Thanks to the semi-national events of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, finding gifts at attractive prices is all but impossible. Sure, you can stand in line at 5 A.M., waiting out in the cold for your favorite retailer store to open its doors, but you don’t have to. There’s a much saner option: Shopping online. That is exactly what I’m going to do tomorrow, in the comfort of my warm apartment, my Internet connection and the All My Faves Holidays page.

As for the gifts I’m going to buy online this season, I have prepared a killer list that perfectly pampers all of my friends and family members, and all of these are bestsellers, so I thought I would share these with you. If you’re still debating about the right gift for someone in your family, check out this list and perhaps you will be inspired.

1. For all the ladies in my life: The Holidays page offers two knock-out categories people are visiting like crazy: ‘For Her’ and ‘For Him.’ But ladies first, as they say, so here we go: For my sister I’m going for the fail-proof UGG boots, and for my cooking-savvy mom, a ‘Le Creuset’ cast iron cooking set. Grandma will get a pair of Isotoner gloves along with the plush Sunbeam fleece throw, and for my best friend Rebecca I’m buying Sarah Jessica Parker’s Lovely perfume gift set.

2. For dad, my brothers and my beau: For my two brothers I’m getting a Kenneth Cole watch and a poker set, respectively. And what about my dad who is absolutely addicted to cycling? I think I’ll get him a set of a WearLink transmitter belt + heart rate and cadence monitor computer by Polar – he’ll be ecstatic! My boyfriend, who has grown mildly obsessed with PS3 games, will get the bestselling video games Call of Duty: Black Ops, and the FIFA 2011 he’s been raving about for the past couple of weeks.

That’s a good starting point. I’m also going to indulge myself in a nice holiday gift, but I’m still debating whether I should get the Wii Fit set (yes, part of my New Year resolution), or the e-Book reader everyone’s been raving about, the Kindle. I hope you find everything on your gift list this holiday season. The AllMyFaves Holidays page has compiled all of the best deals for Black Friday and Cyber Monday in one page. Visit it now – being an early bird pays off. Here’s a screen shot of the upper part of the Holidays page. Happy Hunting!

We can’t believe it ourselves, but AllMyFaves is now four years old. The website has seen so many changes since 2006 in terms of both design and functionality, it makes us feel proud just as parents are filled with joy watching their little baby turning into a young man.

So what are some of the major changes AllMyFaves 2010/2011 includes, compared to the site’s earlier versions? First and foremost, we have the Mini Faves feature (see the example below), the personalization tool allowing users to manage and access all of their bookmarks and favorites in one visual page. This tool is extremely popular and in high use, with more than  13,000 active accounts.

Other major changes include the recent additions of designated pages (notably the Education and Business pages), a new design -currently live in All My Faves Canada, our Blogs page and the spanking new Holidays page – the ultimate shopping center for all the best Black November, Cyber Monday and Christmas shopping. By the way, the new design is coming to our US homepage very soon! Aside from these big changes, numerous new favelines have been added to practically every page on the site.

So these are the major developments AllMyFaves has seen in the past couple of years, and we would like to thank you, our devoted users, for being there every step of the way. Your feedback is crucial to AllMyFaves’ current and future development, and we couldn’t have done it without you. THANK YOU!

You are all welcome to stop by our Facebook fan page to say hello! We’d love to see you there.

VYou – An innovative and fun idea that makes social interaction much more personal: “you record video responses to messages entered by friends and fans. VYou organizes their messages and your videos into conversations, making the experience feel continuously live even though the content is stored.” Still in beta, VYou offers a unique -and free- tool you ought to make use of, or at least try out.

The traditional concept of video chat is also available via VYou -there are over 55 topics by which you can find video conversation buddies- meaning all the other features I’ve mentioned above are sheer added value.

The VYou tool can be embedded and posted anywhere on the web, which gives it a creative spin in the realm of social interactions online.

Summify – Readers accounts (such as Google Reader, Netvibes, etc.) are a great way to stay connected with news and updates of all your blog subscriptions or RSS. But when you add all your Facebook friends’ feeds and Twitter updates, all that information can be overwhelming and time consuming. Summify is here to break it down for you, allowing you to focus on the ‘more important’ updates, leaving out the trivial ones.

How does it do it? Generally speaking, Summify identifies the most shared and discussed items within your areas of interest, and makes these top priority. I took Summify for a test run and was impressed. See the screen shot below of my Summify page based on my Google Reader account. See the video below for an animated explanation of what Summify is all about.

FaveOne – This website is ridiculously simple, but also a whole lot of fun and interesting. The entire concept of this site is about offering you two options for a given hypothetical situation and you choose the one you favor. Once you’re done you are presented with the number of votes each of the two options has received thus far, and then another ‘this one or that one’ scenario comes up. Simple enough, isn’t it?

Although it is so simple it hurts, FaveOne is beautifully designed and has a solid call-to-action that is all but intrusive. Great site, great concept and great feeling of choice! Today’s choice is between flying on a plane and driving a car. I picked the latter.

Internet Archive: Wayback Machine – I wonder what the Web looked like 5 years ago. Can you even remember? If you try to by memory, prepare yourself for futility; technological advancements of the Internet happened and still occur today so fast and seamlessly, the entire Web feels like an organic creature that is growing before our very eyes.

Thankfully we have the Wayback Machine, an archive project by archive.org, which lets you see what web pages looked like, beginning from 1996 and up until a few months ago. Although the most interesting websites are conveniently blocked (try looking up Facebook or Twitter for example), or only partially represented in the archive, here are two fun examples:

allmyfaves.com. December 2006:

CNN.com, Feb 2003:

Looks funny, doesn’t it? Let the fun linger on with the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.

Give it a try yourself and look for the old pages of your favorite website. Simply type in the url in the search box and hit the “Take Me Back” button. Let the magic begin…

Brain Pickings – One of the two winning Weekly Blogs, Maria Popova’s Brain Pickings is a sophisticated venue of intelligence and bite-size horizon enhancers, offering a regularly updated collection of “curated bits of culture that will, at the very least, introduce you to new ideas and perspectives and, at their very best, help you think more, laugh more, create more.”

Brain Pickings is all about enticing your neurons by providing you with well written posts covering out of the box cultural ideas and art projects, among others. Read the fascinating post about the Sounds of HIV as an example (the player below was included in the post, playing those mysterious Sounds of HIV).

Page99Test – There’s a good reason why this writing critic community site is called that way. According to Fox Madox Ford, “open the book to page 99 and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you.” This quote has become a quick rule of thumb for readers evaluating the literary quality of a book, and Page99Test has taken this premise and turned it into a wonderful community effort.

Published as well as unheard-of writers get to submit their 99th page and get feedback from the site’s user community. As you will see in the screen shot below, each 99th page is accompanied by three quick questions: 1. “Would you turn the page?” (yes/no), 2. “Tell the writer why yes/no” and 3.  “Based on what you read, how likely are you to buy this book?”

That’s My Boss – “United we stand against the tyranny of those who make us work weekends, put in extra hours, take work calls over holiday breaks, and question our use of vacation days…when they’re our damn vacation days!” –this strong outcry alone made me curious. Reading further the About page of That’s My Boss reveals the team’s solid manifesto: “So keep your ears and eyes open, record the hypocrisy of your workplace…of your bosses, department heads, and anyone else who tells you to fill out a TPS Report in triplicate. This is your chance for revenge.”

Each post is a true story, submitted by anonymous (and utterly frustrated) employees across the country, rightly venting out their miserable circumstances at work caused by unfit managers. See the post below, The REM Cycle which made me laugh. Another good one is A Cigarette Earned. By the way, That’s My Boss is also a Weekly Blog winner, so give it a nice round of applause please!

To submit your own That’s My Boss story (anonymously of course), click here.

Influencers – A most inspiring and thought-provoking project, Influencers is a short documentary film by David Johnson and Paul Rojanathara, focusing on the factors that create fads and trends. The film was shot in New York City, featuring different professionals from the creative field who share their opinion on what or who is an influencer or trendsetter. The creative agency R+I Creative came up with the concept of this amazing short.

The film is in HD quality and the post-production editing made it especially powerful and captivating. The film is less than 14 minutes long, but the inspiration you draw from it will be long lasting. And don’t forget: ideas spread just like viruses do!

false.jp – All I’m going to say about this site is that it’s very similar to the various Chrome experiments circulating the Web every now and then. I have provided two screen shots below, but if you hover your mouse over the upper left portion of your screen, you’ll get many more awesome options to explore. Enjoy!

Bloons 2 – Guide your monkey and show him where to shoot to take out as many balloons as you can with one shot. You only have three shots, so pay attention to the angle and strength!

For more addicting games and updates on the latest in the online game world, visit our I ♥ GAMES page.