appeared on SmartPlanet with the headline "The Future Of...Gift Cards."

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Running out of creativity when trying to find gifts for friends and family? Here's a suggestion that almost guarantees some good fun, regardless of the gift: dummy gift boxes from prankpack.com.

These are regular rectangular cardboard boxes, about the size of a giant phone book, with professionally printed art and photos that suggest out-of-this-world, crazy products they have inside. The thing is, none of these products exists, and instead you just use the boxes to pack anything else that you want to give.

Just imagine the excitement, mixed with some bewilderment, your nerdy friend will have upon receiving … Read more

It looks like the LeapPad Explorer could be the hottest tech gift for kids this holiday season.

The tablet for tots is currently out of stock at Wal-Mart, Amazon, Best Buy, Target, Toys "R" Us, and other U.S. retailers, according to product-tracking Web site NowInStock.net.

Even the creator of the tablet, LeapFrog, is out of stock and can only simmer down the masses with this vague declaration on its Web site: "Check back often as shipments are arriving regularly." … Read more

What's the best way to keep track of the gift cards, and their respective balances, you received from family and friends around the holidays?

While we may not have a concrete answer to a common problem, we do have three apps that aim to help you keep better track of your gift cards. Some solutions are free, and others will cost you no more than 99 cents. … Read more

There's always at least one person on your holiday shopping list you put off as long as possible because he or she is such a pain to find something for.

You know these kinds of people. The insufferable wiseacre who insists he's easy to shop for when he's constantly looking for weird movies no one has heard of (more accurately, ones no one wants to watch), or talks about how he needs to add to his collection of '70s and '80s TV commercials. They're like gift hipsters. It would be too easy to just get them something readily available.

These are the people for whom gift cards were created.

Ah, but it doesn't have to be that way. With a minimum of fuss, you can get something unusual for that precious snowflake in your life without having to leave the house. Here, in no particular order, are five Crave-worthy ideas that don't involve your online shopping history being inexorably linked to movies with titles like "Blood Freak" or "The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies." … Read more

Have a family member who has an iTunes gift card on his or her Christmas list this holiday season?

Odds are you have at least one person who does. If you aren't the gift-card-giving type, however, and prefer something that requires a bit more thought be put into it, consider gifting an app.… Read more

Handwritten gift tags might be a thing of the past.

This holiday season, JC Penney is offering Santa Tags, a new option that allows gift-buyers to record voice messages for their recipients to play back upon unboxing their gifts. And it's all done with QR codes.

The voice message is attached to a QR code, which the recipient scans with a QR scanner on a mobile phone, and the voice note is instantly played back.

Pretty cool.

But you don't have to go to JC Penney to make this happen, because there's an even better DIY option … Read more

Cut the Rope, one of the hottest smartphone games, just got an update to the free standalone holiday version for both the iPhone and iPad (universal) featuring new challenges and holiday-themed levels.

Certain apps have staying power on the top-10 list at the iTunes App Store and Cut The Rope offers just the right mix of challenging physics-based gameplay, family-friendly graphics, and tons of levels to explore to keep it near the top.… Read more