It’s almost December and for most of that, that means the holiday season is almost here. As a result, you may already be shopping for gifts for your loved ones. Want some cool Google Maps mashups to help you find the right gift? Google Maps Mania has a list of some of the top mashups to help you get some shopping done online. The list includes Froogle ZipCode Search, MapBids and Precision eBay Search Tool which combine eBay auctions with a neat map interface, Google Local (with links to some internation Local sites, as well), and the Apple Retail Store Finder. Remember to get your shopping done early; statistics say that the week before Christmas (and particularly the last 2 or 3 days before it) are the busiest shopping days of the year. If you want to skip those lines, buy online.

Regular readers know I’m a huge fan of anything Google, in particular, their maps service which has now been dropped and combined with Google Local. My one problem with the Google Local service is that while it is extremely useful to find businesses and locations near your area, it doesn’t really give you much information in terms of the quality of the services provided there. I recently came upon Yelp which lets members add reviews of restaurants, clubs, shopping venues, and more. While the service only lists some major cities in the United States, I’ve been able to find other locations by using the zip code search.

With the holidays coming up, and tomorrow being the first and busiest shopping day of the holiday season (Black Friday, for those of you not in the United States or hiding under a rock), you might want an easy way to track packages coming to your home. After all, you want to be ready for the holidays, and what better way to avoid long lines at the mall than to order online! Package carriers let you track where your packages are via a web form on their website, but the web is all about RSS nowadays, so why not track your package via a feed, right? Enter Simple Tracking. To use it, simply enter your tracking number, and select the carrier and you’ll be presented with a custom RSS feed which you can input into your favorite aggregator. Simple Tracking currently supports UPS, FedEx, and the United States Postal Service (USPS), and work is being done to support DHL as well.

With Thanksgiving Day just a few days away here in the United States, many of us are starting to get ready for the holiday season (Friday marks the first day!). I am fortunate enough to have a pretty small family so my gift buying is usually simple every year, but for those of you who love the gift of giving (I love the gift of getting), there is a new web service which might be useful to you this holiday season, and it’s called GiftBox.

Tonight at midnight (or I guess that makes it tomorrow?), the long-awaited and much hyped XBox 360 is being launched. There have been many rumors that there is a severe shortage of XBox 360 units around the world, probably due to the simultaneous worldwide launch, so if you haven’t yet reserved your unit, you may be looking for a place which wasn’t taking preorders and may therefore still have a few units for sale. If so, check out the XBox 360 Inventory Locator. Simply enter your zip code (yes, it’s only available for the United States) and you will be presented with a Google Map of Best Buy stores in your area, and how many units (core and premium packages) each store has available for sale. As for me, I’m waiting until they go down in price a bit. I’m perfectly happy with my current XBoX and Nintendo DS.

Many people have digital cameras nowadays because they’re so convenient. Most people also think that it is actually cheaper to print out your photos from home, but this may not necessarily be the case. If you’re a big photography buff, you might be printing out dozens of photos every month which will quickly add up (ink isn’t cheap you know!). Fortunately, there are many services available online which will print out the photos you want (either individual prints or photo albums) and mail them to your home, usually much cheaper than you could do yourself. Want to find the best prices? Then check out PrintRates. PrintRates updates the prices for dozens of photo printing services pretty often so you’re always guaranteed to find the best prices. Be sure to check it out!

If you’re a smart eBay shopper, you may want to find auctions located near your area so you can arrange for pickup and therefore save on shipping costs. eBay offers the ability to search only within a specific region, but it involves click on too many links, wastes time, and can cost you to lose an auction (god forbid, right!?). There’s a pretty cool service called Auction Mapper which takes the hassle out of finding nearby auctions. Simply enter your zip code and auction search terms, and find what you need. The interface is pretty intuitive and easy to use so check it out.

There are a lot of games out there, just as much as there is gamers. A lot of people buy their games from a game store (EBGames, Gamestop, etc), or from online. Wouldn’t it be great to just be able to trade your games with someone else without having to pay a dime? I ran across a game trading site called Trade Games Now. It works in the same way that Ebay would. You sign up (for free of course), list the games you want to trade, list the current game you’re playing (if you want to), and find a game through the database of games they have online. It’s really that simple, the higher the game on the list, the higher feedback that the user has. From what I have seen there are hundreds of games to choose from, ranging from new to really used.