Webware

Use coupon code 'SAVE' to get $25 vouchers for $3.

(Credit: Restaurant.com)

Hungry? Like to dine out? Restaurant.com normally lets you buy $25 gift certificates for $10, but right now you can scoop them up for just $3 apiece. Simply enter coupon code SAVE when you get to the shopping cart.

Anyone familiar with Restaurant.com knows there are usually a few small strings attached, like a minimum food or drink purchase. However, it's not like you have to order a case of wine or anything. And you can print the coupon right on your own printer: It's immediately ready for use.

A few months back I used one of the gift certificates for a local Italian place, and except for a slight delay while the manager called to verify the coupon, everything went smoothly.

In these horrendous economic times, this deal is too good to pass up. Just make sure to read all the terms and conditions before you buy your certificates, just so you avoid any nasty surprises when the check comes. Bon appetit!

Procrastinators, rejoice! You can print a great gift in minutes.

(Credit: Amazon)

Need a list-minute gift for an office party, your trusty mail carrier, a beloved blogger, or anyone else on your list? As long as you have a printer, you can churn out something special in a matter of minutes. Here's a list of four stores that let you print your own gift certificates for in-person giving:

• Amazon.com On any Amazon page, click the Gift Cards link, then choose Print at Home. The minimum amount is $5, but you're not limited to increments: Your certificate can be in the amount of $10.57, if you want.
• Gifts.com The recipient of a Gifts.com certificate can redeem it at one or more of a hundred-plus stores and restaurants, including Barnes & Noble, Pottery Barn, and Starbucks.
• iTunes Obviously, you can grab an iTunes gift card in just about any store on the planet, but did you know you can print your own? Just fire up iTunes, click Buy iTunes Gifts, and then choose Printable Gift Certificates. Amounts range from $10 to $200.
• Restaurant.com Once again, Restaurant.com is offering $25 gift certificates for just $2 (with coupon code HOLIDAY). Not familiar with the site? Get the details from my previous post.

Social network Hi5 has launched a virtual-gift store and currency called "Hi5 Coins."

Hi5 is big on multiculturalism--the San Francisco-based company enjoys its most loyal following in a number of Latin American countries--so many of the gifts have regional cultural significance. The payment system is handled through the third-party service ClickandBuy, and a total of 36 gifts are available at launch.

Expect virtual-gift services to get even hotter in the social-network world over the next few months, as companies scramble for another form of revenue besides advertising. Facebook has modified its in-house Gifts application to allow for variable pricing, for example.

Gifts and virtual goods are also some of the biggest moneymakers on social-application platforms like Facebook's, not to mention in virtual worlds where members pay to accessorize their avatars.

GiftCardRescue.com, a company that allows visitors to sell or exchange unused gift cards, announced Monday that it has instituted a new bankruptcy protection policy that will cover customers who purchase gift cards from the company's site.

"The current economic downturn is causing anxiety among consumers about whether a gift card purchased today will be redeemable tomorrow given the recent surge in bankruptcies by retailers," Kwame Kuadey, GiftCardRescue's CEO and founder, said in a statement. "This policy is to reassure our customers that their gift card losses from bankruptcy will be covered."

According to the company, GiftCardRescue will reimburse a customer's gift card if the retailer goes bankrupt within a year of the gift card purchase, as long as the retailer is no longer honoring gift cards. Kuadey said his company will cover the cost of the insurance with its own cash reserves and will not pass it on to the retailers or customers.

GiftCardRescue also announced Monday that it will start keeping tabs on retailers through its GiftCardBlogger blog. The site will will feature updates on retailer bankruptcies and their impact on gift card holders.

Gift card sales were one of the hottest buys during last year's holiday shopping season, but economic troubles mean gift cards may not top the list this year. The National Retail Federation announced last Tuesday that gift card sales are expected to drop 6 percent this holiday season.

If you're a United Kingdom dweller feeling left out of U.S.-only services like BuyYourFriendADrink.com there's light at the end of the tunnel. Launching Friday is Get Them In, a new way to buy your friends food and drink items right on Facebook which can be redeemed at various U.K. pubs and retailers.

Unlike BYFAD, Get Them In is not just centered around bars, and it works in grocery stores too. Purchases of drinks and snacks are made through Facebook using PayPal, so you've got your entire list of friends available in one place. Once you've made the purchase, your friend gets a special redemption code sent to their phone which can be redeemed at the point of purchase in one of 1,500-plus participating retailers.

Coming soon is support for the U.S., Canada, and Australia, as well as an OpenSocial version for use on other social networks.

Pick out certain goods and buy them straight from Facebook to send to your friends.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Since its launch in early February of last year, Facebook's online gift store has run off of standard U.S. dollars, letting users purchase gifts one at a time, or in bundles at a slight discount. However, starting Monday the popular social network has moved to a micropayment system where each point represents a cent, opening up its gifts marketplace to items outside of the $1 standard.

There are several benefits to using such a system, the least of which is user convenience. Microsoft, which has had its own points system since the advent of the Xbox Live Marketplace, has forced users to buy points in packs ahead of any purchases, in effect requiring user credit before a sale. The result of this is that users almost always have a leftover balance which can rest in Microsoft's accounts, earning the company interest until the user's next purchase.

The big difference between Microsoft's system and Facebook's implementation is that Facebook has stuck with the same monetary standard that most of its users are locked into. In comparison, Microsoft points are approximately 25 percent more per 100 than a dollar, which becomes confusing at higher amounts--and even more so at the international level. So much so that several developers have created currency translators and sites to help people figure out how to even out their remaining balances.

Facebook gifts must now be purchased in 'points' instead of U.S. dollars, opening up a new system where items can be above or below the magic 100 mark.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

So what does this mean for the future of gifts and other transactions on the service? We're likely to see both higher- and lower-priced items, which will result in customers having remainder balances. It's something that will entice (and require) them to buy more. So far Facebook is offering point packs in chunks of $1, $5, and $10 while the price points of gifts remain at the standard 100-point ($1) and free denominations. Facebook says free gifts will continue to be offered, however expect to see sub-100-point, and more expensive "premium" gifts coming in the very near future.

[via VentureBeat]

One of my favorite sites, GiftGirl, on Monday night introduced some small but important updates that make it an even more useful tool for unimaginative boyfriends and husbands.

The first big change is that users are now able to make "unlimited" profiles, meaning they can set up virtual gift-giving profiles for multiple ladies at once. Aimed mostly at people who have a friend or family member in addition to their sweetheart, it could also conceivably be set up to help polygamists manage gift giving for multiple partners.

The site now also allows group gift giving, with a shared wishlist that you can collaborate on with others. You can invite friends or family members to view and add on to what you've got on the person's wishlist to help coordinate who is getting what. Still missing, however, is a way to pool your funds together to buy it, although you can use third-party services like Homeslyce, which is technically a competitor but does not offer as focused a set of suggestions like GiftGirl does.

In addition to getting recommendations for gifts you can now manage wishlists and guests in the same place.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

The service still costs $20 a year to subscribe to. That payment goes in part to the editorial curation of the items that change by season and online availability. Since we last checked out the site, it also added a special $200 custom consultation which gives you a one-on-one help session with GiftGirl co-founder Jean Vouté Pratt, although for that kind of money if you were thinking of something under $1,000 you might just want to put that towards the gift.

Related:
Gift Girl helps men avoid blender blunders
Closet Couture gives you a virtual closet with real clothes

WujWuj is a badly named, yet really simple to use group gifting service. The aim is to let you gift a single friend with one or more items from Amazon.com and spread out the payment over a group of friends. It's not a new idea--Fundable and FromEveryone do this. As do HomeSlyce and ChipIn, which manage to tack on general purpose fund raising as well.

What might be WujWuj's greatest asset is that it handles multiple gift giving with some basic intelligence. You can add as many presents to the list as you want, and it'll send out whatever it can based on what you and your buddies scrap together before the giving cutoff time. This means you don't need to raise your entire amount as long as it covers items on the top of the list.

Add items you want to gift into a big list. Others can pitch in to get the items, which are shipped out. (click to enlarge)

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Creating a list and inviting people to contribute is a snap. You can add items by searching through the built-in Amazon search engine. It's not as fast as hunting for gifts on Amazon's site, but if you're looking for big name items you're likely to find what you're looking for on the first pass. When it comes time to invite others to get in on the purchase you can either knock out contacts one at a time or slurp them from your address book on a handful of popular e-mail services.

The invite to pay (and go to the party) goes out in the form of an event that has its own special landing page. As the creator you can add all sorts of content like photos, a video from your digital camera, along with related links. It also shows a progress bar with how much money you've raised, as well as which gifts have been met with enough cash to get them. If your cohorts want to pitch in there's a small fee which goes to pay for the transaction--unfortunately as a donor you can't pick which item/s you want your funds to go to, which I'd like to see amended.

Things I don't like about the service include the taxes and additional fees. In most states, buying electronics from Amazon means whatever you're buying is tax free. I added an iPod touch to my WujWuj gift list, which tacked on an extra $10 in tax to the purchase price. There was also a mystery $23 "service charge" despite WujWuj's claims that it's making money only in transaction fees and whatever love it gets back from Amazon for being an affiliate store. Not cool. For that I wouldn't recommend using WujWuj, despite its ease. You're better off simply using a money pooling tool like ChipIn (which links up to your Facebook buddies) and separate Web 2.0 event planning app like Socializr and MyPunchbowl.

Update: CEO of WujWuj Monti Majthoub contacted me to clear up the service fees. The good news is that both the taxes and the service fees will be a thing of the past starting next week. I've pasted his points below:

1- The service fee was tagged the last minute because Amazon refused to include us into their "affiliate program" because we would be buying and shipping the gifts, there for amazon would not agree to include us in the "affiliate program" It doesnt matter, the solution is:- we will REMOVE the service fee ASAP, no later than Monday. Please make a note of this.

2- Taxes is a bug, we will be "collecting" Taxes on 5 states where amazon collects, Kansas, Kentucky, North Dakota, New York or Washington are subject to tax.

3-We will instead charge 7.9% to people that donate, 3.9% will be going to paypal/Credit card fees.

[via SimpleSpark]

In Web 2.0 conference culture, a wheelchair becomes an ad platform, and the letter "X" serves as a mascot. So why not celebrate SWAG?

Inside the wagon, Marjorie Kase plays with a stuffed monkey, one of the cuter pieces of Web 2.0 Expo SWAG.

(Credit: Elsa Wenzel/CNET Networks)

A group of Los Angeles friends who work in social media were kvetching earlier this month about the mountain of waste--such as branded T-shirts, stress balls, key chains, and other giveaways--that pile up at tech conferences.

They decided to turn that into an opportunity to sweeten the convention party circuit while benefiting charity.

Michael Liskin, Marjorie Kase, and David Preciado decided to cruise the Web 2.0 Expo in a "Schwaggin' Wagon," collecting excess knickknacks from vendors. They plan to send the souvenirs in care packages to U.S. troops in Iraq, as well as to the nonprofit InnerKids.

The plan came together 10 days ago. Naturally, a blog, a Facebook group, and accounts on Twitter and BrightKite (more here) shortly followed.

Eight sponsors, including Mashable, Dogster, and Girl Gamer, cover the rental and fuel. In exchange, their logos plaster the 15-person, Chevy rental van that the friends drove to San Francisco for this week's expo.

"It shows that once you get something going and it resonates with people, it can go far," said Liskin. "Even if we don't gather voluminous amounts of SWAG this time, we're raising awareness about the waste."

Last night I hitched rides to party hop in the wagon crammed with SWAG, colorful pinwheel lights, paper lanterns, and tipsy conference goers. All it's missing is a disco ball.

But at the Web 2.0 Expo, there seems to be a shortage of the primo SWAG, unlike the iPhone given to each attendee of Office 2.0 last year. So if all you got out of this conference was a lousy t-shirt, the Schwaggin' Wagon crew invites you to track them down via Twitter or BrightKite.

"If someone brings two or more pieces of SWAG, we could do a SWAG exchange," Liskin said. "In the tradition of user-generated content, it's a collaborative process. People can tweet us and tell us where to go."

He and the fellow "Schwaggineers" total six people, including Kyra Reed, Daniel Hartman, and my friend Andy Sternberg. They want to make the rounds of more tech conferences, but haven't decided on the next stop.

Aiming to reduce the project's carbon footprint, however, Liskin is pledging to use a natural gas or other "green" vehicle next time.

Can't find a taxi? Want to offload a stress ball?

(Credit: Andy Sternberg)