This year I am doing an experiment for the holidays – I am giving iTunes gift apps.

Please forgive me for being lazy. 😉

I gave up long ago trying to find wonderful and fabulous gifts for friends and family. As it turns out, most people I know already have all the things they want, and the things they don’t have are usually things they don’t want to have. There are exceptions, of course – I am being extremely glib here. But the point is, when was the last time you really were able to pull a thoughtful and well-received gift out of your holiday shopping hat?

Maybe I’m just not good at shopping. 😦

A number of years ago I decided that the way to go was to only buy “disposable” gifts. You know, things that get used once and then they are gone. For example:

• Scratch-off lottery tickets.
• A gift certificate for a day at the spa.
• Chocolate chip cookies.

A lot of times these sorts of gifts work out pretty well. (Nobody ever won the lottery.)

In the years when I didn’t do disposable gifts, I took another strategy: Wait until the last minute, then drive to the local mall and walk past every store exactly once. By the time you have made your full circle, you either have a gift for each person, or they ain’t gettin’ anything this year.

For 2011, I have a fun alternative to the “disposable gift” or “I bought it because it was still in stock” gift, thanks to a good friend who recently published a very fun iPhone / iPad application called Moving Portraits. (Full disclosure: I like my friend, but I like his app even more. Trust me, I would not recommend an app I did not think was good.)

This year, all of my friends and family who own an iPhone or an iPad are getting a gift app of Moving Portraits! 🙂

There are three great things about this.

• It is cheap – only $.99 per gift app.
• It is a fun little gadget for their iPhone or iPad – and it’s a sentimental gift since the app is all about taking fun photos (moving portraits) of your friends and family.
• The iTunes Store is open 24/7, so even if you find yourself at the eleventh hour without a much-needed gift idea, you can buy the app and send it to your friend by email. (Note: They must have a compatible iPhone or iPad device – in the World of Apple, I think “compatible” just means “your device is shiny just like mine”.)

I do wish my friend could have built the app for Android so I didn’t have to snag my wife’s iOS device. But he’s an Apple guy, so it’s probably best that he is sticking to what he knows best… 😦

Have fun, spread it around, and be thankful you can avoid a trip to your local shopping mall… 🙂