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Advertisment The proprietor of this site, Lou Dolinar, invented the concept of the virtual gift three years ago in his weekly computing column in Newsday. What's a virtual gift? Something like a music download or gift certificate that you can buy online and email to the recipient, ideally for immediate use. A gift for when you can't stand another run to the local mall. For when you absolutely, totally forgot, and it is Christmas Eve, Mother's Day, or a critical birthday. True, compared to a hand-knitted sweater, virtual gifts are a tad cold, which is why we always give extra credit to potential e-gifts that add spiffy online greeting cards, allow for personal sentiments in the gift itself, and make the process as simple as possible. Surprisingly few retailers have this procedure nailed cold, and you'll often have to compromise on ease of use by attaching your own electronic greeting card, or othewise improvising. In order to support these pages, we're combining the virtual gift concept with the affiliate marketing concept: Lou's Day gets a commission every time you buy a virtual gift linked through this page. (Don't worry, the commission's on the merchant's dime, not yours.) Thus do we get back to what a lot of people used to like about the old Newsday--the editorial product is just as interesting and useful as the advertising. Here's the best of the bunch: Advertisment The Apple iTunes store (Music, audiobooks, video) The Apple iTunes store gift program is state of the art, with a broad range of e- products, including downloadable audio books and video, as well as music, and every conceivable way to get them to the recipient. As presents go, if someone in your life is permanently attached to a white pair of iPod earbuds, this is a no-brainer. We'll also note here that the stuff can also be played back on PCs with free iTunes software, which makes the video downloads, like the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit feature of broader interest than it might appear.
You can go to the main iTunes page by clicking on the link above. The link below will take you directly to their gift certificate page:
Apple has various permutations of how you can deliver the goods. They'll send a little plastic card via snail mail, an e-greeting card with a money redemption code and most niftily, a gift certificate you can print out at home to stuff in a stocking on Christmas Eve. (Gosh, in a era of 1200 dpi home color printers, why didn't someone figure that out sooner?) Besides a simple one-time credit via gift certificate, you can also sign up someone for a recurring allowance of, say $20 per month in iTunes. We couldn't find a direct link for this one: You need to go through the iTunes home page to sign up for this option. Look on the left hand column under the "Account" heading for "Allowance." About the only thing not to like about the iTunes store is that there's no easy way to send a specific audio book, video or collection of tunes, and the collection of e-cards is limited. Don't worry, they'll figure it out eventually. Advertisment Direct2Drive (Game Downloads) Not every male humanoid teen or twenty-something is into gaming, but if you know your target recipient, Direct2Drive is the site for extremely cool e-gifts, namely the top titles in gaming available for direct download to the PC. Everyone from our old buddy Leisure Suit Larry to Far Cry to the Girls of Gaming is represented. Click on the banner below to go to the home page.
If you're not sure what to buy, you can email a gift certificate for $20 to $100. About the only thing they don't have that we'd like to see is home-printable gift certificates with some of their neat art. The magic link for gifts certificates and how to send games is here: Send an Online Gift Certificate
Advertisment If you own a computer, you've probably bought something at Amazon.com, which means you have an account set up and are a click away from paying for an e-gift. And of course if you're sending it to somone who owns a computer, they probably shop there too, have their own account, and merely have to type in a few digits to activate your presnts. This
program isn't a secret, but it isn't simple to find, either. Go here
for the page: Amazon also has one of the better online newstands for dead-tree stuff: Apart from the obvious advantages of Amazon, the
company has the best collection of e-cards we've found for every
conceivable occasion: birthdays, engagements, showers, weddings, you
name it. You can attach money or a gift to any card: Whole books have been writtem
about Amazon shopping, but there are a couple of additional e-features
that you should know about. Wedding and birth registries are old
hat, but Amazon came up with a general pupose wish list that you, or
your recipient, can choose to publish. So basically, before you
buy anyone anything on Amazon, go to: The links aren't aways the most obvious, but you have three key options from this page. 1) set up your own wish list. 2) search for someone else's wish list by email. 3) ask a friend or friends to set up a wish list and 4) at the top of the page, click on "Gift Organizer" and you'll be given the opportunity to input a list of your regular gift recipients, at which point Amazon will nag you via email until you pay up. As we used to say in the dot.com era, cool. Advertisment Why e-gift with Walmart? Sheer ubiquity, with more physical locations and merchandise than anyone else, plus an increasingly sophisticated online presence. Not especially creative, but you can't go too far wrong if the recipient is in the Walmart demographic, so to speak.
You can go to the main Walmart page by clicking the banner above or by using the search box. Walmart has a decent program for e-gifting but it isn't alway simple to find because of a deficient search engine and poor links from the home page. The universal magic link is below, and the page repays careful study of its contents: The Perfect Gift: Walmart.com Online Gift Card There are several different kinds of cards you can order on the page: a plastic debit card that Walmart snail mails for you, in amounts up to $2,500. Similar to Amazon, but more limited there is a selection of e-cards for instant gratification on birthdays, anniversaries and the like, in amounts up to $200 that can be redeemed immediately online or in-store. A cute idea is a photo card: You upload a picturre, the local Walmart prints it out on as many plastic debit cards, in the amount you wish. You have to pick up the card and mail it yourself. Finally, there's Walmart's answer to the iTunes store and online emailed gift certificates, but let's keep in mind the 88 cent per song downloards are for Windows and compatible devices, not Apples and iPods. Here's the link:
Advertisment StubHub (Tickets of all kinds) Tickets are tough. Not all vendors offer gift certificates, the ones that do don't send them via email, and you probably don't want to buy specific seats for a specific night as a gift. StubHub, a relative newcomer, serves both sellers and buyers, and throws in online gift certificates as well. The home page, for sports, theater, concert and special event tickets is below.
Read the fine print on the the home page and also note
that tickets aren't e-shipped, though they can be sent by overnight
express mail. As usual, it is a tad tricky to find the gift certificate
page, but the magic link is below: Oh, and since we have our column syndicated in New York and Los Angeles, here are direct links to events in those cities: Tickets Now: Premium Seating and Tickets to Sold Out Events Advertisment (sort of) Since Western Union (see
banner below) abolished the telegram a few months back, it has been
easier to get home delivery of a stripper than of real cash.
Understandable, perhaps, in the era of hacking, phishing and computer
insecurity, but unfortunate. Western Union does cash, per the above banner, not gifts. You'll need to find an e-card vendor if you want to add a touch of class when you notify your intended that money will be arriving shortly. Western Union transfers work pretty much as you might expect. You register and create an account as with any online service. You bill the amount, plus transactions fees to your credit card. The basic service requires the recipient to pick up the cash at a participating agent. (In my home town of Bay Shore, this included King Kullen and Pathmark grocers, a stationery store and a check cashing service.) Depending on location, it may be possible to arrange delivery, a phone call alerting the recipient the money has arrived, or even home delivery. Just don't count on it. Western Union is big on international money transfers, so if you want to send Grandma in Guatemala a trip to your home in New York for the holidays, this is a the way to go. A good alternative that does not pay us a commission is PayPal, http://www.paypal.com/ which transfers money via email from your account to the recipient's, and requires said gift receiver to set up their own PayPal account, including a credit card number. Fine if the recipient is computer savvy and a PayPal user, but lots of folks just delete PayPal messages assuming they're some form of phishing. Send your own e-card so they know what they're getting. Another excellent form of money (again, we don't get a commission here, but we're indulging our instincts for conspicuous honesty) is the American Express Gift Card, in effect a debit card pre-loaded with a fixed amount of cash: You buy it online with a credit card; Amex immediately sends a little email greeting/notification to the recipient, and a few days later, the card arrives in an impressive personalized gold envelope. While it would be nice if the ecard was coded for immediate use on line, Amex says gift shoppers bought close to $400 million of theirs and similar certificates last year. In theory, the best e-gift program I ever used was Visa Buxx, which allowed me to create a debit card account online for my daughter Ann, who got a Visa card a few days later. I could then set up a monthly allowance billed to my credit card, and notifiy by email any doting aunts and grandparents who might want to contribue to the kid. I think they even did mass e-mailings to said relatives on birthdays and holidays. Unfortunately, the execution of Visa Buxx is horrible. My credit card deposits to the account got posted about half the time at best. And two of the banks we used, including Bank of America, dropped out the program, causing endless aggravation with switching balances, redeeming checks and so on. Buxx Suxxs. More to come soon on other ways to transfer money online. Advertisment The Wall St. Journal Online The Journal is the only American newspaper that people have been willing to pay to read online, a tribute to its excellence and a sad commentary on the dismal state of the rest of print journalism in the U.S. It is a truly useful product for the harried businessperson, with everything that's in the dead tree edition, nicely searchable with access to decades of data the paper's archivives as well. For Alan Abelson fans, they even throw in the electronic edition of Barron's. At $99 per year, it is a bargain as well. About the only disadvantage is that there's no formal gift program, so you have to sign up yourself, then transfer the account name and password to the gift recipient. You'll also want a spiffy e-card with which to send the account information, which you will find here. Advertisment
Shutterfly Online photo processing has become a huge business, and Shutterfly is among the biggest and best. If you're familiar with these kinds of services, read no further for why you might want to send an electronic gift certificate, otherwise an explanation is in order. The simple explanation is
that you upload digital photos that are stored on the site for free.
You can then order prints in bulk and in various sizes, up to poster
sized 20 by 30 inches. Prices are comparable or cheaper than printing
the stuff yourself, and less of a pain. Shutterfly and similar
vendors throw in subsidiary products like coffee cups, greeting
cards Where things get slightly more complicated is when the service lets you set up the account so that grandma, grandpa, doting aunts etc. have access to the photos and then THEY can order prints, t-shirts, mugs etc. on their own dime. This of course suggest all sorts of additional opportunities for gift giving. The kids are remiss in sending you photos of the grandkids, so you bribe them with a $100 account at Shutterfly. Or the grandparents are always pestering you for photos so you dump your disk to Shutterfly, send THEM a gift certificate, and get 'em to get lost or sort it out themselves. The banner above takes you to the main Shutterfly page; the one below, to their gift certificate page which sends a electronic or paper gift certificate. And of course don't forget that, if you're willing to wait, you can fabricate all sorts of personalized gifts at this site.
Advertisment See Shutterfly blurb. EasyShare is a smaller operation, but you might want to check if your intended is already a member, since the site is promoted along with Kodak cameras.
Kodak EasyShare Gallery Gift Certificates may be used to purchase Prints, Photo Cards, Photo Gifts and more at Kodak EasyShare Gallery Advertisment
On the other hand, if you're looking for something really classy, try someone who doesn't pay us commissions, Jacquie Lawson, below, for $8 bucks a year, all the downloads you want. The selection is limited to about 70 cards at present.
Advertisment All-electronic books are the wave of the future, and have been for at least ten years. But seriously, a technogy that's been the shy stepchild of the MP3 generation is just about ready for prime time.
Advertisment Audible (downloadable audio books, newspapers, magazines) Advertisment TreeGivers Advertisment CinemaNow http://www.cinemanow.com/GiftCert.aspx Advertisment Magazine City Save up to 92% on Great Holiday Gifts! advds tk, blurb follows Take money, for example, or rather, sending plain old money for spending anywhere online, a process that's admirably automated by PayPal. You' d think that maybe one of
the geniuses at would come up
with a holiday e-greeting card to which you could attach money, then
advertise the heck out it on national tv two days before Christmas.
(Actually, they did, or do; they started a program shortly after this
original column ran) Otherwise, if you want a card to go with your money,
you have to head on over to Try http://www.americangreetingcards.com/, Money is money, and always welcome, but more targeted gift certificates can suggest that you actually know something about the recipient. The http://www.amazon.com/ junkie in your life is certainly going to appreciate and use an e-gift certificate from the world's biggest store of everything. If like me you already have an Amazon account, just go straight to the gift certificate page, click on the card you want to sent, and click on an amount. A perfect 10! A favored online geek supply outlet, Newegg, also ships e-gift certificates, but with a minimal selection of cards. Attention Wal-Mart shoppers: That firm also offers e-gift certificates. For flexibility, we like http://www.giveanything.com/. These gift certificates are exclusively electronic, and good for use at over 300 stores, brick and mortar and on line. You can 1) email the certificate, good for immediate use or 2) print it out out at home, put in in envelop with an on-dead-tree Christmas card, and hand it to the recipient. Some 300 stores include Sharper Image, Sports Authority, CD Universe, and KaBloom, the on line florist. http://www.givefun.com/, a gift certificate for gift certificates, offers a slightly different spin, entertainment. You purchase a gift card that's shipped by email; the card in turn can be redeemed for a gift certificate for a specific entertainment outfit or restaurant chain. Some of the gift certificates—for example, the Chile's restaurant chain—are then mailed out. Others, like those for the http://www.broadway.com/ show service, are redeemed on line. Neat system, but the e-cards are kind of tacky. Www.Broadway.com will also sell you e-gift cards directly and has various bundle deals that include dinner or hotel rooms; At http://www.ticketmaster.com/, meanwhile, are gift e-tickets to specific concerts, which the recipient in turn prints out, a nifty feature that, alas, is almost perfectly hidden by their home page. As traditional print, audio and video increasingly migrate to electronic distribution, a fair number of firms are realizing how these lend themselves to instant gifts. With proliferation of PDAs and particularly high-power, high storage cell phones, books might even make a comeback. Take a look, for example, at http://www.ereader.com/, which offers gift certificates for hundreds of popular titles, including Harlequin romances and a good selection of Sci-fi, along with software for PCs and various handheld devices. Amazon also has scads of downloadable books for purchase with their general-purpose e-certificate. If you're into listening, rather than reading books, www.audible.com has set up a nifty gift center this year that sells books, magazines and various subscription packages. Kudos to Audible for allowing shoppers to pick a specific collection of books, something none of the other services allow. Periodicals include Scientific American, The New Yorker and Forbes. We'll also note here that virtually all for fee on line publications like the Wall St. Journal, New Republic, and National Review also offer on line subscriptions. These aren't necessarily set up to expedite gifts, but its pretty easy to create an account and send your own e-card with registration and password to the the recipient. Amazon meanwhile, has a huge on line newsstand for paper gift subscription that will also generate an e-greeting card. For music downloads, Apple offers snail-mailed plastic or ecards gift certificates. http://www.musicmatch.com/, meanwhile, has gone all electronic, with various options for subscription to its Internet radio service as well as song downloads. We're pretty fond of the Music Match Radio, which lets you pick the artists you want to listen to for just $4.99 per month. Napster, oddly is no longer promoting e solutions, just credit cards you can buy at local retailers. Their only on line deal is a free player with a one year subsciption at $14.95 per month. Wal-Mart also has special online cards for its extensive downloadable music collection. I'd hoped to see more in the way of video this year, but the only service that lets you both download first run movies for your PC and buy on line gift certificates is http://www.cinemanow.com/; the official industry site, http://www.movielink.com/, sticks with plastic gift cards that you can buy a local retailers. Their cutest egift I've seen is a dead tie between http://www.greatboyfriends.com/ (As Seen on Oprah!), which offers a month of blind dates for $20, and http://www.smithmicro.com/, which is selling a nifty little downloadable aquarium screensaver, also for $20. For the latter, just cut and past the download link they send you into any e-greeting card. hallmark home page registration walll st journal |
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