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Ask Slashdot: How Do You "Unwrap" e-Gifts?
theodp writes "With all of the content that can be delivered electronically — e-books, music, apps, movies, e-gift cards, tickets — the percentage of Christmas gift giving that's digital is growing each year. However, the e-gift unwrapping user experience on Christmas morning leaves much to be desired. In addition to providing old-school mail delivery of gift cards, Amazon offers a variety of other options, including e-mailing a gift card on a specific day with or without a suggested gift, posting it on someone's Facebook Wall, or allowing you to print one for personal delivery. Another suggestion — using USB drives — harkens back to the days of burning CDs with custom playlists for last-minute gifts, but you'll be thwarted by DRM issues for lots of content. So, until Facebook introduces The Tree to save our e-gifts under until they're 'unwrapped' on Christmas morning with the other physical gifts, how do you plan on handling e-gift giving and getting?"
Your victim will never suspect that the envelope does not contain cold hard cash.
We have made rolls of Christmas paper with a message written inside telling our sons what they can go and download. That way they get a physical thing under the tree along with the other presents.
, how do you plan on handling e-gift giving and getting?"
I pirate. Most of what's "e-gifted" is just supporting the entertainment industry; and I'm loathe to support them until they clean up their act with all the DRM crap, manipulating the market prices, and throwing people in jail for trivial crap, as well as co-opting our entire legal system and feeling entitled to profits. So... I just give people cash or socks. Because holy shit, adults love socks. And cash. Everyone does, actually.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Sociology usually isn't any indicator to anything, but in this case it has interesting things to say: Mauss and follow-ups suggest that the exchange and the unwrapping of the gift is just as important, as a social event, if not more, than the gift itself.
bought some games for the kids on steam. printing a letter from santa for them and downloading the stuff when they are sleeping. then we all pretend the elves did it. of course if steam crashes tonight i will still pretend the elves did it but left the download instructions.
gift.zip.ace.7z.tar.bz2.iso.apk.pea.dmg.cab.r0001
...
gift.zip.ace.7z.tar.bz2.iso.apk.pea.dmg.cab.r0002
gift.zip.ace.7z.tar.bz2.iso.apk.pea.dmg.cab.r0003
gift.zip.ace.7z.tar.bz2.iso.apk.pea.dmg.cab.r0004
gift.zip.ace.7z.tar.bz2.iso.apk.pea.dmg.cab.r8999
gift.zip.ace.7z.tar.bz2.iso.apk.pea.dmg.cab.r9000
gift.zip.ace.7z.tar.bz2.iso.apk.pea.dmg.cab.r9001
Have fun! Hope you enjoy it!
Ask them.
That's a little hard to do without rubbing in their faces the fact that they (perhaps) weren't grateful enough to thank you for the gift.
Find a spare box (limited only by the available amount of wrapping paper, big boxes with obsurd labels ("beauty care" for a dude, "Windows 8" for a Linux advocate, or perhaps "Extreme Chores"). Print out your gift or some ad for your gift, maybe use a card or something, put it in the box. Extra points for lots of packing ~peanuts. Wrap box, label, etc.
I once did this. I asked the clerk at Best Buy if I could have one of the empty Windows Vista display boxes. I got it. Real gift went inside. The receipient knew how adamantly against Vista I was, so it definitely turned her head.
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
Call me old school, but the whole point of Christmas is to be together with loved ones. The idea that everyone is sitting around the tree in their pajamas, and suddenly whip out their iPhones 'n whatnot to check their email to see what presents they got, just seems.... tacky.
Unless the product in question could *only* be delivered via email, or if you were sending a gift to someone very far away and it's just more realistic to do it that way, then virtual presents just feels wrong. If you don't want to give someone a physical for some reason, then make a donation to a charity in their name or something.
Humans are naturally physical and a huge amount of our interaction with the world revolves around touch. It's already been well established, for example, that people value software far less when it's not delivered in a box than when it is. Not only will people who recieve a virtual gift be virtually guaranteed of cherishing it less, but people will be thinking (subconsciously or consciously) that the giver was somehow cheap, in some vague unidentifiable way.