December 20, 2010, 10:21 AM — You're packing your bags to head out of town for the holidays when you suddenly realize you forgot to buy something for your uncle or your friend Nick at work. It's too late to get something to them by mail, and you'd have to be a fool to brave the retail world to find that perfect gift. So how can you save yourself?
You have two options: Either deliver a gift late and apologize profusely--or read on for some face-saving gift suggestions for the procrastination-prone.
[If you still have time for shopping, consider some of our other holiday gift guides such as our 'Cool Stuff' Holiday Gift Guide or our Guide to Holiday Digital Camera Deals.]
Digital Gifts and Gift Certificates
To begin with, there's the old stand-by of gift cards and gift certificates. If you've got someone in your life that's hard to shop for, it's hard to image that they couldn't find something to their liking with a digital Amazon gift certificate.
And for music lovers, you can't go wrong with an online iTunes Gift Card now that they can grab stuff DRM-free and port it to the music player of their choice.
Your iTunes cash can also be used to buy books from Apple's iBooks store, but most e-book bookstores offer gift certificates. Amazon's Kindle store even lets you gift specific e-books like the new Mark Twain autobiography.
If you're looking to get a little bit more specific with your gifts, however, there are also digital gift certificates for more geeky ventures like our friends at ThinkGeek, who offer great toys and gadgets for techies; or you could buy a $60 gift certificate to cover the cost of ThinkGeek's new zombie attack hoodie. Or just gift a game or two from Steam Valve's online game store--it has over 1000 games that your giftee can instantly download straight to their computer. I'd suggest Civilization V, the newest game in the long-running and highly addictive Civilization strategy game series.
