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What's New - US Picks - Yahoo! Aust./NZ Picks - Yahoo! Canada Picks - Yahoo! France Picks - Yahoo! Germany Picks
Irish Picks - Scottish Picks - Picks of the Week
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What's New - US Picks - Yahoo! Aust./NZ Picks - Yahoo! Canada Picks - Yahoo! France Picks - Yahoo! Germany Picks
Irish Picks - Scottish Picks - Picks of the Week
We've had fun finding the sites that make Yahoo! UK & Ireland one of the best places to find UK or Irish sites, so we thought we'd share a few with you. If you have any suggestions, please send us a note about them. Also send any general thoughts or comments about Picks of the Week or even suggest sites you'd like us to consider for the next issue. Click here if you only want to view the list of sites.
A press report last week revealed that when a man is confronted with the prospect of Christmas shopping, his brain immediately attempts to divide by zero and goes into an infinite loop. If you look closely, you can see a General Protection Fault error message flashing in his panicked eyes. This causes him to do stupid, irrational things (hey, as if men need a reason!). There are few relationships strong enough to withstand the feeling of intense disappointment your paramour will experience when she discovers you’ve got her a video of John Motson’s Hilarious Sporting Bloomers -- especially when she’s bought you a portable CD player with 40 seconds antishock and 32 preset FM radio stations. We know. We’ve stood in that particular grotto and, let us tell you, it’s what gives Santa his claws. This week’s Picks is, therefore, a service. It helps you navigate the rocky shoals of gift acquisition by harnessing the power of the web.
First up is Christmas.uk.com, a brash (and in no way understated) guide to the season of God and gluttony. The shopping section contains links to most of the big high street stores -- presented via a pleasing Christmas card style interface. You can e-mail Santa from his grotto, send a selection of seasonal postcards and download a number of screensavers, Christmas music and other such jollies. Should you find its own selection of stores isn’t sufficient there is a large selection of links to other shops organised according to category.
More of the same is offered by Christmasgift.co.uk -- although here you can register in order to qualify for a selection of discounts and special benefits. They also promise to deliver if goods are ordered before December 21st. Gifts are helpfully organised into For Him and For Her sections, and further filtered into a number of price bands. A warning here guys -- do not, no matter how strong the temptation, select a gift from the under £10 category. You may think the satin thong (£8) or the Cotton Rich socks (£3) will aptly demonstrate the vastness of your love for her. She will not agree. Unless she's your mother (who is under an inflexible maternal obligation to bill and coo over whatever you get her). But why are you buyingyour mother a satin thong? Other sections offer gifts for Kids and for the Family. There is also a helpful Santa who explains how to use the site and what happens after Christmas (the answer is not, as we half expected, "roll over and start to rebuild your shattered lives!").
If the two previous Picks are insufficient, then try Christmas Direct, another site that offers delivery and a range of benefits for registered users. Here gifts are organised according to 17 different categories from display cases to scarves. Another warning here chaps, the Fart Machine in the Novelty Toys section does not an appropriate gift make. If you think it does, you are drunk and should lie down for a while.
But, lest we forget Christmas isn’t just about presents, no matter how much you want it to be so. So let us spare a moment to think of some of the other facets of the festive season. Where would we be, for example, without bad jokes in Christmas crackers? (Example: Q: Who hides in a bakery on December 25? A: A mince spy!) Or advent calendars? Luckily both are available on The Christmas Pages brought to you by Scotland Online, along with a host of other information. Check out the Christmas facts section for info on some of the lesser known aspects of the festival, and post your own Christmas greetings to the rest of the web.
Finally, we know that a man’s brain can only retain so much information about a given subject. If overloaded he will begin to lose control of certain crucial motor functions resulting in a lot more mess for everyone. If it all starts getting too much than you should down-shift instantly by doing something that is undemanding and utterly pointless. We suggest you have a trawl through noodlebox -- a strange, but very beautiful trawl through someone’s discarded macromedia experiments. It’s difficult to make any sense out of this site, so we won’t even try. Suffice to say that a) you will need a shockwave plug-in and b) the more time you spend amongst it’s gently whirling constructions and colour fields, the calmer you will feel. Check out the main menu -- a system of interlocking rooms that you can manipulate to make your own buildings. Links shift in unpredictable ways and there is much joy to be had in discovering how you can affect what is appearing before your eyes. This site is as cool as snow, and much less likely to melt in the spring.
That’s it for this week. We’re off to compile our own little list for Santa. Let’s see ... one winning lottery ticket ... erm ... a winning lottery ticket would be nice and, if you feel we’ve been particularly good this year we’d appreciate a winning lottery ticket, too.