Stuck on what gift to get your game-addicted child, technologically-hip spouse, or even for the IT person who rescued your computer from constantly reverting to the dreaded "blue screen of death"?

There are a few sites offering reviews of possible gifts divided into multiple categories based on your price limits. For starters try the "gifts" section at Canada's Globe & Mail (www.globetechnology.com), Cnet (www.cnet.com), and PC Magazine (www.pcmag.com).

You can also try Froogle (www.froogle.google.com), the new shopping service by the Google search engine that allows users to scan for prices in particular categories. It's good for comparison-shopping if you're doing your buying through the Internet (do not forget to add in duties!), or if you want to see how prices compare with those in Bermuda.

My favourite is the gift guide put together by the dependable Consumer Reports magazine (www.consumerreports.org). In fact get your favourite person a subscription to the site. Consumer Reports is published by Consumers Union, a non-profit organisation that does not accept advertising. Their gift guide has excellent information on the general features of a particular product to look for, and to ask for when shopping. Their top picks of gift types indicate the zeitgeist of the season.

The magazine's gift "highlights" sections lists portable music devices, digital cameras, microwave ovens, breadmakers, bicycle helmets, treadmills, PDAs, and walkie-talkies as the items people are after. For portable CD players the Panasonic SL-CT490 comes out on top, while the Apple iPod 5GB heads the high-capacity MP3 player list.

In the digital camera section, Consumer Reports recommends the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-F707, or, in the two-megapixel category, the Kodak EasyShare DX3600 Zoom. The magazine picks the Palm m500 and the HP Jornada 565 as the best PDAs in the market.

The magazine's online electronics gift selector narrows your choices down by allowing you to select online the features available for each type of device. While the selector feature is available only to subscribers, there's lot of information in this section to make it useful to others.

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The search engines' year-end reports on what people are interested in on the Internet presents a somewhat schizophrenic picture of the world.

Google's 2002 "Zeitgeist" list shows the top news searchers of the year were those regarding the World Cup, Iraq, the US sniper attacks, Hurricane Lili, hochwasser (the German word for "floods"), Las Ketchup, Worldcom, American Idol (the television show), the Winter Olympics, and Isla Perejil.

A time line graph of the searches for Spanish hit group Las Ketchup shows how the searches rose then fell as the Ketchup Song swept the globe. Their popularity peaked in their home country in February then disappeared out of sight on the graph. Now the Germans, British and Americans are hot on the three sisters (www.theketchupsong.com).

Spain also features in the news search number ten spot of Isla Perejil a tiny uninhabited rock in the Mediterranean Sea that the country is in a dispute with Morocco over possession. That search term burst into the fore in July when Moroccans briefly set up camp on the island.

Google's tally is based on about 55 billion searches conducted around the world. Currently searches for Spiderman are on the upswing while Nostradamus, Napster, the World Trade Centre and anthrax are on the top 20 declining queries list. Lycos' top 100 query list for 2002 reveals that Dragonball, a Japanese animation comic, holds the number one spot for the second year in a row.

"Yes, we know there are still plenty of people who have never heard of it, but Dragonball is still immensely popular on the Internet thanks to teens and college-age Japanese animation buffs," Lycos said. Dragonball spent 25 weeks as the number one search during 2001, and 13 weeks in the spot in 2002.

Dragonball is being challenged by Yu-Gi-Oh!, currently in 32nd spot. Yu-Gi-Oh! is a successor to Pokemon, which hold the 41 spot. KaZaA, the file-swapping programme, holds second place, followed by "tattoos", Britney Spears, Morpheus, the NFL, the IRS, Halloween, Christmas, and the ever present favourite, Pamela Anderson.

The Bible at 21st spot just beat out 22nd placed marijuana. The World Trade Center only got 30th spot, with September 11th holding at number 33.

Thank goodness for interest in William Shakespeare at 65th place and for Martin Luther King Jr. in 66th spot. Unfortunately they are followed by Barbie in 67th spot.

Where are my search tastes on the list? I'm afraid I come out looking not very hip. I had to go down to 17th place, the Winter Olympics, to find a term I had searched for over the past year.

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On a more serious note, Microsoft has issued a few more patches. Three separate fixes were issued on December 11. One is for flaws in Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, and Windows XP. The second is for users of Windows XP and Windows 2000. The third, which fixes eight flaws, is for all Windows users. Microsoft also issued a cumulative patch for Internet Explorer on December 4.

Visit the Microsoft TechNet page at www.microsoft.com/technet/default.asp

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Tech Tattle is about issues in technology. Contact Ahmed at editoroffshoreon.com