You've Got 12 Days Til Xmas

'Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. But back at the office -- What? You're still there? -- your mouse was scurrying: A deal was in the air! So you logged onto the Net to do some last-minute shopping -- and breathed a sigh of relief: These Web stores are hopping!

We know, we're mixing our Christmas images. But carols and stories are the heart-warming part of the holidays. As for all your holiday shopping -- well, that headache is enough to make a little drummer boy beat himself silly with a stick.

Face it: The holiday season is as much about guilt and anxiety as it is about peace and joy -- especially for all you overworked businesspeople. Could the holidays possibly come at a less-convenient time? After all, late December means more than just eggnog and reindeer. It also means racing to meet year-end quotas and to finalize next year's budgets. It's hard to stroll through the mall when you're stuck in planning meetings -- or tethered to your computer, revising cash-flow projections on a spreadsheet. So where do you find great holiday gifts? On the Web, of course!

This edition of @Work offers a list of great virtual places to go for holiday gifts. It includes options for when you want to browse, for when you know just what you're looking for, and for when what you need is a good gift recommendation. So let's take a trip to the virtual mall. You don't have to leave the office -- and there's always a place to park!

Browse Without Bruises

The nice thing about shopping in stores is that you'll discover gift ideas that you'd never think of on your own. But it's hard to enjoy browsing in a store when you're trading elbows with thousands of other stressed-out shoppers. That's why we scoured the Web to find the best stores for you to browse -- on your browser.

Catalog City (www.catalogcity.com) catalogs more than 15,000 catalogs -- most of the name-brand favorites, plus thousands of focused offerings. But the site is more than a directory. It also displays scanned pages from most of its featured catalogs, and it lets users order directly through the site. It also offers some neat shopping services, including a Gift Registry and a Remind Me feature (the equivalent of marking a page with a Post-it note).

If you're an unreconstructed mall rat, then iMall (www.imall.com) is the closest thing to the real thing on the Web. Truth be told, the average Internet mall is little more than a collection of links to utterly obscure e-commerce sites. But iMall is an online community that features what CEO Richard Rosenblatt, 29, calls a "very eclectic mix of name brands and small merchants." The mall hosts more than 1,600 merchants and offers more than 2 million products.

What makes iMall different? For one thing, it includes retailers that you've heard of: Disney Collectibles, FAO Schwarz, Barnes & Noble. As for small retailers, it helps them create and host their own sites -- which gives the mall an overall coherence.

You say you've had it with catalogs and malls, and just want a good old department store? Then visit NetMarket (www.netmarket.com), a membership site that offers a wide range of products, from home electronics to garden supplies, to members as well as nonmembers. (A three-month trial membership costs $1.00; a yearly membership runs $69.95.) NetMarket's core advantage is value: low prices, refunds, and warranties. Its most surprising benefit is fun -- in the form of the Haggle Zone.

Using the Haggle Zone's online characters, shoppers bargain with the site over prices for brand-name products. You and the virtual merchant engage in a real-time exchange, while a specially developed algorithm negotiates the give-and-take. The haggling continues until a compromise is reached or until the merchant decides that you're not serious.

Still looking for places to browse but feeling overwhelmed? Then chill out with coolshopping.com (www.coolshopping.com). The site's team surfs the Net, looking for the most interesting, the most innovative, and the "coolest" shops on the Web -- and then organizes them into areas such as "Sports," "Gifts," and "Discount Shopping." The site also personalizes your experience. If you're interested in sporting goods, for example, then add "Sports" to your list of preferences. The next time you visit the site, coolshopping.com will show you all of the new listings in its sporting-goods area.