Today is Christmas Eve, and the online Santa Trackers are live and plotting the big, red elf’s every move.

Google’s tool is our favorite, and longtime Santa-stalkers will notice some upgrades to the interface. You can see how many presents he has delivered, how much distance he’s traveled, a constantly changing roster of locations and destinations, and even status updates.

All that data is on the dashboard; it also has a super-cute map view, complete with Santa-in-his-sleigh animations. Anytime you click on one of the present-shaped map pinpoints, you can see photos and a Wikipedia entry on that part of the world — just in case your sugar-high-peaking little ones have the requisite focus to do a bit of learning on Christmas Eve.

And if learning is out of the question, you can check out Santa’s Village for freebies and games, including perennial favorite Santa Phone Calls.

“We’ve received this special preview from one of Santa’s many developer elves, who are hard at work in the North Pole helping Santa prepare for his big day,” says Google of the shiny new toy.

“Santa’s dashboard — featuring the latest and greatest in Google Maps technology and sleigh engineering — will allow you to follow his progress around the world, and also learn a little about some of his stops along the way.”

With all the potential sources of anxiety, spending too much for flights shouldn’t be one of them.

This holiday season, VentureBeat worked with Kayak and Visual.ly to create an infographic of the best and worst times to travel. Kayak analyzed more than a billion search queries and unwrapped a few key findings, and well as some interesting comparisons between holiday travel general year-round travel and between international and domestic journeys.

The most important takeaways? The earlier you book, the better, and traveling on Christmas Day or New Year’s Eve can save you significant amounts of money. Kayak also discovered that Florida is a hot spot for holiday travel as well as for weather.

The three top trending Christmas destinations (based on a year-over-year comparison) are all in Florida, and Orlando is the number one holiday destination this season. But spending your Christmas in the sun has its drawbacks. Miami, Phoenix, and Orlando have the highest increase in airfare this Christmas. While New York remains the most popular place for New Year’s, Las Vegas and Orlando are also high on the list.

No matter where you are going, flying around the holidays is going to be expensive. The average airfare is $528, and this number is on the rise. To keep costs in check, Kayak offered two main pieces of advice: Be flexible with your travel days, and book well in advance.

As for dealing with your family once you arrive at your destination, the team at Kayak has no advice. Although maybe this explains why so many people head to the beach.

Online wunderstore Fab.com says it racked up million-dollar daily sales during the Black Friday/Cyber Monday rush that kicked off holiday shopping.

Between November 23 and yesterday, November 29, Fab.com moved a total of $6.5 million in design-forward products. On Monday, November 26 — Cyber Monday, if you will — the site hit an all-time record with $1.3 million in sales, and the daily average for sales was $933,500 during that entire week-long period.

And as for every retail outlet, late November is just the beginning — the beginning of a four-week period that yields some of the highest volumes they’ll see all year.

“This coming Monday December 3, 2012 is the official Cyber Monday in the United Kingdom,” said Fab CEO Jason Goldberg in a post on the flash sales site’s flashy stats. Fab recently launched via acquisition in the UK, so Goldberg et al. are expecting big numbers from Europe, as well.

In preparation for a blockbuster holiday, the startup launched a new lineup of mobile apps back in October. One offshoot of that effort, Goldberg noted, was that a full third of the company’s sales came from mobile devices.

The company also launched holiday shops to eliminate analysis paralysis and increase sales, and it also introduced free shipping for all orders — a sweet bennie that won’t go away when the holidays end.

Holiday shopping is so awful, it’s no wonder so many of us suck at it.

It’s not just the crowds and the cold-weather germs and the screaming toddlers in all the stores. It’s the endless consternation and analysis paralysis that comes with all holiday gift-giving, whether brick-and-mortar or click-based. With all that pressure, how can anyone blame you for sending out a cheese grater and a pair of socks to your 9-year-old niece?

Lucky for you, we’ve got your back. Here’s the easy, painless way out: online stores that offer a limited, hand-picked selection of the best gifts for everyone on your list. No Amazonian breadth of options to confuse you; no SkyMall-esque tackiness; no toddlers; no pressure.

Pick a site or two, settle in with your credit card, and you’ll be done with all your holiday shopping in an hour. Our list isn’t in any particular order, so just pick the sites that appeal to you most.

Wantful

Wantful is the best. It completely takes away all the pressure of choosing the perfect gift by letting your recipients choose the specific item themselves.

The Wantful product is a pretty, beautifully printed booklet containing 12 gift choices. You enter a price range and answer a couple simple questions about your loved one’s personality and interests; Wantful generates a list of great products for him or her. You choose the 12 you like best, and your work is done. It’s more personal (and better-looking) than a gift card, and it’s almost guaranteed to leave your loved ones smiling.

Etsy

Etsy ain’t just for humorous taxidermy and upcycled motor parts, folks. The handmade-and-vintage-focused online retailer is a village of micro-boutiques, and some will surface truly delightful, one-of-a-kind finds. You’ll find the expected assortment of rustic, retro, artsy tchotchkes, but you can also find beautifully designed iPad mini cases, hip laptop bags, and other thoroughly modern stuff.

The site’s holiday section is especially great if you’re looking for ornaments or kids’ toys to send as gifts.

Fab

We love us some Fab.com around here, and the e-tailer’s holiday shops leave nothing to be desired. Here, you’ll find discounted, unique gifts sorted by type of recipient — a shop for moms, a shop for pet lovers, etc.

Most important, the focus is on design with a capital D. Each collection is meticulously curated by robot elves with impeccable taste. We’ve been doing shopping on Fab for a while now, and we’ve yet to find anything but the most modern, elegant, and delightful items in its inventory. But shop fast; popular finds sell out fast.

Facebook Gifts

Facebook Gifts is pretty new and pretty dang convenient. The social network launched Gifts just a few weeks ago, and it’s been adding products and partners ever since. Here’s what we love about Gifts: 1) You can choose unique and elegant items tailored to your friends’ and family members’ tastes; 2) you don’t have to know their addresses or screw around with shipping details. Facebook takes care of the dirty work for you.

Just go to the profile page of the intended gift recipient, and above the box where you’d normally enter a message, click the Gift button. You’ll get a few gift recommendations off the bat, and in our experience, they’re usually spot-on.

ThinkGeek

If you have a nerd, scientist, graduate student, or die-hard Trekkie on your list, look no further than ThinkGeek. There’s a special menu (on the left-side column) for gifts sorted by price and gender, or you can look farther down the menu to explore gifts by interest.

You got a Mincraft fan on your list? They’ve got Minecraft foam swords. Lego freak? Check out their grown-up-enough Lego-shaped storage cubes. Star Wars guy? He’d get a kick out of the Han Solo Carbonite ice cube tray. It’s so nerdy, it’s delightfully embarrassing — or embarrassingly delightful, depending on your perspective.

Threadless

No one doesn’t wear T-shirts, right? But the Threadless holiday shop is ever so much more than just T shirts. You can find backpacks, stationery, gadget accessories, kitchen towels, and even pet gear in popular Threadless designs.

Of course, you’ll also find Threadless’ famous stash of funny, interesting, gorgeous, thought-provoking, and terribly cute T shirts to suit an infinite range of sizes and personal styles.

Svpply

Svpply is something different. It’s not a marketplace per se; rather, it’s a gorgeous gallery of collections, again curated by high-taste-profile robot elves, with items from a variety of online stores, for a variety of recipient types. Think of it as a Pinterest just for great products, but run by design Nazis rather than bored women in their mid-30s.

You can shop by type of person, type of object, or by keyword, or — cooler still, especially if you’re pressed for time — you can check out Svpply’s recommended local stores, sorted by city and even by neighborhood and selected based on the quality of products you’ll find inside.

Best Made Co.

Best Made Co. doesn’t have something for everyone on your list. What it does have is the sturdiest, simplest, and, well, best-made items for the butch and/or outdoorsy types in your life — your camping/hiking enthusiast parents, your back-to-nature sister-in-law, your would-be lumberjack best friend, or any other Ron Swanson you might know.

Best Made Co. is perhaps most famous for its iconic axes, but you can also find more practical items in its online store. The quality of workmanship is superb; each tumbler, map, and rucksack seems destined to last for roughly 900 years of adventure. And the brand’s simple, iconic logos and typefaces are a surefire hit with designers; check out the Best Made line of journals, pencils, and journal cases, or even its rustic Best Made Soap.

Gilt Gifts

If your intended gift recipient is more into conspicuous consumption, hey, we ain’t here to judge. Just head on over to Gilt Gifts, the home of all things super-luxe, for a look at the site’s holiday gift shop. You’ll find discounted items sorted by type and by price, each hand-picked from top-shelf brands in every shade, texture, and flavor of indulgence. There’s an entire section just for cashmere. Think about that.

Also, if you get stymied, you can check out the Gilt Live ticker to see what other savvy shoppers are picking out.

Donors Choose & Heifer International

For that super-rich retiree on your list who really does have everything (love you, Dad!), sometimes the best gift you can give is a heartwarming donation to a cause he or she really cares about.

Personal story time: My husband and I just got married, and since we’re both in our 30s and already have every imaginable household decor item and kitchen utensil imaginable, we asked our guests to make a donation and tell us about it as their gift to us. Reading those cards was amazing — our grandparents made a donation to an Alzheimer’s research foundation; a couple we love gave money to a first-responder organization for abused children. Knowing that our wedding itself had a positive impact on our community was the best collection of gifts we ever could have gotten.

Donors Choose and Heifer International are two safe choices. The former lets you choose an amount, then your recipient gets to pick a real classroom in need and donate toward a special project or item the kids need. Who doesn’t love supporting kids and education? Heifer is all about creating sustainable animal husbandry in the developing world. E.g., you buy a flock of chicks for a family, and the family then passes on some of the chicks to another family in need, creating a positive chain reaction in the community.

We’ve got a whole ‘nother list of great charities for holiday gift-giving, so check that out if you’d like more options.

Top image courtesy of Miriam Doerr, Shutterstock. All other images from the e-commerce websites mentioned in the article.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Editor’s note: Keynote Systems’ Startup Shootout Index provides some insight into the three-screen challenge now facing anyone with a web presence. We’ll be bringing you a fresh set of data from Keynote every month. Check out previous Startup Shootout results.

With the holidays upon us, we thought we’d take a look at how ready our index startups are for two great holiday traditions – shopping and travel. Between Black Friday, Cyber Monday, holiday vacations, and winter storms, these sites are about to get a workout.

As part of the Keynote Startup Shootout Monthly Index we track some of the top travel and online retail sites, across desktop, smartphone and tablet devices. We’ve discussed before the impact of this “three screen” world, especially in adapting to mobile. Let’s see if our index startups are ready for the holiday challenge.

The Virtual Shopping Experience

Creating positive online shopping experiences used to be so straightforward: have the right products at the right price, a smooth checkout process, good overall site performance, and the sales will come rolling in. Mobile sites are becoming increasingly popular for shopping and it is important for retailers have a strong mobile presence. But mobile sites present a whole different set of challenges to ensure they look good and function efficiently. The shopper, of course, just expects a consistent level of performance, regardless of device.

Fab.com offers a native app for the mobile visitor, but it is buried at the bottom of the site. Even if a user does manage to find it, it has taken them a while to do so, which slows down the shopping process. Key takeaway? Put that app right up top if you want to get it used.

None of the retail sites offer tablet-specific pages, but some are designed for better performance.  The two fastest home pages for tablet users, RueLaLa and Ideeli, load about three times faster than the others on the retail index. Keeping pages lightweight and less complex, whether the page is specifically optimized for tablet users on not, is key to earning their loyalty rather than driving them to frustration.

Beware of the online retailer that fails to provide a mobile or tablet-specific experience. Otherwise, they are loading incredibly large (desktop) pages across a usually much weaker network and screen experience.

Travel-log

As with shoppers, travelers tend to be in transit if they are accessing these sites from their mobile device. If they are on the road, they may have varying degrees of network support – sitting in an airport or station, driving, on a train, or finding themselves in rural locations with limited access.

Again, we see a number of the travel sites delivering a full desktop page when accessed via a tablet. Companies sometimes assume that tablet users have stronger wi-fi connections than mobile users, but this is not always the case.

Tripology, interestingly, has neither a mobile-optimized site nor app, never mind being optimized for tablets.

AirBnB has an iPhone-optimized site, but the loading time is slow. It loads an excessive element count – which means too many http requests. We can offer a couple of best practices here.

• Keep to ten or less HTTP requests. These each involve round trips from the browser to the server which add to a site’s latency. On the AirBnB site, we are currently seeing 47 http requests. That will definitely slow you down.
•  Redirections can be painful in the mobile world, and again we’re talking about slowing down the service dramatically. With AirBnB, there are two redirections from the original URL – first from a non-secure to a secure to a secure mobile site. Ironically its front page appears to be a secure site, which is unusual for a home page. Secure pages are usually reserved for transaction areas and credit card/billing-type pages.
• We recommend at most two or three domains for mobile or tablet apps due to the network issues they can have. We saw 12 different domains on AirBnB’s home page, each of which can add a quarter of a second to loading time.

Conclusion

We continue to see tablet-specific sites fall somewhere in between the full desktop experience and the mobile experience. A startup might have the desktop and the mobile covered, but not the tablet. It makes a big difference when it comes to the customer experience.

The holidays will keep pushing the web performance of these retail and travel sites, plus we’ll assume many people will receive new devices which will only increase the demand. Let’s hope 2013 brings “three screen success” to all out Startup Shootout companies.

Aaron Rudger is the senior manager of web & mobile performance and Ken Harker is the mobile evangelist at Keynote Systems.

Instead of buying your kid or young-at-heart loved ones a battery-operated gadget for the holidays, why not give them a kit that challenges them to make gadgets of their own?

LittleBits, a delightfully named startup, has just unveiled its 2012 holiday kit, a $50 package of wires, switches, LEDs, motors, and an instruction sheet to get makers started.

The startup’s founder, Ayah Bdeir, makes these lovely little toys not just as unique gifts, but also as a quiet protest against consumer culture.

“Often, marketing departments in large companies decide on the hot new holiday gadgets, and we engage in prescribed interactions that they design,” Bdeir said in a statement on the news.

“littleBits turns this trend on its head. The product is no longer the goal — littleBits is a platform that enables people to bring their creativity to life.”

Here’s a sneak peek at the new kit and its gorgeous gift wrapping:

The Bits of littleBits’ kit are part Lego, part circuit board, and each one has a distinct function, such as flashing lights, sounding beeps, or sending a pulse of electrical current through a circuit. The bits feature magnetic snaps and can be combined to make larger projects.

The Bits in the holiday kit include some new hardware — the Light Wire and the Bright LED — and the kit includes instructions for building a Christmas tree ornament (sorry, Hanukkah/Kwanza/Festivus celebrants), a dancing ice skater, and a New Year’s Eve party hat.

The company is also challenging the tinkerers of the world to show off what they’re making for the holidays. The contest, the company says, is intended to be “a call to inventors of all ages to submit sketches of their dream littleBits projects. The littleBits design team will pick the three most imaginative ideas and the winners will receive all the Bits to turn dreams into reality!”

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

We can’t bear to say it, but the holidays are sort of upon us, and design-centric flash sales site Fab.com is getting into the swing of things early with free shipping.

There’s no special code, and this isn’t a limited-time offer just for December. From now on, orders over $75 ship free — and really, aside from the odd tee shirt, if you’re going to shop on Fab, you’re likely planning on dropping $75 or more anyhow.

It’s also not just for the U.S.; free shipping will be a global rollout.

“It’s the right thing to do for our customers — just as removing the login requirement was,” the company noted in an email.

Fab reps say that all but around 2 percent of Fab products qualify for free shipping. You’ll see all eligible items appear on the site now with a small, gray truck icon next to them.

A couple of weeks ago, the company also launched its holiday-themed pop-up shops, each with a specific demographic in mind — moms, design nerds, pet parents, etc. And just a month earlier, the startup launched a lineup of sleek mobile apps for on-the-go Fabbing.

Looks like the Fab team is prepping for a very merry Q4 indeed.

According to comScore, which tracked online consumer spending between November 1 and the week beginning December 25, year-over-year sales figures for online retailers were higher for every single week for the final 56 holiday shopping days of 2011.

“Holiday e-commerce spending has remained strong throughout the season,” said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni in a statement.

“We can now say with certainty that the $1.25 billion spent on Cyber Monday will rank it as the heaviest online spending day of the season for the second consecutive year, but we should also note that it was accompanied by nine other billion-dollar spending days this year.”

One huge new trend was the purchase of digital goods and subscriptions, with many purchases being made as late in the game as Christmas Day.

This e-commerce vertical includes digital downloads for media such as music, TV, movies, e-books and applications. To those of us tracking the popularity of gadgets, this trend isn’t too much of a shock.

Given that tablets, smartphones and e-readers (as well as iTunes gift cards and similar gift certificates) have become popular gifts in recent years and months, it’s not too surprising that many recipients of such gifts spend the hours post-unboxing in a frenzy of app and media downloading.

According to comScore’s data, on an average day during the 2011 holiday season, digital content and subscriptions accounted for around 3 percent of overall e-commerce sales. However, on December 25, the digital content and subscriptions category made up more than 20 percent of sales.

comScore says the higher figure should be echoed on each of the days following Christmas Day for about a week.

Here’s a snapshot of year-over-year sales increases between the holiday season in 2010 and this year’s holiday shopping online as well as the hard numbers for a few significant shopping days:

The overall hike in online spending was apparent as early as November 23, when we saw a 14 percent year-over-year increase. And the week ending December 18 was the biggest week in online shopping in the history of e-commerce.

First Round Capital is famous in these parts for its irreverent, awkward and often hilarious holiday e-greetings.

This year, the team and its family of startups pitched in to create an elaborate send-up of Rebecca Black’s soulless mistake of a song, “Friday.”

In the vid, you’ll catch glimpses of some of our favorite folks, from TaskRabbit’s Leah Busque to Turntable.fm’s Billy Chasen to Mashery’s Oren Michels to GetSatisfaction’s Wendy Lea.

And of course, there are the partners, including Josh Kopelman and Howard Morgan, “kickin’ in the front seat, sittin’ in the back seat.”

Sure, it’s autotuned and cringe-inducing, but a lot more hilarious than your average family holiday get-together.

It’s the day after Thanksgiving, and the VentureBeat offices are deserted. Where is everyone? Out shopping for insane Black Friday deals, apparently.

VentureBeat chief technical officer and resident videographer Christopher Peri spends some quality time with his camera, talking about what’s going on with holiday shopping this year. So far, online shopping is up 14 percent over the same period last year, which is a great trend.

Chris also talks about the top 10 Black Friday deals for gamers, including Uncharted 3, Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword, the Xbox 360 Kinect controller, and a cool 3D TV from Sony.

Looking for an e-book reader? The Nook Simple Touch and the Kindle are both just $79 this weekend, and Kindles are just as cheap.

And finally, get a glimpse of the future: The Landing Zone is a slick-looking docking station for the MacBook Air.

Looking for the best deals? Here’s our advice on the best apps for holiday shoppers.

Of course there are plenty of people who don’t care much for Black Friday –  avoiding it at all cost due to the massive crowds. However, last year, at least 212 million shoppers did participate to generate an estimated $45 billion in sales.

To find out about the type of person who chooses to stand outside a Target parking lot at midnight for a cheap Xbox 360 Kinect game pack (and/or name brand athletic footwear, etc.), social media analysis firm MashWork conducted a study based on Black Friday-related conversations from microblogging social network Twitter.

MashWork analyzed over 270,000 tweets referencing Black Friday from Sept. 26 to Nov. 17. The data collected — displayed in the infographic embedded below — yielded answers about what items people were most excited about buying, who they were shopping for and where they plan to make their purchases.

Some of the results actually surprised me. For instance, 46 percent of people plan on buying items on Black Friday for themselves, which sort of defeats the purpose of a gift-giving holiday. Also, the study indicated that computers/tablets and expensive basketball athletic shoes (like a pair of Black Air Jordan Cement 3s) were among the most talked about items.

As for tablets, MashWork notes that the iPad is the dominant device referenced, despite the launch of competing products from both Amazon (Kindle Fire) and Barnes & Noble (Nook Tablet).

“For every 10 times the iPad 2 is talked about in relation to Black Friday, the Kindle Fire is mentioned just once,” the company states in the report. “Shoppers tend to discuss brands on social media that they are engaged and familiar with. Amazon is trusted, but Kindle Fire conversation won’t pick up until more people have used it.”

Check out MashWork’s Black Friday Twitter infographic below for a visual representation of the data from the firm’s study.

Do you plan on taking advantage of Black Friday deals? Let us know in the comments. Also, make sure you check out VentureBeat Senior Editor Devindra Hardawar’s post about the essential Black Friday mobile apps and services for shoppers.

When the service debuted on Nov. 8 it had a number of issues that made it tough for users to connect. Now, the company says it has stabilized the service and can deliver all of its major features to both paid and free users.

“We are where we should have been at launch,” said Daniel Suarez, vice president of production at Activision in an interview today. “It should be an enjoyable holiday weekend for people.”

Call of Duty Elite hit more than a million paid subscribers in its first six days, Activision Blizzard said. It now has more than 4 million paid and free gamers registered. That was part of the problem, as demand for the service overwhelmed the company’s server infrastructure. Gamers were still able to play Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 multiplayer, but the service for Elite wasn’t good.

Suarez said that the company has slowly been adding more users and more features to the service. On Friday night, the Elite TV section of the service will debut the first episode of Friday Night Fights, featuring an Army vs. Navy game competition. That is the last big remaining piece of the service to debut.

Meanwhile, Suarez said that Activision will have announcements of downloadable content coming soon. Users who pay a subscription fee of $50 a year are entitled to DLC for free. Normally, they would have to pay for content such as new multiplayer maps.

As we noted yesterday, the subscription numbers suggest Activision Blizzard is marching on its way to getting gamers to pay for Call of Duty on a year-round basis, deepening their engagement beyond a few weeks after a game launch.

Call of Duty Elite has the benefit of riding on the coattails of the most popular video game in history. Modern Warfare 3 sold more than $775 million worth in its first five days of sales, making it bigger than last year’s Call of Duty Black Ops debut.

Last week, Suarez told us in an interview that the company had been able to restore enough service to guarantee service for those gamers who have signed up for the paid service. But at least half of those who are using the free version of the service weren’t able to log in, so they were still seeing error messages when they attempt to get in. The Elite web site as of yesterday finally shows that the service is fully operational.

So far, 80,000 Elite clans have been created and that should probably pass 100,000 shortly. The service has had more than 3 million daily logins. During the past week, Activision started offering competitions for gamers. Suarez said the Beachhead Studios team continues to chase small bugs such as making sure that users get their entitlements for Founders status.

Suarez said the mobile app for Elite will be available next week.

“Every week, we have progressively improved,” Suarez said. “Everything is now up and running.”

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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