It's time once again to gird our loins for the annual holiday shopping season, in which Apple is on track to sell an estimated 29 gazillion iPods and 13 packages of iPod socks. But if you want to go beyond the obvious for your gift giving and receiving, we're here to help with something a little different. Instead of soliciting ideas from readers and then assembling every last one of them into a massive gift issue that many people probably can't finish reading before the end of December, we're going to focus in on just the best ideas. We'll collect ideas in TidBITS Talk, as always, but after 10 days we'll create a survey from the suggestions and open that up to public vote. Once the voting has identified the top gift ideas in the various survey categories, we'll write them up in the 2007 TidBITS Gift Guide, currently scheduled for 07-Dec-07. Of course, the TidBITS Talk threads will remain available for anyone who wants to explore further.

We've started threads for the initial categories in TidBITS Talk already, so if you subscribe to TidBITS Talk, just reply to a message in the right thread. If you read TidBITS Talk via the Web, you can post via the Web too; just scroll down to the bottom of the window in the appropriate thread.

• Hardware Gift Ideas
• Software Gift Ideas
• Game Gift Ideas
• Computer-Related Miscellaneous Ideas
• Non-Technical Ideas for the Macintosh-Minded

Please suggest only one product or idea per message, give the reason why you're recommending it, make sure to include a URL or other necessary contact information, and recommend only others' products. If possible, try to suggest products that haven't appeared in previous gift issues. To refresh your memory on what readers have suggested previously, check out the last three gift issues from 2006, 2005, and 2004 before writing in. Thanks in advance!