Gifts that give in 15 minutes

By Lou Dolinar
Updated Feb 3, 2006

This week, procrastination once again meets instant gratification with our third annual virtual gift round up.

What's a virtual gift? Something 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 its Christmas Eve.

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.

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 www.PayPal.com 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 www.americangreetingcards.com,
or www.hallmark.com, or a similar site, and create your own.

Maybe that's why we still prefer the slightly outmoded American Express Gift Card (in effect a debit card pre-loaded with a fixed amount of cash) as a way of sending raw buying power: You buy it online with a credit card (See accompanying URL chart; You'll never find the page directly from the American Express main site); 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.

Money is money, and always welcome, but more targeted gift certificates can suggest that you actually know something about the recipient. The 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 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.

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 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 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 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. 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 www.cinemanow.com; the official industry site, 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 www.greatboyfriends.com (As Seen on Oprah!), which offers a month of blind dates for $20, and 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.