Web Worker Daily

It may be a terrible pun, but it is a useful micro-site from the people at Google. The site (and the pun) is “Appy Holidays,” and the aim is to help you manage your hectic holiday schedule.

In the tradition of Fashion Your Firefox, and iPhone Your Life, Appy Holidays collects a selection of Google Apps under a consolidated theme, in this case “manag[ing] the holiday hustle and bustle”.

The Google services featured on the web site include Calendar, Docs, Picasa, and the recently released Gmail-integrated video chat. In fact, the services listed and their suggested uses does present a nice way of getting all of your holiday ducks in a row. Most useful are probably Calendar and Docs, especially if you’re already using these services professionally.

I’m awful at keeping track of deadlines without a planner or calendar, and I already use Google Calendar to keep track of appointments, so it makes sense to add a new calendar devoted exclusively to making sure I don’t miss any of those holiday parties I’ve committed to, or, at the micro-management level, reminding me that the turkey needs to go in by 10:00 if it’s going to be ready when company comes.

Appy Holidays also suggests using Docs for shopping list management, and for labelling and writing holiday letters. They’ve even prepared a special selection of templates so that most of the work is already done for you. If you’re like me, you might also want to keep tabs on your holiday budget using a Docs spreadsheet, since otherwise January might be a very long, scant month indeed. Leftover turkey can only feed you for so long.

Darrell Etherington recently came up with a list of holiday gifts, and I wanted to add some ideas to the mix. I’m more of a gadget gal, myself. I like tangible items that I can unwrap and hold in my hands, marvel at the construction and hope, of course, that they are intuitive to use since I hate to read instructions.

Here’s a list of gift suggestions I’ve come up with ranging from $10 to $500 to accommodate any gift-giving budget.

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If you’re like me, the beginning of December means one thing: regretting not having started your Christmas shopping earlier. The malls are packed, Black Friday has ravaged store stock, and you don’t have a clue what to get anyone anyway. I hope I can help with at least one of those problems, with this list of great gifts for that web worker on your list.

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