Technology is all around us. At times it can seem overwhelming, but technology can be helpful when you know what to do and how to do it. This upcoming holiday season is a great time to explore some of the benefits of the technology around you. From sharing your holidays with far-away family and friends to finding the best online deals, from finding the perfect gift to navigating directions to the perfect store, technology can be your helpful friend.

Sharing the Holidays
In these challenging economic times, it may be harder to travel during the holiday season. But that doesn't mean you can't be together, virtually, with your family. Sites like www.dropshots.com make it easy for friends and relatives to view photos and videos of all your holiday events.

DropShots is a free site where you can easily upload photos and videos to share with a specified group of people. And one of the best parts about DropShots is that it is private. Unlike sites such as YouTube, your photos and videos are not put in any public locations and can only be accessed by people you invite.

Uploading photos and videos is easy with the DropBox application. You can drag and drop photos and videos which are immediately loaded into your site's library. You can caption each picture or video and build and name albums. Sharing your picture and video albums is also a snap. Simply email an invitation to your friends and family. They will be able to set up their own free account to view your albums and create albums of their own. You can even purchase copies of printed photos from Kodak.

The free account includes the ability to upload and store 500 photos and 20 videos (videos must be less than 2-minutes long). If you have lots of photos and larger videos, for a fee, you can upgrade your account. (To view a sample family site, go to http://www.dropshots.com/moorefamily)

Shopping for the Holidays
When you are looking for the best price on holiday gifts, there is no shortage of online sites and smartphone applications that will help you get the best deals.

For comparison shopping online, check out www.pricegrabber.com (rated the top price comparison site by SmartMoney.com). PriceGrabber includes large, national chains as well as smaller merchants. You can search for products or browse through categories. PriceGrabber even includes a separate area for environmentally-friendly products called Shop Green.

In addition to pricing information, search results include user product reviews and merchant ratings. While you don't need to create an account to search, by creating your own account you can review products and merchants, save items to your own lists, and share pricing information with family and friends.

If you're not near a computer and still want to find the best prices, just pick up your smartphone. For iPhone users, try the Save Benjis application. For a one-time application charge of 99 cents, Save Benjis allows you to search by product name, manufacturer or by the numbers on the product's bar code. Save Benjis displays multiple locations where you can purchase your product – listed from lowest to highest price.

For the BlackBerry and other Internet-enabled phones, check out Frugalytics. This free app (available from the BlackBerry store) allows you to search by product name or browse products by category.

While all of these comparison sites will show you the online price, many stores' websites include a place to enter a zip code and check the in-store availability for locations near you. And if you're just not sure what gifts to give this holiday season, check out Giftbee. On this site you can search for gifts by category (such as sports) or by a trait (such as pet lover). Giftbee also includes a list of all the hot toys for the holidays.

Getting to the Stores
Many of today's portable GPS devices and GPS-enabled smartphones include Points of Interest or POI. These include commercial establishments within the area, such as restaurants, gas stations and museums. A lot of people don't realize that retail stores are also considered POIs. GPS devices for your car, such as the Tom Tom, are not connected to the Internet, so you won't get an automatic update of POIs.  But you can download updated maps which include additional POIs.

Most BlackBerry smartphones include GPS capabilities with built-in maps, while the iPhone comes with GPS and Google maps. Since these devices can connect to the Internet, current information is always available.

So let's say you're out drinking a peppermint mocha and you decide to do some gift buying for the kids. Just type in Toys "R" Us to find the store closest to you and your GPS or smartphone will list the closest locations. If those stores are too far away, simply type in toys and see what other stores with toys are in the area. Choose the store you want and the phone or GPS device will map directions to the store from your current location.

Just for Fun
Some technology serves no practical purpose other than to make us smile. Here are a few apps and sites to make you smile this holiday season:

• Winter Snow Globe app. With this free app, you can shake your iPhone to the sounds of the holidays and watch the snow fall across a winter scene.
• Jingle Bells by singing dogs? What better way to get into the spirit of the holidays. Check it out at http://www.santasearch.org/music.asp?PID=2&AudioID=357
• Did you know that during the holiday season, more than 1.76 billion candy canes are made? For more fun holiday facts, check out http://www.twinklebulbs.com/trivia.htm.

Have a safe and fun holiday season, from your friends at YOU Magazine.

Chris Raitzyk has worked in the technology field for over 15 years.
She is currently working on her communications degree.
Chris enjoys writing about technology for a non-technical audience
and believes that technology should be accessible to everyone.