Brilliant: The Gift Cards With Built-In Gadgets

JR Raphael, PC World

At a time when electronics retailers like Circuit City are struggling to stay alive, Best Buy and Target are debuting brilliant new moves for the holiday season: gift cards with built-in gadgets. For real.

To check out these cool gift cards and read the entire article click here.

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FedEx delivering Christmas trees to 45 military bases

Submitted by SHNS on Wed, 11/12/2008

By WAYNE RISHER, Scripps Howard News Service

This holiday season, FedEx aims to plant some holiday spirit among America's armed forces by partnering with Christmas tree growers to ship live-cut trees to more than 45 military bases.

The Memphis, Tenn.-based delivery giant and the Christmas SPIRIT Foundation launched the fourth annual Trees for Troops drive today, with 300 trees scheduled to be picked up in Columbus, Ohio, for delivery to troops in Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan.

To read the entire article click here.

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A Parent's Guide to Safe, Simple Kid-Friendly E-Mail

Rick Broida, PC World

The Internet can be a dangerous place for children, but it's an increasingly necessary evil. Here's how to set up e-mail for your young'uns while maintaining parental control.

When it comes to children and the Internet, most parents focus on safe Web browsing. That's understandable, given that the Web can sometimes seem like one big Red Light District. But the Web isn't the only source of objectionable material online. E-mail can be just as bad

Read the full article here.

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More on etiquette and email

by Christopher Breen, Macworld.com

In what came as a surprise to me, my recent Mac 911 entry, Etiquette and the Bcc Field, generated more supportive feedback than I’ve seen in years. And not so much because the advice I provided was news to most readers—that advice being, don’t dump a bunch of email addresses in the To field because it’s rude and violates privacy—but rather because so many people are frustrated that the less-savvy email users among us do employ the To field and Reply All button unwisely.

It appears that in addition to validating the views of some readers, this entry has offered the additional benefit of providing a way to alert friends, family, and coworkers to the dangers of their email habits. Those who are annoyed by this kind of behavior have discovered that sending a link to this article and then ducking has been helpful to some.

As it is, it seems only right to enhance that advice with a few additional email tips in the hope that they too will be passed along.

Read the full article here.

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Create your own HTML e-mail newsletter

Posted by Dennis O'Reilly CNet News

The other day, a friend asked if I how he could spiff up the weekly e-mail he sends to the members of his bowling team. I told him the simplest way was to download an HTML newsletter template he could customize and then send from Outlook or any other e-mail program.

Start by locating and downloading a newsletter template. You'll find a bunch of free ones at Templates Box. After you download the template you like, open it in an HTML editor. My favorite is the Composer component of the Mozilla Foundation's free SeaMonkey Web suite.

To find out the rest of the steps click here.