The perfect e-gift

What should you order online for Bill Clinton or Bill Gates, George W. Bush or Jesse Ventura?

By Charlie Varon and Jim Rosenau

  • Pages 1

Dec 11, 1999 | Now is the season of our introductory discount -- and if you act fast, free shipping, too! The ballooning world of online sales tempts even the most loyal and footsore holiday shopper to duck the crowds, stay home and browse for the holidays by the comforting glow of a computer screen.

But even before you zap your oh-so-private credit card numbers into secure socket layers, there's still the matter of what to give whom -- and whether they'll like it. Intelligent agents and compar-a-bots can't help you there. Gift-giving remains a human domain -- and a tricky task at that.

Readers are invited to find a gift, actually available for purchase online, for an appropriate recipient, real or imagined, famous or obscure: A child's globe for Dubya; a muzzle for Jesse Ventura.

Tell us who's getting what. Tell us why, unless it's obvious. And please include the Web address at which the gift may be found -- we might have to return it.

Up to three submissions per person.

R U L E S

Send your submissions via e-mail only to salon21st@salon.com. Please include your full name and an accurate e-mail address so we can contact you if you're a winner. By submitting your entry you give Salon Technology permission to publish it. Deadline for entries is Dec. 20, 1999.

P R I Z E S

The winning response will receive a copy of Salon Technology senior correspondent Andrew Leonard's book, "Bots: The Origin of New Species."

In two weeks we'll publish a winner and some selected entries -- then start over a couple weeks after that with a whole new challenge.

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