Christmas email

My family likes to communicate via email about our Christmas lists for the upcoming holiday.

Every year we go through the same thing.

In some ways, email helps keep everyone abreast to "who bought who what," and "who wants what."

If I buy a gift off of someone’s list, I may send out an email alerting everyone that I bought it for "someone," so don’t go buying that same gift.

And if I suddenly see something else I want for Christmas, I’ll send out another email to everyone, stating what it is, and where to find it.

The problem

The problem with this approach is when you have six or more family members communicating this way – your email inbox becomes LOADED with abbreviated subjects, incomplete sentences, broken links – which all has to be sifted through, in order to even have the slightest idea of what a particular family member wants for Christmas.

If you’re like me, you don’t like your email inbox overloaded with emails that you have yet to digest, or have to manage and monitor.

Content management

Email, acting as the "Christmas list mediator," turns out not being a very effective approach.

For such situations, software would work better. And by software, I mean a content management system. This is truly what needs to be in place, to make the gift giving process easier.

Web interface

Imagine a simple web interface, where you would log in with your assigned username, and be able to see (on one page) everyone’s Christmas lists, links or stores of where to find the gifts, and information on whether the gift was already purchased by another family member.

All this information, and more, would be at your disposal, through a web browser. You could check it from anywhere, and see "up to the minute" information.

Features!

Did Dad buy that tie that Matt wanted at Amazon? Log in and find out.

What else did Laura say she wanted? Log in and find out.

Where did Dave buy that DVD from? Log in and find out.

You could also print each person’s list, and take it with you to stores, if you wanted.

Compare prices from various retailers. Estimate shipping costs.

Keep track of mounds of information – without cluttering your email inbox.

The project

I intend to start on this project very soon. I want to have it ready in time for next Christmas. My goal date would be November 1, 2005.

The reason I forsee it taking that much time is because I wouldn’t be able to work on it every day – only once a week.

Yet to be seen

Without even starting the project, I already see some issues that might create problems.

For one thing, if I log into the web site, I shouldn’t be able to see ANY information that pertains to ME. In other words, I shouldn’t be able to see what gifts people have purchased for me.

This is obvious. There would have to be some way to disable gift information for the person that logs in.

We’ll see how things go.