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.

Finding a blogging topic today sure was easy!  TechCrunch is being sued by Earthcomber, a patent owner who's really suing Loopt, but decided TechCrunch was worth adding in an amended complaint.  Basically, they don't really want to go through with this, they just want to sue Loopt.  However, they couldn't get Michael Arrington on the phone, so they thought a lawsuit might get his attention.  It did.  I highly recommend reading the full story.  This is going to be pretty fun to watch.

Getting enough sleep can help your business, according to a CNNMoney.com article out today.  Entrepreneurs and business owners are especially vulnerable to sleep deprivation, as it's tempting to stay awake to get more done.  However, new scientific research shows that too little sleep can negatively affect your health, memory, ability to make decisions and more.  Researchers also believe that sleep deprivation is a leading cause of diabetes and obesity.  I guess this means I'll be cutting down on my 3am blogging in the future!

The Associated Press has released a list of the 10 highest paid CEOs of S&P500 companies for 2007, based on their calculations.  The overall compensation of each CEO is determined by salary, bonuses, perks, stock options and more.  Larry Ellison, pictured left, is in the lead at $84.6 million, though I would have thought he'd lead by a larger margin.  You can find the nine other highest paid CEOs in an article published yesterday by The Huffington Post.

A new season of Dragons' Den (Canada) premiers on September 29th at 8:00PM EST on CBC.  Season Three sees a new dragon, Brett Wilson, replace Laurence Lewin, who couldn't stay on this season due to health reasons.  If you'd like to keep up to date on the latest news, or aren't familiar with the show, be sure to check out http://www.cbc.ca/dragonsden.  Wikipedia has some extra information on the history of the show, which has also been produced in several other countries.

Jason Calacanis sent out a message to his e-mail list several days ago titled How to Demo Your Startup, and TechCrunch recently reposted it.  Though it's about presenting a startup company's product (often to get funding), many different types of people will find this information extremely helpful for many different reasons.  I highly recommend reading the full text of Jason's e-mail here:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/09/how-to-demo-your-startup/

America's rich, in these volatile economic times, are becoming more value conscious than ever.  One Telegraph article even quotes the head of a private jet brokerage firm as saying that customers, while flying private, can no longer find value in paying $50 for an in-flight lunch.  Considering the amount of spending attributed to the top 10% of income earners, I'm not surprised that I've seen so many articles published on this topic in the past several days, including one in my local Toronto Star.  However, it seems to me that a lot of this is based solely on the perception of value, rather than actual dollar-over-dollar savings.  It's not like those choosing private jet travel have to save, they just want to feel that their spending is a little more reasonable than it used to be.