iPhone apps: Santa's little hand-held helper

If the thought of holiday shopping brings out your inner Grinch, you might want to turn to the nearest iPhone. No, not to warm yourself with the virtual glow from a burning log video. 

Your phone could become your favorite elf in formulating and navigating your gift-giving strategy.

The iTunes App Store hasn't (yet) become totally wrapped up in holiday hysteria, but it does have potentially useful options tucked away in the various categories.

Here are some applications we played around with:

Holiday Gift List ($1.99): This app is mostly holiday neutral -- although it does use the emblematic colors of Christmas, green and red. If you like to separate gift-giving into groups, this could be the app for you. You can track whether items have been bought or remain on your to-do list. Adding the cost of an item isn't intuitive. But you can type it in next to the item with the dollar symbol. The app adds the dollar figures and gives you a total in each person's listing.

Read further for the lowdown on six other apps ...

Christmas Shopping List (99 cents): Even though it has Christmas in the name, the app is more inclusive. You can change the background on this app to Hanukkah or Kwanzaa — or eggs for Easter later. You can create a total gift-giving budget and password-protect the details. As you add people to your list and a budget for each, the app tallies what you've spent, how much you have left and whether you've bought the gifts. (Warning: Be sure to type your password carefully on your iPhone keyboard.)

Better Hanukkah List ($2.99): Sure, you can download a dreidel game, holiday countdown and a mobile menorah to celebrate the Festival of Lights "on the go." But Hanukkah-focused shopping apps are a little harder to find so far. This app lets you add a person and load them up with eight days of gifts. The app helps you track budgets and whether gifts have been bought and sent and how many shopping days you have left.

Dear Santa ($1.99): You can make a list and check it twice. This app will help you keep track of whether gifts have been purchased. One fun feature: Your kids can make their own wish list and e-mail it to Santa or to an aunt or an uncle. An actual e-mail is crafted and sent. That's a blessing for family and friends fumbling to figure out what gifts the children in their lives are likely to enjoy this holiday season. Fun and functional.

Asking Santa ($1.99): This one does the same thing, but with a bit more flair. You can assign cartoon pics to each child. It lets you enter all of the relevant info — gift, make, store, cost. You can set up a budget. Parents, there's password protection too! Children can tap a Santa icon to the right of the items they really hope to see under the tree.  With this app, when kids send a note to Santa, they get to see it travel to the North Pole and get an immediate response from the big guy. Nice animation for immediate gratification.

xMas List (99 cents): This is a fairly simple list that's visually holiday elegant. Your gift list appears on a virtual scroll that looks like parchment. You can add the names of your lucky recipients, gift items, store locations and prices. It gives you a countdown until Christmas. It's not clear how to adjust the details for someone who's been, say, naughty. You can, however, delete them with the swipe of a finger.

Christmas List ($2.99): This application got kudos in the Appiphilia review column. Ultimately, it lets you create password-protected lists and links to price comparison site PriceGrabber.com to help you find the best deal on that Wii for little Rohan. It also allows you to create a budget and lets you track your spending. You can keep track of which gifts have been bought, wrapped and sent.

—Michelle Maltais

Maltais is editorial broadcast manager for the Los Angeles Times

Comments

[Jason Dolbin]

I think you missed the biggest app. SantaLive is 3D and is available on the iPhone. You can see a demo at iPhoneSanta.com.

The app is sort of like a webcam to the North Pole. Each day you get to see what Santa is doing.

[Jeremie Weldin]

Hi. What about the app that is actually named Santa's Little Helper? http://itunes.com/app/SantasLittleHelper