Christmas is just around the corner and, as the old song tells us, it’s the most wonderful time of the year. There are a whole host of fabulously festive iPhone apps to keep both you and the kids entertained over the holiday season. Here are some of my favorites.

Christmas!!
Christmas!! is an all-encompassing iPhone app that is jam packed with festive features such as an advent calendar, Christmas themed wallpapers, a countdown clock and selection of cracker jokes that will even make the family scrooge smile!

Christmas Sound Shelf
Ever wished you had a sleigh bells or crackling fire sound effect to hand whilst telling Christmas stories? If so then you will love the Christmas Sound Shelf app as it comes pre-loaded with a range of sound bites such as jingling bells, ho ho ho’s, ripping paper and popping Champaign corks. This free app will really bring your children’s bedtime stories to life!

Cards
The Cards app is perfect for both big and little kids with arty fingers. Customise your own greetings cards on your iPhone and for a nominal fee you can have them printed and sent to your family and friends. There are a number of templates to choose from and you can add photos, art work and personalised greetings. Avoid the card shops this holiday season and send something personal with the Cards app.

Santa Meter
Create your own naughty and nice lists with the Santa Meter app. Add all your family and friends and use the app to tell Santa if they have behaved well enough for a present. You can also view the naughty and nice scale to see how you and your family members compare to others. A new feature for this year allows you to call Santa’ when your kids have been especially good or bad to tell him all about it. Here’s hoping that they will be on their best behaviour so you don’t have to make that call!

Christmas Experience
Build your own Frosty the snowman from the comfort of your cosy armchair with the Christmas Experience app. Choose from a selection of scarves, hats, noses, gloves, buttons and stick arms for your snowman without having to get cold. When he is all finished you can take a nice picture of him to share with your friends and family. This app also includes a Christmas hang man game, a sleeps countdown clock and a number of Christmas songs to listen to.

==== About the author ====
Vicky is a technology writer who especially likes to write about iPhones, iPhone apps and iPhone insurance.

Phew, boy, we ran a contest to giveaway an Apple iPad and let us tell you the responses that came in overwhelmed us and made it a tough one to pick a winner.

We saw a lot of good entries and use multiple criteria to list out the best ones and then pull an entry that would be decided as the winner. Everyone who participated was part of the judging criteria we had put in, but sadly there will only be one winner.

And the winner of the iPad is Cory, we hope you have fun with the new iPad coming your way. Cory, you will be receiving an email from us at the email ID you used for commenting on the site shortly. Here is the comment Cory left on the site, it definitely touched us a lot.

For the rest of you who did not win, we are really thankful that you participated, and as promised we will be doing another big giveaway either today or tomorrow, so stay tuned for it and this one is really big .

Once again, thanks everyone for participating in the contest and stay tuned for the next one.

[Windows Only]

Christmas is coming fast. I hope you’re ready for it. How about some free Christmas gifts for those geeky friends of yours? The folks at NewFreeScreensavers have just added 5 new Christmas screensavers, bringing the total to 35 Christmas and New Year items.

I’m sure you can find plenty of other screensavers out there, but be careful to visit only safe websites when you are looking for them. As many of you have learned, not all free screensavers are created equal. Many times, free means that you have to install stupid toolbars, adware and other unwanted junk along with the screensaver. That’s not true of the ones at NewFreeScreensavers.

Some these now have transparent backgrounds, showing your desktop with snow and decorations on top. Another nice feature is that they now have settings to mute the sounds. A few of the screensavers also have a setting to include a small analog clock on the screen.

Screensaver Download Page

W I n d o w s 7 t h e m e s ?

If you have Windows 7, be sure to check out the Holiday Lights theme from Microsoft. If you don’t have Windows 7, you can still snag the wallpapers by using this trick.

Techie Buzz Verdict: I’ve downloaded and installed several of the screensavers at this site and never had a problem with any of them. These screensavers are safe, totally free, and there are dozens more to check out once you visit.

Techie Buzz Rating: 3/5 (Good)

Google is known to sport Google Doodle‘s on their homepage instead of the traditional logos. Some of the most fun (and maybe annoying) Doodle’s till date have been the Google Pacman Doodle, the Google Balls Doodle and the John Lennon Doodle.

However, the new Google Doodle for the holidays is probably the most complex Doodle created yet. The Doodle sports some historic places and events. According to the WSJ, the Doodle was created by Micheal Lopez and team of 5 artists who took 250 hours to create this Doodle.

The WSJ post also delves deeper into how the idea behind the Doodle came out and the process Lopez and team went through to come up with this Doodle. Nevertheless, the hard word shows off since it is definitely one of the most complex Google Doodle I have seen in a long time.

As every year, this years Holiday Doodle will remain on Google homepage till Christmas is over. What do you think about the Google Holiday Doodle? Do you like it?

Update: Sorry folks but the contest is now over. We appreciate all the entries we got and thank everyone for participating. It will be a tough time for us to pick a winner. We will use a randomizer to pick one person as the winner, it will be announced between 26-27 December, 2010. Commenting is now closed on this post.

Update 2: The winner of the Apple iPad Giveaway has been declared, take a look at the winner announcement.

Hi everyone, as promised we are here with our first Christmas giveaway an Apple iPad. The iPad is currently one of the hottest selling internet tablets and it was also one of our fan favorites for the giveaway.

In the spirit of Christmas, we want to make our readers happy and one of them will be a lucky winner who will take home the Apple iPad. This is the 1st of our two giveaways. We will also be a few more things to our readers on December 27th, so you have one more big giveaway to look forward to.

We will be giving away a 16GB Wi-Fi version of Apple iPad. If you are looking forward to winning an Apple iPad, here is what you have to do. Some of these options are compulsory so please read carefully.

• Follow us on Twitter @techiebuzzer or become a Fan of Techie Buzz Facebook
• Tweet this page to your followers and include the hashtag #techiegives in your tweet, you will find an example message below, but feel free to be creative.

Example Tweet Message: Yippee @techiebuzzer is giving away an iPad, go get one for yourself http://goo.gl/6m7YD #techiegives

• Share or like this page on Facebook
• Leave a comment with your tweet or share link here and tell us why you want to win the iPad.

That’s it. That’s not much efforts right? Well, then go ahead and give it a shot, we’ll pick one winner to receive an iPad shortly. Please read the official rules and regulations below.

Rules and Regulations

1. Contest is open to everyone 13 years or older
2. In order to participate, users will have to tweet this link on Twitter or share it on Facebook and then leave a comment on this post. If users do not leave a comment, we will not accept it as an entry to the competition. Contest participants must complete all the required steps in order to be eligible for the contest
3. Contest will end on December 25, 2010 at 12 PM 11:59 PM EST. We will pick one entry from the received entries and announce the winner on December 26, 2010
4. If the Apple iPad does not ship to your country, we will offer an appropriate alternative which is available in your country. In this case, the winner may also choose to have the iPad shipped to them. However, the shipping costs will have to be borne by the winner.

Best of luck.

P.S. In past competitions, we have seen some comments go into spam. If your comment does not show up within a few hours, please send us a note using our contact form and we will dig it out from there.

Note: This contest is not endorsed or sponsored by Apple.

Gameloft is known for making some game looking games for the iOS as well as for the Android platform. However, the company for some unknown reasons does not sell its games in the Android Market. Instead it does so via its own market (which is crap).

Due to this, not only do the sales of the game suffer but not many people know about their offerings. The company has some pretty impressive Android games like Asphalt 5, Assassin’s Creed and Hero Of Sparta.

Now, as a part of their Advent Twitter promotion Gameloft has made Dungeon Hunter for Android available as a free download for 24 hours. The company will be giving a surprise gift every day until Christmas so expect them to make a few more Android games available as a free download.

The clock is already ticking so users should quickly head over to Gameloft’s site and download their free copy of Dungeon Hunter.

[Windows Only]

Last week, I told you about the Christmas and New Year screensavers. This week, our friends at NewFreeScreensavers have added 10 new free screensavers with mostly Zodiac themes.

I’m sure you can find plenty of other screensavers out there, but be careful to visit only safe websites when you are looking for them. As many of you have learned, not all free screensavers are created equal. Many times, free means that you have to install stupid toolbars, adware and other unwanted junk along with the screensaver. That’s not true of the ones at NewFreeScreensavers.

One of the nice features of these screensavers is that they now have settings to mute the sounds. Some of the screensavers also have a setting to include a small analog clock on the screen.

Screensaver Download Page

*Windows 7 themes?

If you have Windows 7, be sure to check out these nice Christmas themes. If you don’t have Windows 7, you can still snag the wallpapers by using this trick.

Techie Buzz Verdict:

I’ve downloaded and installed several of the screensavers at this site and never had a problem with any of them. These screensavers are safe, totally free, and there are dozens more to check out once you visit.

Techie Buzz Rating: 3/5 (Good)

Google today announced the kick-off of this years Christmas countdown at noradsanta.org, a partnership between North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and Google.

If you have been following the tradition of tracking Santa Claus, you can do it this year too by visiting http://www.noradsanta.org/. According to Google kids can play holiday-themed games with a new one is released each day and get updates from the North Pole as Santa prepares for his big sleigh ride.

So go ahead and have fun this year tracking Santa. You’ll find more info on this at the Official Google blogs. By the way watch a video of NORAD tracking Santa in 2009 embedded below.

(Click here if you can’t view the video)

[Windows Only]

Thanksgiving has just ended. Even though I don’t approve of putting up Christmas decorations this early, our friends at NewFreeScreensavers have just added 15 new free screensavers.

I’m sure you can find plenty of other screensavers out there, but be careful to visit only safe websites when you are looking for them. As many of you have learned, not all free screensavers are created equal. Many times, free means that you have to install stupid toolbars, adware and other unwanted junk along with the screensaver. That’s not true of the ones at NewFreeScreensavers.

One of the nice features of these screensavers is that they now have settings to mute the sounds. Some of the screensavers also have a setting to include a small analog clock on the screen.

Screensaver Download Page

Windows 7 themes?

If you have Windows 7, be sure to check out the Holiday Lights theme from Microsoft. If you don’t have Windows 7, you can still snag the wallpapers by using this trick.

Techie Buzz Verdict:

I’ve downloaded and installed several of the screensavers at this site and never had a problem with any of them. These screensavers are safe, totally free, and there are dozens more to check out once you visit.

Techie Buzz Rating: 3/5 (Good)

While the pun in the title was semi-intended, the fact that this post could be a source of the drain on your wallet is highly intended! Valve corporation’s Steam digital distribution store has begun its holiday sale in earnest. From whole catalogues availing a general discount to everyday sales that you might be familiar with if you have ever shopped in the other digital distribution stores.

A few suggestions are:

Mirror’s Edge: ($4.99 for only four more hours!) A new kind of game where agility and speed must counter guns and aggression. As a Runner of a dystopia where information is monitored rigidly, you must run across the city dodging enemy bullets and more in your quest to deliver a message. At 75% off, this game is a steal.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl: ($1.99 for only four more hours!) A complex mesh of RPG, FPS and survival-horror elements, this dark and brooding game from the Ukrainian developer GSC Game World comes at 90% off. A quick look at a review will tell you just why this game is worth every one of those two dollars!

The Witcher: Enhanced Edition Director’s Cut: ($13.59 till January 3rd!) This is one of my favorite RPG games of all time from a beautiful story to gorgeous graphics to a shocking and deeply-influencing finale, this game had it all. Although I would advice anyone to go for a boxed edition ($39.99, I believe) because this is one of those games that must be owned, the digital distribution deal is not bad at all. Buy it, everyone you will not regret it!

Braid: ($2.49 for only four more hours!) Platforming action taken to a whole new level. Add emotive and wonderfully suited music and an emotionally jarring ending and you have one of the best indie games of the year. Trust me on this one and go buy it!