Best Buy gift cards with built-in speakers
Opening gift cards is always a bit of a letdown. They're great gifts--I'd much rather get a gift card than some expensive gadget that I don't want or already have, and which I'll have to return for store credit. But the moment of revelation itself? Oh, a plastic card. Kind of boring.
Until now. Beginning Tuesday, Best Buy is selling $50, $100, and $200 gift cards with a built-in mini-headphone (one-eighth-inch) jack, connecting cable and speakers. Why? Because they can! Plug any MP3 player into it and you'll be able to rock some tunes around the Christmas tree. And you know they'll sound awesome. Or at least as good as the ringer in your cellphone. (I saw this first on Engadget, which embeds a wacky online advertisement for them as well.)
Not to be topped, Target's offering gift cards that double as a digital camera. Which is great for off-the-cuff holiday-morning shots, but somehow that lacks the instant appeal of the audio gift card--you'd have to connect the camera to a computer before you could really do anything with the pics.
Prediction: these things are going to be huge. You will know somebody who gets one of them. Maybe you'll be that person.
Matt Rosoff is an analyst with Directions on Microsoft, where he covers Microsoft's consumer products and corporate news. He's written about the technology industry since 1995, and reviewed the first Rio MP3 player for CNET.com in 1998. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network. Disclosure.
For one thing, they are terrible gifts. Showing you don't care, you might as well give cash. Hell i rather take cash then a gift card.
Also your contradicting yourself. You say you rather get a giftcard then a gadget that you will have to return for store credit. Hmm Giftcards are STORE CREDIT.