Taking the guesswork out of Christmas gifts

Choosing gifts for Jesus' birthday is a nightmare. Unless you're a sock-giving grandparent, you almost always end up choosing pointless presents that get binned or swapped in the January sales. We could start buying present before 6 p.m. on Christmas Eve, we suppose, but where's the fun in that?

There's help at hand, thanks to that t'Internet. Gift Finder is a Web site that helps you decide which gifts to give, and which gifts people should give you. Log on, answer a few short questions by clicking one of 15 images per topic, and it calculates your "true personality." You get a one-paragraph summary describing what type of person you are, and a list of gifts that it thinks will suit you.

We tried it out this morning and it's a very helpful service, if slightly flawed. It "guesses" your "personality" well enough, but the list of presents is pretty random. The suggestion of a RoboMop was right up our street, but we weren't so keen on the long match holder, tomato squeeze bottle or cheese basket.

Anyway, if you see something you like, you can click the "love it" button to prioritise items, then send your entire gift list via email so everyone knows what a desperate, materialistic saddo you really are. Philanthropic types can complete the questionnaire from the point of view of someone else to get an idea of what to buy them.

The service isn't perfect, but it should at least give you a few more ideas about the types of gifts you can give your friends and family. Check it out here.

(Source: Crave UK)

[saedie]

Go With Small Reputable Energy Conscious Products

Giving educational toys and gifts made by smallish reputable companies seems like the way to go. The size of company speaks of an attention to detail and quality control,(such as product components and composition) that larger companies seem to lose with their growth. Going green - energy conscious items - may be even better as the producer already errs on the side of awareness of product impact on the environment. Some of these companies include Thames and Kosmos, Earthcasa, Uncle Milton, Solio, and Dream Cheeky. With discussion about the effects of global warming, this year's gift giving could be an opportunity to foster creative thinking or just a bit of awareness. Various companies sell bunches of solarized items. Some items are things such as baseball caps, flashlights, cell chargers, backpacks, minature racing cars, wooden models and very cool experimentation kits.

[davidbdavis]

The thing that annoys me...

This happens every Christmas and manufacturers and retailers should be ashamed at allowing the dreams of a child to be squashed. Lets take this years hype phenom. Rockband by MTV Games. The hype for this product all year has been incredible, with a release date of Thanksgiving. You couldn't not only get one of these bundles, but they had faulty equipment that came with them. My sons had been waiting all year for this release. The promise of a game that was above and beyond Guitar Hero. We waited in line, not knowing that the store had only 10 units available. We've looked everywhere, high and low. We've seen people scalping them on EBay and Amazon for 3 times their amounts. No other controlers to be released until end of January. No other special bundles to be released ever. Just like the Wii last year and the PS3, promises have fallen short and ticked off a lot of parents struggling to get something for their kids that should be readily available. Shame on you MTV/Harmonix, shame on you Nintendo and Sony! You've made our lives a living hell trying to find product that you hold back on production-wise. There's a special place in hell for your marketers who get the hopes up of teenage boys, only to disappoint them come Christmas time. The one time of year that a childs dreams are supposed to come true.