Why you won't find American's fares on Expedia or Orbitz

Ok, I'll admit it: I am a gift procrastinator. Every year, I wait too long to buy presents, and then I spend a few, panicked days right before Christmas running from store to store. If you're like me, you know the feeling. Luckily, part of my job in 2010 was to coordinate our Coolest Gift Guide Ever, so I did my gift-buying early. But we simply didn't have the space to fit in all the awesome, high-tech toys that we found into two pages. So for all you last-minute buyers out there, I'm sharing with you a special, bonus edition. Here are five travel items you can still get for every techie on your list: Gorillamobile for iPhone 4, $40. Joby electronics has plenty of useable, funky-looking items in their roster (including the cute Torch), but this new piece is ideal for obsessive iPhone 4 users. The flexible, wrappable legs make your phone an in-flight TV, a camera tripod, or a hands-free stand during facetime calls back home. Lensbaby Muse, from $100. Love the dreamy effect of lomo and Diana cameras, but don't want to spring for the full model? This plastic optic camera lens fits onto digital SLR cameras from most major manufacturers, including Canon, Nikon, and Samsung. Focus in on subjects or create cool pinhole effects simply by scrunching the accordion-like lens with your hands. Best of all, it works right out of the box—how often can you say that at this time of year? Brenthaven 5-in-1 iPad case, $60. We've praised Brenthaven's durability before, and I'll let you watch the handy one-minute video to get a full picture of all this ingenious case does. But in brief, the 5-in-1 protects your investment in a two-sided hardshell case that can also flip around to make a typing or viewing stand. Scottevest SeV Revolution Jacket, $175. Specializing in apparel that replaces the need of a carry-on bag, Scottevest has gotten a lot of attention recently, what with the new TSA restrictions. One of the company's new models, the SeV Revolution, has 26 pockets for stashing everything from a bottle of water to your bluetooth headset, plus removable sleeves and a hood. iHome Portable Speaker Case, $80. Perfect for camping or a beach-villa stay, this portable set of speakers packs a huge sound. An array of colors to choose from makes it a fun gift for the younger set. MORE FROM BUDGET TRAVEL The Coolest Gifts For Every Traveler Which Garmin GPS Unit It Best? 6 Money-Saving Bags

True lovers of travel don't want to be weighed down with stuff. But what to buy a traveler who doesn't want new luggage, toiletry kits, or alarm clocks? Find some gift-giving inspiration in the following roundup of ideas. (Batteries not required). • Buy an airline gift card. The money you add to the card may be redeemed toward a plane ticket. Southwest's gift card is particularly attractive because the airline charges no bag fees or itinerary-change fees. In other words, your gift won't accidentally set up your loved one to be hit with nasty fees. For international trips, opt for an American Express gift card, to buy plane tickets on any major airline. Your gift recipient can then choose which airline has the best fares and routes for their trip. But encourage him or her to travel within a year's time. After that, monthly fees of about $2 typically kick in, depleting the value. (Expect to also pay a shipping fee of about $9.) • Buy a hotel gift card. Travelocity's Hotel Gift Card, for instance, is redeemable for stays at more than 55,000 hotels—with no expiration date. You can personalize the gift card with a photo and a message, too. The big catch: Don't overload the card with money. If the hotel costs less than the value of the card, the remaining value on the card vanishes. Ugh. • Give the gift of a walking tour. If your loved one is going to a particular urban destination within the next year, look into gift certificates redeemable for a tour or activity there. A couple of examples: Viator has a variety of options in a wide array of destinations around the world, such as dining at the top of the Eiffel Tower. Alternately, Context Tours is strongest in its array of high culture walking tours of European cities. (On the site contexttravel.com, pick the city from the drop down menu first, then search for "gift certificates" in the box at the top right.) • Use your frequent flier miles to someone else's advantage. Airlines allow you to give the ticket you earn with your miles as a gift to someone else, as long as no money changes hands. The less attractive alternative is to transfer miles into another person's account. It's unappealing because airlines charge fees for this service. • Teach them to earn their own miles faster. The Frequent Flyer Master course by Unconventional Guides costs $49. The 40-page manual is supplemented with a half-dozen e-mail updates over a six month period that alert you to points-earning opportunities. There's a guarantee, too. If the advice doesn't help your gift recipient get enough miles to fly for free at least once, there's a full refund. (I gave this as a gift to myself a year ago, and I can vouch for the high quality of the material, presented in an easy-to-digest way. And, no, the guide describes several other strategies besides signing up for airline co-branded credit cards, and roughly half of the material is about how to effectively redeem the miles for flights—not just how to rack up "non-qualifying" miles.) BUDGET TRAVEL The coolest gifts for every traveler Dec 2010/Jan 2011 Must have! A genius travel beauty tool for just $15 Travel by smartphone: Mumbai, India

A self-operated roller coaster that zips through the forest sounds pretty cool to us. You don't even have to ski to enjoy most of these features and activities, all new for the 2010-2011 ski season: Big White's New Ice Climbing Tower The Big White Resort, in British Columbia, Canada, is adding a 60-foot-tall ice tower this season. How do they even build such a structure? Four telephone polls are braced together, then flooded with water that freezes. Big White's tower will be broken up (bad choice of words), or rather divided into sections for advanced climbers and beginners. Even kids are welcomed to climb, with the help of rented boots and axes. One climb costs $20, or an all-day pass is $55 (Canadian dollars). Breckenridge's New Gold Runner Coaster Colorado's Breckenridge resort, which opens today, November 12, is introducing a 2,500-foot-long elevated roller coaster that zips through the forest and is open for single and double rides in all four seasons. Okemo's New Timber Ripper There's also a mountain coaster due to make its debut this season in Vermont. Okemo's coaster, named the Timber Ripper, will rip along 3,100 feet of track and is scheduled to open on December 11. Like Breckeridge's coaster, Okemo's Ripper can be ridden by one or two passengers, who control how fast the sled-like cars zip down hills and around curves. The cars are expected to max out at about 25 mph. The Canyons' New Chairlift with Heated Seats This season in Utah, The Canyons opens a bubble-enclosed quad chairlift with heated seats -- the first of its kind in North America. The lift promises to not only be cozy, but fast, with snowboarders and skiers reaching the top of the mountain just nine minutes after sitting down on the lift's warm seats. MORE FROM BUDGET TRAVEL Trip Coach: Ski Vacations Shut Up and Ski: Top 10 Old-School Ski Resorts In Search of the Perfect Ski Village

One day recently I landed on the shores of the Italian island of Ischia without a guidebook or a paperback novel. I was forced to depend on my Kindle for reading on the beaches, the ferry rides, and around town. Our editors have road-tested Apple's rival device, the iPad, before, and the iPad is certainly a cool tool. But the Kindle is now less expensive. In the past year and a half, Amazon has dropped the price of its e-reader by 63 percent to a reasonable $139. The two e-readers have different personalities. Amazon's Kindle is like the Mitt Romney of e-readers (dull and bookish, but also reliable and high class), while the iPad is more like Sarah Palin (playful, populist, and the one you would feel more comfortable asking for directions when you get lost). THE VERDICT I'd give the Kindle a B- when it comes to travel friendliness. The latest Kindle with built-in Wi-Fi ($139, $189 for 3G) is quite handy for travelers. But it still has several flaws to fix. If you're like me, which no doubt you are, you do not like the idea of having to carry huge piles of guidebooks, beach reads, and magazines with you on your trip. When you set out to pack your bags, you want to travel light. The latest Kindle is a neat solution to the weight problem for sure. It weighs a mere 8.5 ounces, or roughly the same as an in-flight magazine. KINDLE PROS AND CONS Pro: You can store up to 3,500 books and documents on it. You no longer have to decide which guidebook to bring with you, the city one or the country one or the restaurants-only guide. Take them all! Con: Amazon delivers the Kindle to you naked. Travelers will want to buy a cover for protection during a journey, and that cover will add a ridiculous $30 to the cost. Pro: Screen is easy to read both indoors and out in the bright sun. It's not reflective. Con: The affordable version lacks color for photos and maps, and it doesn't reproduce maps well. You can't zoom in on a map, which makes it nearly useless for directions. Pro: Super long battery life. I used the device for several hours a day for more than a week and didn't need a recharge. Amazon says its Kindles have one-month battery lives if you leave the Wi-Fi turned off. Con: The device never "shuts off." It continually refreshes its screen, even when you're not using it. This habit can exasperate flight attendants who don't want you to have any electronic devices operating during takeoff or landing. UPDATE: My mistake, as the commenters have pointed out. You *can* turn the Kindle off with the top button. The battery life is excellent, though, so few people probably do. Pro: Font size is adjustable. So if a book's print is too small to read, you can just make the text larger. Con: Page size isn't fixed, which means that the index to any guidebook is useless because you there is no corresponding page number. Pro: You can search text, such as guidebook, for a word or phrase you want. There's a basic English language dictionary built in, too. Con: There's no spelling suggester, unlike in Google search results. ("Did you mean to spell Iskia "Ischia"?) If you don't know how to spell the name of a town or a restaurant, you're out of luck. (Another problem: Kindle returns search results from the start of the book, not from your current page in the book onward. If you want to find a plaza in a particular town, let's say, your Kindle will search for every mention of the word plaza in your book. Ugh.) Pro: Its built-in Web browser lets you surf the Web in more than 60 countries for free. Con: The refresh rate was so s-l-o-w that I found the free Web surfing is only useful when you have absolutely no other Internet option. Pro: More than 700,000 books are available on the Kindle. Guidebook publishers are increasingly publishing individual chapters from their guidebooks. You can spend less and get precisely the information you want. Con: Merely 7,400 of those books are travel-related, and your favorite guidebook might not be available in a digital edition. MAX OUT YOUR KINDLE Save magazine and newspaper articles to your Kindle. Whether they're destination planning guides or just something good to read in the ski lodge, you'll want to set up the following process for saving good info for later. (Hat tip to Cool Tools.) 1) Register at Instapaper.com, a free site, via your PC or Mac. Instapaper will let you add a button to your browser for saving articles. Whenever you see an inspiring article, click the "Read Later" browser button and the article will be saved. 2) Write down your personal Kindle e-mail address. It usually looks like yourname@kindle.com. You can look up yours on your Kindle by clicking "Menu" and then "Settings." 3) Download Calibre eBook Manager (calibre-ebook.com/) to your PC or Mac. Let Calibre know your personal Kindle e-mail address. 4) Link Calibre to your Instapaper account. Calibre has easy to follow instructions for doing this. Sign up for a "feed" of all the articles you clip and save to Instapaper as you surf. Be sure to schedule how often you want your clipped articles to download. For example, you can check "autosend" in the sharing preferences on Calibre. 5) Surf the Web. Click the "Read Later" button on your browser whenever there's a travel (or other article) you'd like to read on your Kindle later on. Need something better to read on vacation than Confessions of a Shopaholic Part 13? Visit TheBrowser or LongForm.org and then click to save articles. [MORE: When you download something other than an Amazon book to your Kindle, and you use a 3G network instead of WiFi, you may be hit by a small charge from a telecom company. Paul Kline has a tip on how to avoid the small fees that telecom companies may charge you. It involves adding the word "Free" to your personal Kindle e-mail address: Calibre + Instapaper + Kindle = Reading Goodness] EARLIER Test Lab: iPad as travel tool New site TripAlertz is Groupon for travel