christmas

Since I’m full of the milk of human kindness after a wonderful Christmas, I’ve been trying to remain calm in the face of all the Google Reader hysteria about shared items and so on — but wiping out on some ice yesterday and landing on my ass has made it hard to stay serene (combined with gashing my hand playing Wii baseball), so I can’t help pointing out that much of the moaning about “privacy” is just ridiculous.

For US-based online businesses, the day after Christmas means getting back to work, but that doesn't mean the holiday shouldn't be on one's mind.

Know what a Christmas market is?  If you’re American, you might well not - Wikipedia lists only six of them for our country, while there are closer to 30 entries for Europe.  Still, that’s all the more reason to show interest in a new Hitwise report on the subject.

Shopping online the day after Christmas is becoming a family holiday tradition, says Nielsen//NetRatings. Overall visits to Internet shopping sites that day jumped 35 percent over last year, adding eight million more people to the virtual elbowing party.

What is your favorite Christmas song? Are you a fan of the traditional hymns like Silent Night or do you prefer the more contemporary songs like Jingle Bell Rock? Do you know all of the 12 Days of Christmas? Are you waiting patiently for your Winter Wonderland to arrive?

A glut of web searches for the Nintendo Wii has made it the most desirable gadget for Christmas, surpassing the perennial iPod for the top spot. To emphasize this point, the Wii was launched in the UK last week and it sold all 50000 of the available consoles in 12 hours, making the sale rate for the Wii at 1 console sold per second.

It's Christmas time, a time for making wish lists that may or may not be fulfilled. What do you want for Christmas? What needs to be done before the family gets here? All of these questions usually lead to comprehensive lists that tend to rule our lives during the month of December.

Google's weekly report on the top search gainers, Zeitgeist, came with its usual disheartening revelations, boxed and wrapped by Christmas fanfare.