As Christmas nears, many of us including myself have yet to kick into full shopping mode. We have the choice; do we crawl through the maze of shoppers at the nearest mall? Or do we order the gifts online and hope they arrive in time?

The numbers continuously shift each year from the amount of dollars spent at brick and mortar stores to spent online during Christmas season. So you’d think launching an e-store would be a safe bet.

There just happens to be one big issue. Adults.

As my parents ask what I’d like for Christmas, I yank ‘em over to my monitor, and pull up a few websites that just so happen to be in my bookmark toolbar (wink wink). I mention all the techy details in an ecstatic display in hopes of sealing the present deal and wait for their reaction.

Nine out of ten times I’ll hear, “can we get that at the store?� or “I don’t want my credit card to get hacked�. I’m not too sure exactly how a credit card would get “hacked�, but I cut them some slack.

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An agency named teehan+lax has created a unique investment fund. They’ve purchased $49,672.90 worth of stock that they feel “have great user experiences�.

At the time of this writing the fund is worth $52,006.15; a gain of 4.7% over the past two weeks. Not only is it a remarkable gain, but in my opinion, it’s one of the safest investments available.

Their list of investments includes Apple, EA, Google, Jet Blue, Netflix, Nike, Progressive Insurance, RIM, Target, and Yahoo. All of which are some of the gutsiest companies out there.

teehan+lax’s strategy was based upon user experience, but if you want to generalize each of the companies, they’re creatively designed. If you look at each of their products, ad campaigns, packaging, and especially websites, you’ll see innovation and design far and ahead of the rest of the market.

I know a few more companies than can easily fall into this class of exceptional design, but I’d like to hear what you think. If you look around you, which companies do you think stand out creatively?

Mention as many as you see fit and we might end up with our own little YGG Creative Fund.

Here’s the teehan+lax UX fund.

Some time ago I looked back at my past failures and successes, not just in business but in life overall. Standing them side by side I realized one very obvious theme: My state of physical well being seems to be directly tied to the kind of success I was having in life at the time.

i went through a rough time briefly prior to and immediately following high school where I was very unhealthy and out of shape. My diet was atrocious, I was pushing 300lbs and moved like a slug. I had the lowest self esteem imaginable and was constantly thinking about how others viewed me. It was all consuming, and I was completely unproductive.

I don’t know what happened, but one day I looked at myself in the mirror and realized the person staring back wasn’t me at all. The person inside didn’t match the shell. The shell was suffocating the real me with self conscious thoughts. It was that day that I decided to make a change.

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I’m not sure how many of our readers smoke. To each his own. But I wanted to share the latest ad from The Truth initiative. It’s not just a prime example of effective advertising but possibly the best public service announcement to date.

Any smokers that are reading, I’m not trying to get you to quit, but this ad is. Sometimes it doesn’t hurt if you do what an ad tells you to.

Here’s the link for the ad if you can’t see it above. Please share it with others.

To go hand in hand with this week’s poll, I’ll talk about a habitual notion. If you’re like most people, you can look around your office and within arm’s reach will be a ream of cds or dvds. They’ve been anxiously staring at you for a few months’ time.

You heard about all those viruses on the go and headed to your local geekery shop, bought your backup media, and were gun-ho in ensuring those years of work are backed up.

Amazing how a threat can get you to drive to a store, hand your money over to a cashier, bring the cds home, but not follow through with actually backing your data up.

If you were to calculate the amount hours, sweat, and tears you put into every single piece of data on your computer it would be well into the thousands. Now take all of that and delete it. Why the hell would you do that? Well you wouldn’t, but somebody else will try to at some point.

Hackers can be slowed down with firewalls, software, and common sense, but 9 times out of 10 you’ll be the one that accidentally downloaded an infected file from a colleague, which leads to your computer’s slate being wiped clean in no time.

So take the time this week, only a couple hours, and back up every important document on your computer. You’ll thank me for this public service announcement if something tragic was to ever happen to your computer.

When’s the last time you went skating or played a little hockey? It’s been much too long for me. Are you a good skater? Have a mean wrist shot?

It’s nice every now and then to go out with your buddies, play a little shinny and feel that crisp air in your throat as you speed past Tony the turtle.

We all know a Tony, or Tonya. In fact, you might be a Tony. He or she’s the person that’s always active, doesn’t show any hesitation in life, but once they finish lacing up their skates and walk towards the ice, something kicks in.

Those butterflies should get two for unsportsmanlike conduct. Tony steps on the ice and in a split second is as stiff as a board.

That my friends is fear. Chances are Tony fell on his ass once or twice before. He didn’t like it. So he’s now afraid to try anything that might reintroduce his rear and the ice.

For the rest of his life, Tony will be the Frankenstein in your group that cautiously two-steps on ice, or what he calls “skates�.

What should Tony do? Simply fall down. Over and over. Try to stop like the pros, skate backwards, crossover, jump, duck—all the things he wouldn’t do before because he was afraid.

Trying new things will help him see what he was doing wrong and right. It can only make him a better skater.

Imagine how many times the pros have fallen. Thousands. That’s how they learned what does and doesn’t work for them and refine their approach from there on out.

Are you a Tony or a Tonya? Falling on ice and failing in business is the most important thing you can do.

The new Sony Bravia spot debuted today in an explosive fashion. (Sorry for that one). Known for their blockbuster approach (balls), Fallon has once again gone all out to tie color and Sony Bravia together.

A few on-site videos snuck onto the net a couple months ago when the piece was being shot, but the blogosphere has anxiously awaited the final production. Well here it is.

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Microsoft has been playing catch-up in most of their undertakings. They seem to enjoy the strategy of waiting until someone else is successful and then trying to steal market share away from them. They’re trying to outsmart the iPod with the Zune, and now they’re trying outdo YouTube with a site they call Soapbox.

Online video has been the craze for the past year and will only get bigger over the next few years. YouTube has dominated the scene so far and become the hot spot for just about any pop culture clip.

Soapbox was mentioned in the media a couple weeks ago and I decided to apply for an invite into the beta test. I just received the invite, put the site to test and here’s what I think.

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I saw a FoxTrot cartoon a few days ago that was spot-on with this new web craze. When you’re working on your website focus on the problem you’re trying to solve, not including all the latest doo-dads.

While browsing through some different cover performances on YouTube I came across a girl named ReoRae. She’s a hidden surprise based in the UK. Most of her videos only have a few thousand views, while her first video has managed just under 20,000; far from impressive stats on a site like YouTube.

After watching and listening to her seven videos, and waiting for the goosebumps on my arms to subside, I wondered how such a beautiful and powerful voice could not be a gigantic act in the music scene.

Understandably, there are thousands of different sites, publications, and platforms out there to absorb—which entertainment labels have always tried to do—but it’s never been easier.

People like ReoRae fall into the cracks of YouTube, Myspace, sites like them, and can be really difficult to spot at times. These are the types of people that we should always be looking for. Imagine how many e-mails the most popular girl on Myspace or the music era dancer on YouTube get per day. Thousands and thousands. Imagine how many ReoRae gets per day. A handful at most.

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