Window shopping on the web

Shelterrific.com: This site for people who love their homes features myriad knickknacks and gadgets, from horse lamps to keyboard vacuums. The site suggests gift ideas by room (a small wastebasket for an office, for instance). Its popularity has won the attention of small merchants, like furnishing store Jayson Home & Garden, which offers a select discount to Shelterrific readers. The site was founded by Angela Matusik, development editor at People.com, and has several other contributors. Many of its writers are former magazine staffers who often select items to review based on products they liked that never made it into print magazines.

Designsponge.blogspot.com: Products featured on this home-and-design blog are selected from among 200 submissions a day, are generally affordable and often handmade.

New items — from letterpress calendars to block-printed dish towels — are posted about five times a day by Grace Bonney, a free-lance writer in Brooklyn, N.Y. For unique gifts, check out the blog's online store, featuring six new artisans a month who sell craftlike wares such as bookplates and needlepoint photo albums.

Sports

Sportingreviews.com: This site is a miscellany of gift ideas for the sports fan or athlete, reviewing affordable items ranging from softball bats to poker chips. Products are selected and reviewed by editors, who work for the Sports Cartel Blog Network, a conglomeration of sports opinion and fan blogs. The site's 12 days of Christmas countdown is a good source of gift ideas like the videogame Madden NFL 2006 (which the reviewer describes as having "top-notch" graphics, "down to even the most minuscule blade of grass"). Overall, the site lacks product shots, but often links to Amazon.com.

Food

Chocolateandzucchini.com: This popular food blog has a list of what every cook should have in the kitchen for the holidays, from a slotted spoon to a nutcracker. Each entry links to merchants that sell the items, when possible, but be prepared to land at the site of a European retailer with a page in French. Other specialty items that Clotilde Dusoulier, the site's editor and a free-lance writer, digs up in European food stores may require a plane trip to hunt down. Shoppers willing to poke around the site can also find, among recipes for items like hot cross buns and polenta, a variety of cookbook reviews.

Jewelry