With Christmas coming and Black Friday only two days away, holiday shopping is going into full swing, even if we are in a recession.  To make spending on others a little more interesting (I've always preferred spending on myself), several retailers are experimenting with gift cards that double as actual useful objects.

Target's card for 2008 doubles as a digital camera!  It even comes with its own USB cord, driver disk, instructions, and a voucher for 40 free prints.

Say what you will about the digital camera card above, this one is my favorite.  Best Buy's 2008 card comes with an integrated speaker with a cord and plug.  It also goes really well with an iPod under the tree, as it allows you to share the music with more than one person on Christmas morning, even if the iPod only comes with headphones.

Several months before the digital camera above was released, Target offered a gift card with a Speed Racer-themed 60+MB flash drive.  It came preloaded with wallpaper files, video clips, printable coupons, and a cheat code for the upcoming video game.  Self promotion doesn't get much better than that.  While it appears that they are no longer available, used ones can still be found on Ebay.

Of course, radio personality Clark Howard has his own solution.  Click here to view an alternative to all the gift card craziness; a printable certificate you can wrap around cold, hard cash.

As reported several different places, billionaire Mark Cuban was charged with insider trading today for selling 600,000 shares of Mamma.com more than four years ago.  Understandably, Cuban is contesting the charges (click the links above for details). 

The SEC is stating that the sale allowed Cuban to avoid around $750,000 in losses.  I find it rather amusing that they no doubt feel the avoided loss will strengthen their case.  Since the amount is by no means substantial to Cuban, I can't help but wonder if stating this will actually weaken it.  To me, it's pretty obvious that the sale was not strictly based on trying to save a few hundred thousand dollars.

I wish Mark all the best, but I suspect everything will turn out alright for him.  The SEC is notorious for doing a consistently terrible job, and besides, Mark appears far too innocent for this to go anywhere.  I've seen shows on CNBC actually bring up charts detailing insider trading almost in real time, but the SEC rarely does anything.  One host even poked fun at the SEC, stating that it was so easy for him to spot but, mysteriously, so difficult for them.  Hopefully, this will all blow over soon so they can focus their limited resources elsewhere.

There's a great article on YourHome.ca that reminded me how broadband connections are not as popular as we all sometimes believe.  As if the higher cost of gas, along with the real estate crisis, wasn't hurting rural area housing enough, it turns out people are also moving away because they can't get broadband!

If you're reading my blog, you're most likely already more tech savvy than usual, and therefore more likely to have a broadband connection, but I'm still surprised that people would be willing to move for what we take for granted.  Perhaps I forget the sting of 56kps.  It has been nine years or so.

The end of the article gets to me a little bit though.  Why would anyone move back to a house that they moved away from over broadband?  While I guess you could question the intelligence of the original move (couldn't they get a satellite connection before?), to me, moving back is a pretty expensive way to own a mistake.  On the other hand, I've had broadband the whole time, so maybe I just don't understand.