Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has made his largest charitable donation to date.

A week before Christmas, the young technology executive announced he will be giving almost $500 million in Facebook stock to a Bay Area nonprofit that focuses on improving access to education and health. The beneficiary is the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, which rewards grant money to local projects and causes.

The gift of 18 million Facebook shares is valued at $498.8 million, based on the company’s closing stock price today, when Zuckerberg made the donation.

Tech entrepreneurs are increasingly popping up in lists of the top philanthropists in the nation. The Chronicle of Philanthropy publishes a definitive list each year; in 2010, Zuckerberg made the top 10 tied with Salesforce.com’s Marc Benioff. Last year, Oracle’s Larry Ellison and eBay founder Pierre Omidyar featured in the top 30.

Zuck’s willingness to donate funds to local causes is a departure from the late Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who kept a low profile in this regard. While Jobs was reluctant to join, Zuckerberg is a keen supporter of Giving Pledge, the effort spearheaded by Microsoft founder Bill Gates and investor Warren Buffett, to get the country’s richest people to donate most of their wealth.

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.

Good grief, Charlie Brown. Halloween is barely over, and the gift-giving-holiday commercialism is starting already.

But since this announcement is from design-centric online shopping mecca Fab.com, we don’t mind it so much.

The startup is launching holiday pop-up shops, virtual boutiques with “affordable daily design for everyone on your list.” Fab’s done pop-up shops for other gift-giving occasions — Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day — and all with great gift suggestions that have made this reluctant shopper’s gift experiences much smoother.

For the Q4 holidays, Fab‘s taking it a step further and will give you, the shopper, a pop-up shop of beautiful suggestions for a range of different tastes and price points. Pop-up shops will include options:

• For Best Friends
• For Design Lovers
• For Dad
• For Mom
• For Food Lovers
• For Her
• For Him
• For Pet Lovers
• Gifts Under $25
• Gifts from $25 to $50
• Gifts from $50 to 100
• Gifts over $100

Here’s a sneak peek:

Fab is also taking this as an opportunity to upgrade a few of its navigation and search features. The homepage will feature the holiday shops in the top navigation, a redesigned search bar and sub-nav menus, and new pop-up shop horizontal navigation that may remind you a bit of tablet browsing.

“Thus far in 2012 Fab has grown from 1.5 million customers to 9 million, serving design lovers in 26 countries, and selling 4 products per minute,” said Fab reps in a release on the news.

“We’re hopeful that we’ve been able to brighten your lives and make you smile. This has been a tough week for us here at Fab in NYC, but we’re still smiling. Big time.”

Top image courtesy of jocic, Shutterstock

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Overall, the majority of the country has experienced a pretty mild winter this holiday season, which means there isn’t much fluffy, white snow falling. The same cannot be said for YouTube videos.

The Google-owned video sharing community site has added a temporary snowflake button that allows you to control the level of frosty precipitation within your video player. The feature is available on most videos, but some still don’t have the ability to manipulate the weather.

As you can see from The Hobbit trailer screenshot, the falling snowflakes accumulate along the bottom of the video and continue to stack up until you toggle off the effect by clicking the snowflake button. Pausing the video doesn’t stop the snowfall, but if the entire player is covered in white you can clear the screen by clicking the snowflake button.

Obviously consistency is very important to the YouTube staff, which is why they’ve also changed the progress bar’s cursor into a snowflake as well.

This isn’t the first time YouTube has changed some of the site’s user interface elements due to a special event, popular meme or trending topic. The site previously added a rainbow progress bar and tiny pop-tart kitty cursor to the original Nyan Cat video meme. Other amusing additions include the YouTube Vuvuzela button during the World Cup soccer tournament, an xkcd web comic inspired playback option for comments, as well as the Onion News Network parody of YouTube’s “Actually Good” tab.

YouTube encourages its engineers to slip in these kinds of quirky features, the company told me in a previous interview. The person responsible for the most recent quirky feature (or random act of awesomeness) is even awarded a temporary trophy.

[Screenshot from The Hobbit movie trailer via YouTube]

Let’s face it: These days, most of us have more than enough stuff.

Instead of buying more gadgets and do-dads for your loved ones and friends, have you considered making a charitable donation in their names instead? Or handing out charitable gift cards?

Since the best, feel-goodiest part of gift-giving is knowing you brightened someone else’s day, it makes sense to give your gifts to those who are truly in need — and your recipients might agree with that sentiment, too.

If you’d like to buck the consumerist tradition while still keeping the joy of seasonal gift-giving, there are more than a few alternatives. Best of all, they’re available online and are great choices if your gift-selection deliberations have left you with little time on your hands.

Here’s our list of easy online charitable gift-giving options, including charitable gift cards. We at VentureBeat hope you’ll consider making charitable causes part of your gift-giving plans now and throughout the year.

Donors Choose gift cards

Donors Choose is a project aimed at the needs of underprivileged classrooms and students. These gift cards can be loaded up with the amount of your choosing, then sent to the recipient who can decide where the funds should go. For example, they can choose a classroom to donate to based on location or subject material. The cards can be mailed, emailed or printed at home.

Unicef inspired gifts

Unicef’s mission is to save children’s lives through simple improvements such as vaccinations, proper nutrition and clean water. The United Nation’s organization has created gift categories on its site ranging from emergency help to immunizations to education. When you select a gift, you can dedicate it to a friend or loved one, who will then receive a card. Winter Child Survival Packs and Child Survival Food Packs are particularly appreciated around the winter holidays.

American Cancer Society donations

Through the Cancer.org website, you can make a charitable donation to honor or remember a friend, family member or loved one. You can choose for your donation to be used to benefit cancer research, a number of specific cancer types (such as breast cancer) or just send it to wherever the funds are most needed.

charity: water gifts

If clean water is something you’re passionate about, check into the gifts available from charity: water. The organization offers print-at-home cards, a pack of 10 cards to send in the mail or deliver in person, and personalized cards with DVDs and wristbands. All of the proceeds from the purchases are used to fund clean water projects.

World Vision gift for children

World Vision will help you select a gift, mostly focused on the needs of children, for people in needy or underdeveloped communities. This could be as simple as $22 for school supplies or as much as $100 for a woman’s small business or a well to provide clean water. When you select your gifts, you will be sent special cards including a picture and information about the impact that gift will have on those receiving it.

Salvation Army tributes

The ubiquitous Salvation Army bell ringers are going high tech this year, taking donations with Square credit card readers and smartphones. Bell-ringers outside the grocery store are only one way Salvation Army raises money for its many projects during the holidays. Salvation Army, which focuses on helping the homeless and destitute, allows you to honor a loved one when making a donation through its website. If you so choose, Salvation Army can send a special letter to your honoree.

Doctors Without Borders tribute gifts

Medical emergencies happen everywhere, all the time — especially during natural disasters and political unrest. Doctors Without Borders attempts to respond to those in greatest need with fewest resources. Through the organization’s tribute gifts, you can choose to send an e-card or a mailed letter to let your loved one know about the gift.

Oxfam America Unwrapped

For gift-giving, Oxfam will allow you to choose items such as mosquito nets, a dozen chicks or a school meal to be donated to those who suffer from poverty and hunger. The friend or loved on on your shopping list will get a card (via mail or email, or you can print it out yourself) with details about the gift.

Razoo giving cards

For these flexible gift cards, you choose the amount of the total donation, then print or email a card to the recipient. He or she can then choose a nonprofit organization to receive the funds. Another Razoo tool is the Holiday Wish, which allows you to raise funds for your favorite cause through a simple page that can be shared via email and social sites.

Habitat for Humanity Gifts from the heart

Habitat for Humanity is an organization that focuses on building safe, affordable housing for the homeless and at-risk. Through its website, the group lets you make a donation in someone’s name. When making your donation, just choose to have a card mailed or emailed to your gift recipient and choose the occasion of the gift.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Thanksgiving Day 2011 will go down as a day when many of you opted to indulge in more than just an extra helping of turkey. A growing number of shoppers opened up their mobile wallets for online deals too good to pass up.

The U.S. holiday saw a 511 percent jump in global mobile payment volume from Thanksgiving 2010, with a majority of folks in the U.S. shopping via mobile between 6:00 and 7:00 p.m. PST, payments platform Paypal announced Friday.

A much larger pool of mobile shoppers contributed to the gigantic leap in payment volume. According to PayPal, an eBay-owned company, there was a 350 percent increase in the number of global customers shopping on mobile this year. Shoppers in New York, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami and Chicago opted to pay via PayPal mobile more than shoppers elsewhere in the world, the company said.

eBay mobile also experienced record Thanksgiving Day activity in the U.S. “The amount shoppers in the U.S. spent via eBay Mobile more than doubled this Thanksgiving over last year,” eBay said in a press statement.

Perhaps, if the day after Thanksgiving is Black Friday, the Thanksgiving Day mobile shopping phenomenon warrants its own name. Couch Potato Thursday, anyone?

But what’s really going on here? The prevalence of smartphones and tablets means that consumers can now shop from the comfort of their couches any time they’d like. And eBay wisely kicked off a massive “When it’s on your mind, it’s on eBay” television ad campaign in September of this year to promote its mobile application as a convenient, whenever-the-mood-strikes-you shopping assistant. Consumers apparently took notice.

The company said Toms shoes, iPhone accessories and a Traxxas brand radio-controlled truck were among the most popular items purchased via eBay mobile in the fashion, electronics and toys categories.

The big bump in mobile shopping underscores the fact that tablets and mobile phones are fast-becoming more common mechanisms for shopping, and further suggests that the emerging mobile pay/wallet industry is on the cusp of a breakout moment.

More than two-thirds (68 percent) of employed adults in the U.S. check their work email on traditional holidays such as Thanksgiving and Christmas, and 27 percent of those who check email do so several times a day, according to data compiled by email and social intelligence startup Xobni. The online survey, conducted by Harris Interactive, polled 2,810 adults in November 2011 on their holiday email behaviors.

Okay, so we check our email. Guilty as a charged. Plus, more and more of us are always toting around email-capable smartphones so that makes sense. But perhaps more telling of our always-on, work-related holiday email patterns is this little nugget: 79 percent of those folks who check email on their holiday vacays said they received a work-related email from a coworker or client. That’s right, your coworkers are sending you action items when they should be sitting down for Thanksgiving dinner.

Of course, you may not mind the work diversion — and you wouldn’t be alone. Nineteen percent of those who received work emails on holidays said they were “thankful for the distraction” or “relieved.”

If this all sounds familiar that’s because Xobni conducted the same study in 2010 with similar results. The same percentage of people (79 percent) expect to receive work-related emails on holidays this year, but the number of people who expect to check their work emails has dropped from 59 percent in 2010 to 55 percent in 2011. But Xobni also found fewer folks will loathe the never-ending stream of messages in their inbox, as just 37 percent (as opposed to 41 percent in 2010) of workers said they felt “annoyed, frustrated or resentful” about holiday emails.

It even turns out that our holiday work preferences and patterns vary by our age and gender. Men, for instance, are still more likely than women to check their work email, but the percentage gap is closing.

You can have a look at the infographic below (click to enlarge) for some of Xobni’s other demographic findings.

[Image via Flickr/geishaboy500]