holidays

NOTE: To commemorate the holidays, different Crave experts will be posting their top 10 gadget picks for the season. See what we crave, and maybe you'll get some ideas! Here's the latest installment.

When Caroline McCarthy isn't tracking Mark Zuckerberg's every move for CNET News.com, she enjoys reading great books (the paper kind, Amazon!) and finding fun new things to do in her home city of New York, which may or may not encompass karaoke and mechanical bulls. She believes that excessive glitter text on MySpace profiles is the root cause of global warming. Al … Read more

Yes, I know, this is Train Wreck: Dysfunctional corporate behavior. But hey, there's a time and a place for everything. And the holidays aren't about blogs, they're about family, friends, food, and of course, drink.

Wine is a complex subject that can be intimidating for novices. It takes years to really know what you're doing just with American wines, let alone those from France, Italy, Australia, and everywhere else. If you want to learn enough to buy or order good wine but don't know where to start, you're in the right place.

Years ago I wrote a column called Tobak's great wine for techies. It's timeless stuff. Click on this link and you can read the archives. You'll find articles that will teach you everything you need to know to get started with wine.… Read more

NOTE: To commemorate the holidays, different Crave experts will be posting their top 10 gadget picks for the season. See what we crave, and maybe you'll get some ideas! Here's the first installment.

Whether it's cars, motorcycles, robots, or lifestyle gear, Candace Lombardi is on top of all things mechanical. An avid fan of travel, she's also always on the lookout for the best gadgets to take on the go.

1. Alfa Romeo 8C Competizione I told you this would be at the top of my Crave wish list when I first wrote about it. This … Read more

Join CNET TV on Friday, November 23 for the Holiday Help Desk our live, 10-hour call-in show. Whether you need advice on software, games, electronics, gadgets, computers, or anything else technological under the sun, experts will be answering your holiday tech shopping questions live from 8 a.m. PST to 6 p.m. PST.

Call 1-888-900-CNET with your questions on Friday or e-mail them in advance to holidayhelp@cnet.com. If your call is answered on the air, you'll be entered into a drawing to win one of eight Nintendo Wii Holiday Mega Bundles valued at $600. Included in … Read more

With Thanksgiving only two days away, people are bringing out their favorite recipes for turkey, gravy, stuffing, and pumpkin pie. How do you keep your recipes from year to year? My father's method was to put his favorite recipes into notebooks that would be brought out every year. But even with laminated pages, eventually his notebooks got pretty messy. My mother used index cards to store recipes, but over time the ingredients would fade, especially if the recipe was popular with the family.

In the search for a better method through software, I discovered some good recipe database programs anyone can use. These handy apps let you store all your favorite Thanksgiving recipes (along with all your other recipes) in a searchable database which you can quickly print out for easy access in the kitchen. You can also catalog things like spices and ingredients on hand, and then search for results using those and other parameters. Some of these apps let you explore other databases online with countless recipe variations and varieties of foods to choose from.… 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

Today we close out our three-part series on Thanksgiving cooking (read about gadgets for cooking the turkey here and gadgets to help with side dishes here) with--what else?--sweets. An informal poll of eaters around our office revealed that pumpkin pie is far and away the preferred closer for a Thanksgiving meal, though apple and pecan pies also have a respectable following. And while I considered dishing up tools for such alternative desserts as cr?me brulee and fondue, it seems prudent to stick with tradition; some folks I talked to view even pumpkin cheesecake with suspicion. So I focused … Read more

It's happening again.

If you thought one minute past midnight the day after Thanksgiving was too early to choke out your fellow shoppers in the name of a great deal, you were wrong.

Following last year's decision to offer a $398 laptop several weeks ahead of the traditional Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving), Wal-Mart is planning on slashing prices on five items--in its stores, not online--beginning at 8 a.m. this Friday. One of them will be a $348 Acer laptop with 1GB of RAM. The other four items and their prices will be kept secret until … Read more

With the holidays right around the corner, here's something to consider stuffing in that stocking. The Vamp from Inter Active Toy is a great gift for kids age 8 and up. It's essentially a radio-controlled flying bat that can be used indoors and outdoors.

Six AA batteries power the remote, which in turn charges the Vamp via a small plug. A full charge--around 15 to 20 minutes--should give you about 8 minutes of flight time. The Vamp retails for $59 and is exclusive to Radio Shack in the United States and Circuit City in Canada. It is expected … Read more