Are you or yours looking to give/get any gadgets this Christmas? Or is the economic recession putting a stop on gadget-buying in your household?

My beautiful wife and I do plan to pull back some this Christmas (compared to the last one). That being said, there are a few gadgets I am looking for:

• More memory. Given that 4 GB is apparently not enough for my desktop PC, I’m hoping to up the memory to 8 GB and then sell the old 4 GB online.
• Back-up power supply. Specifically the APC BR1500LCD 1500VA 865 Watts 8 Outlets BACK-UPS. It’s not the cheapest power supply at that wattage, but APC gives you the best warranty. I’ve been burned by backup batteries that die too soon before.
• APPLE AirPort Express Base Station. I’m looking to hook up my XBOX 360 to our wireless network, connect a USB printer, and stream music to my living stereo system all at the same time - and this one device can do all of that! Not only that, but the streaming music can be controlled by the free Apple Remote program on our iPhones. Newegg has the best price, though Amazon actually has it in stock, for only a few extra bucks.

For Christmas this year, I’m looking to get some sort of music game for the family, and I need some advice. I have both an XBOX 360 and a Nintendo Wii. The options are:

• Rock Band 2
• Guitar Hero World Tour
• Wii Music

Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero World Tour are pretty similar to each other, and I would like to have the option for karaoke, since that’s about the only way to get my wife to play :-). I’m not terribly interested in the drum set, since there is no place in our house (living room) for it. Both are more expensive than your standard game, however, since you have to pay extra for the musical “instruments”. The microphone only comes with the most expensive version of each game (no less than $189!), so if you get the standard game with no instruments (I do already own a Guitar Hero 2 XBOX 360 wired guitar), then you have to spend anywhere from $15-$60 more to get a Microphone.

The Wii Music game is different, from what I understand. It’s been described as more of a musical toy (you can create, conduct, and play various instruments, all controlled by the wand controller) than a game. Of course, there is no option for karaoke.

Have any of you played these games? Can you offer up your own experience/advice on what works with these games and what is really fun about each? I’d certainly appreciate the help!

A family tradition in our house (since last year) is the creation and decoration of a gingerbread house, except instead of gingerbread we make rice crispy treat walls, using molasses and pumpkin spices to get a great tasty thing going. And that’s before the sugar-laden icing and candy.

It is a truly scrumptious endeavor, even if it does not look quite as house-like as last year’s. Next year we will actually let our daughter participate. She was in bed already this time, and still is not yet two years old.

Here are the pics. Let me know what you think. What traditions do you and your do each year around Thanksgiving and Christmas? Did we put up our tree (today) too early for any of you?

Back in July, Google announced that they were making it easier for users to make their email more secure by using the https:// prefix instead of the http:// prefix when going to mail.google.com. If you used Google to handle your email, then you already could have just typed https://mail.google.com/ into your web browser, but Google added a setting to redirect you to the secure connection for all of your email, even if you typed in http, without the s.

If you use Google Apps to host your own domain’s email, then you should now see this setting showing up in your mail settings, several months later.

Whether your email address is a Gmail.com address or you use Google Apps, I highly recommend that you turn this setting on. Using the https prefix will ensure that your email messages, settings, etc. are encrypted between Google’s servers and your web browser. This prevents your internet service provider, next door neighbor, and that guy sitting next to you in the coffee shop from reading your mail.

To turn on the setting, click on the Settings link toward the top-right of your email screen. You should then see, under General settings, the option called “Browser Connection”, allowing you to check the setting called “Always use https”. Check the radio button, hit “Save”, and you’ll be good to go.

Why not turn this on? Well, sending data back and forth between your web browser and a web server using the encrypted connection will be a bit slower than unencrypted data sent back and forth (the encrypted data has to be decrypted on the two ends of the connection), so if you feel confident that your internet service provider does not read your email, then you probably do not need to worry about it. Of course, if you are sitting in a coffee shop with free WiFi (or you unsmartly do not have your home wireless router set up with a password for encryption), then you certainly had better encrypt your data. If that’s the exception and not the rule, you can always just type in https instead of http and leave the setting off.

If you are like me, though, and are more the forgetful type, I would just turn the setting on.