holiday

Hey you, Ground Controls and Major Toms orbiting out there! If you're a space aficionado or know someone who'd like to blast into the cosmos, it's time to take your protein pills and click on the gallery below for a definitive go/no-go holiday gift list. It was complied by Gizmodo and reprinted with the site's permission.

See anything we missed? Be sure to let us know in the TalkBack section below.

The holiday season is upon us and we know most of you are struggling to "find the money" to buy gifts for your friends and family, so we make the long trip across the hallway and invite Jill Schlesinger on the show to help us keep our heads above water. Jill is editor at large for CBS MoneyWatch.com and has plenty of experience with financial planning, so listen up!

As you might already know from past episodes featuring The Financial Decoder, Jill isn't the biggest fan of credit card companies, or "legalized drug dealers," as she calls them, but this time she has her scope pointed at the dangers of using a debit card.

Despite proposed laws that would outlaw overdraft fees, Jill suspects we haven't seen the end of hidden fees and actually recommends budgeting this season with presents that won't leave you with an empty bank account. Your dear old mom doesn't really need that Tiffany's necklace or box of Godiva chocolates! Leave that stuff for Mother's Day, and just go out and have fun together--it's free, and it won't drain your bank account.

Jill also drops knowledge on us (in a Bulgarian accent, no less) about how to develop optimistic (and realistic) financial goals for the year instead of frantically scrambling to plan around the holidays. With Valentine's Day coming up, it's too bad Jeff isn't here! Jill tells us the best way to stop the cycle of "hedonic spending" is to play a game she calls "Find the Money."

Have fun and play games while balancing your spending and saving money at the same time?! Be sure to listen to this episode of The 404 Podcast to get the whole story!

Now that the holidays are upon us, many of us are considering what kind of food we'll be making. Sure, we might start out with the turkey on Thanksgiving, but what about desserts or appetizers? Finding help from online resources is certainly welcome.

That's why I've decided to take a look at several recipe sites. If you're getting together with family over the next month to celebrate a holiday and you plan to cook, this roundup is for you.

AllRecipes All Recipes is one of the best places to check out holiday recipes for your family. You can either click on a specific holiday you're planning to cook for or you can sift through its many recipes for regular days. It's a nice site.

The first thing that struck me about AllRecipes was its design. Finding recipes is quick and easy. Plus, thanks to a handy navigation pane both in the left sidebar and in the header, I was able to drill-down into what I was looking for without much trouble. Since I was searching for holiday recipes, I started there.

I was pleasantly surprised by the selection. And thanks to the option of choosing recipes based on ratings (the top-20 tab was my favorite) or when they were added to the site, I was able to find recipes that matched what I was looking for. I really liked AllRecipes. It's well-designed and its recipes are great.

Chow Chow might be best known for providing information on good eating around town, but the site also has a nice selection of recipes.

Chow's selection of recipes won't be as big as other services in this roundup. (It's not dedicated only to recipes, after all.) But what it lacks in quantity, it makes up for in an outstanding selection of really good recipes. What's best about Chow is the way in which you choose recipes. You don't have to just search the site to find what you're looking for. You can find options based on ingredients, the type of cuisine you're in the mood for, or based on tags that are placed on all recipes. You can also pick which course you want to make a meal for.

When I used the site, I found that many of the options were right up my alley. Since I eat Italian food often, I was quite happy with the site's selection. Try out Chow. I think you'll like it. (Disclosure: Chow is owned by CBS Interactive, the parent company of CNET.)… Read more

eBay is playing virtual Santa this holiday season with a free "Deals" app for the iPhone that leads consumers to the better buys on the auction site.

Launched Tuesday, eBay Deals is designed to deliver a stream of the best deals on the site from across hundreds of millions of listings. Like eBay Mobile, the company's regular iPhone app, Deals lets you search, shop, and pay for your items from your iPhone or iPod Touch.

All featured deals spotlight items with no bids, no reserve price, free or fixed-rate shipping, and less than four hours remaining to … Read more

For the past few years, holiday cheer has been in short supply for electronics retail chains.

Just two years ago, around this same time, we saw the bankruptcy and closure of CompUSA. Last year it was Circuit City spiraling toward extinction right before the crucial holiday shopping period.

Though both brands have been since revived, mainly as online discount destinations, their time as serious competitors with physical stores is over. Looking back, it's clear their demise was brought about by a languishing consumer economy, but also by the unrelenting competition from uber-discounters like Wal-Mart and the convenience of Amazon.… Read more

You're not seeing things. The Crave giveaway has gone from weekly to daily (throughout the Christmas season), and we're raising the bar with a Sony Bravia KDL-32L5000. This 32-inch 720p HDTV earned three stars when David Katzmaier reviewed it recently. Normally, it goes for between $450 and $500. But we're giving you the chance to score it for free.

One important note: unlike most of our giveaways, this one isn't brand new. It is, in fact, the very model that Katzmaier tested. But that means it's barely been used and it's already been professionally … Read more

To highlight the increased crime during the holidays, security company McAfee has come up with the "12 Scams of Christmas" ranging from bogus electronic greeting cards that deliver malware instead of cheer to fake charities that steal your money and your identity.

In this podcast, McAfee's David Marcus counts down those scams that criminals are using to take some of the cheer out of the holiday season.

Retailers aren't the only ones gearing up for the holiday season. Criminals are also out in force.

To highlight the increased crime during the holidays, security company McAfee has come up with the "12 Scams of Christmas" ranging from bogus electronic greeting cards that deliver malware instead of cheer to fake charities that steal your money and your identity.

It's especially important to be extra careful this time of year, says McAfee's David Marcus. "The bad guys know people are spending more time online, they're paying more bills online so [the criminals] stand … Read more

T-Mobile on Friday rolled out a new unlimited prepaid program called T-Mobile Complete. It's actually a pretty sweet deal: unlimited minutes and unlimited texting for as little as $50 a month. It also gets you a Samsung T239 flip phone at $59.99 or the T229 slider at $79.99, which isn't bad.

But then it gets a little more complex. At $149 you can have the Samsung Gravity, a full-QWERTY slider. But your plan would be $60, presumably because you'd be texting a lot more with the full keyboard than you would with a T9 phone. … Read more