Gift Giving 2.0: The Best Apps & Websites for the Holidays

Give Em This

Gift giving may be an art, but Give Em This has turned it into more of a science. The free online application connects with your accounts on social networks like Twitter and Facebook and uses public data from your contacts on those sites to suggest specific gifts for each person you’re shopping for. In particular, the service takes into account general information about the person like their age and gender, as well as more detailed information like events or books they’ve posted about. There’s certainly no guarantee you’ll end up with a perfect gift – one item it suggests my friends should buy for me is a Buddhism for Dummies book, which I would really prefer they not do. But if you really are drawing a blank, it ensures you’ll give something with a little bit of thought behind it, even if that thought isn’t entirely your own.

Photo Credit: Giveemthis.com

Clingle

Clingle lets you take the most impersonal of holiday presents – gift cards – and make them incredibly personal and arguably more useful as well. The app lets users pay for the gift card in advance and then delivers it to the intended recipient when they walk into the store, along with a video or audio message that you can customize beforehand. So instead of giving someone a physical $20 Barnes & Noble gift card at a family gathering which they might lose or forget about in a drawer somewhere, Clingle will reveal the gift card to the person as soon as he or she checks into the store on their smartphone and will play your message with it. To redeem the gift card, the recipient either has to be a Clingle user or check in using Facebook.

The app is available free on the iPhone and Android phones.

Photo Credit: Apple.com

Gift Card Granny

If you really want to give a gift card but want to save some money in the process, try Gift Card Granny. You can buy other shoppers’ unused gift cards for as much as 50% off the normal price or sell back your old gift cards from the previous holiday season. That way you can make a little extra money to put toward gifts this year. The service recently launched a free Android app to make it easier to find deals on gift cards while on the go.

Photo Credit: Giftcardgranny.com

Mgift

Mgift is a well-designed shopping list that works great for the gift giving season. With this app, you can easily keep track of gift ideas, who you need to buy gifts for and how many gifts you’ve already purchased, as well as the amount of money you spent on each. This way you can keep to your budget and make sure that no one slips through the cracks. The app is available for $2.99 on the iPhone.

If you’d prefer not to spend the money, there are several other general to-do list and task manager applications that can help you keep track of your holiday shopping lists including Wunderlist and Remember the Milk, both of which are available for free on the iPhone and Android phones. Remember the Milk is particularly useful because you can enter a task like “Buy Dad a DVD player at Best Buy” and it will remind you to do it next time you’re near the store.

Photo Credit: Apple.com

Christmas Wrapped

The goal of Christmas Wrapped is to help users find gifts for friends and family that fit a predetermined budget. As with Mgift, users start out by making a list of the people they’d like to buy for, but Christmas Wrapped also asks for basic information about the age and gender of the person as well as the amount of money you’d like to spend. Based on this information, the app suggests a wide range of items to add to your shopping list.

The app is currently free for the iPhone for a limited time, so get it before the price goes up.

Photo Credit: Apple.com

Pricegrabber

If there are any items on your holiday shopping list that you’re trying to wait to buy until they come down in price, then try using the site Pricegrabber. The price-comparison service highlights the stores and websites that offer the lowest price on electronics, clothing and more, and lets shoppers sign up for alerts that notify them when the price on a certain item drops.

Aside from the website, Pricegrabber also offers a free iPhone and Android app.

Photo Credit: Pricegrabber.com

Red Laser

Red Laser is a barcode scanner that serves as a powerful price comparison tool when shopping in stores. You just scan the product on the shelf and Red Laser will pull up the best prices from shopping aggregators like Google, TheFind and more. This way you’ll know if the price really can’t be beat.

Photo Credit: Radlaser.com

Lemon

Lemon won’t do much to help you find a gift this holiday season, but it could be a lifesaver when it comes time to return them. This app digitizes and catalogs your receipts so you won’t have to worry about misplacing them during all the end-of-year shopping mayhem. Even if you don’t end up having to return a purchase, the app serves as a great way to keep track of your spending during the holidays by creating charts of how much you purchased on specific dates and at particular retailers. If you keep track of your expenses now, you may be able to avoid an unpleasant surprise the day after Christmas when you check your bank balance.

Photo Credit: Apple.com

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