Whether you relish in the holiday shopping season or dread it, your smartphone can be an instrumental tool for finding and purchasing gifts for your loved ones. A useful app (or two) can go a long way toward saving you time and money. Many of them even integrate bar code scanners these days, so all you need to do to comparison shop is take a quick pic of a product's packaging.

In the gallery below, you'll find a selection of apps for devices running iOS, Android, and BlackBerry--all free, of course. Sadly, though Windows Phone 7 does have some cool-looking apps in the works, we could find none available at press time.

The other day I had to drag my kids along for some furniture shopping. Rather than endure whining and interruptions for half an hour, I handed over my iPhone--with the condition that the only apps they could use were e-books.

We didn't hear a peep from them the whole time.

As I said in Five amazing e-books for kids and again in Five more amazing e-books for kids, iOS devices are awesome e-book readers--especially for children's titles. So in honor of the season, I've rounded up another five excellent e-books for kids (six, actually)--all of them honed for the holidays.

Oceanhouse Media just cranked out a host of new goodies, including the Thanksgiving-themed "The Berenstain Bears Give Thanks" and the classic "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer"--the latter featuring artwork and sound effects from the beloved TV special.

They're both $2.99, and both universal, meaning they're compatible with iPhones and iPads alike. (While you're at it, check out OM's new Little Critter titles: "All By Myself," "Just Grandma and Me," and "I Just Forgot." They're not holiday-related, but they're just as fabulous--and only $1.99 apiece.)

Christmas Tale for iPad  Let's hear it for a rare e-book freebie. It's your basic toddler-oriented tale of Santa, the North Pole, and presents, with nicely illustrated pages and the obligatory interactive goodies hidden therein. The app also includes a few games and even a wish-list builder. It's free until December 15.

Flying Poodles - A Christmas Story This original tale, inspired by the poodles who ran in the Iditarod, features 28 pages of rhyming narration, original artwork, and "clickable audio surprises." (Wait a sec--poodles ran in the Iditarod? Who knew?) It's a universal app priced at $1.99.

Violet's The Night Before Christmas  Violet (aka Phantom Girl) has already starred in two e-books; this one puts her in the classic Christmas poem by Clement Moore, with original illustrations and lots of interactive elements on each page. It's too bad the bonus materials (including coloring pages and an interactive sketchpad) are on the seller's Web page and not in the app, but don't let that stop you from grabbing this nifty modern take on the beloved poem. (It's currently iPad-only, but an iPhone/iPod version is imminent.) Price: $2.99.

Stray Sheep: Poe's Christmas  Join beloved Japanese cartoon character Poe, who walks in his sleep, as he wakes in an unfamiliar town, walks the snowy streets, and helps the mysterious "Mr. Red" bring presents to children. The story features interactive elements, of course, and the app itself comes two games: "Spot the Difference" and "Sliding Puzzle." I like to see that kind of added value for my $6.99. For now, Poe's Christmas is strictly an iPad title, but iPhone and iPod Touch owners can check out the free lite version.

By the way, fellow Chosen People, I looked and looked for any Hanukkah-themed e-books, but came up empty. Come on, authors, where are the tales of runaway dreidels, dancing latkes, and magical menorahs? I'm giving you till 2011 to get something Festival of Lights-y into the App Store.

Have you found any other holiday-themed e-books worth sharing? If so, hit the comments and tell me which ones!

Originally posted at iPad Atlas

Editors' note: This post originally stated that the Opera 11 beta was not yet available for Linux. In fact, Opera 11 beta 1 for Linux is available for download here.

Opera may be getting most of its attention these days from its mobile browsers, but that doesn't mean that the company is ignoring its desktop browser. The first beta for Opera 11 introduces a long-missing extensions API in a lightweight profile similar to those that run on WebKit-powered browsers like Chrome and Safari.

Available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, Opera 11 beta 1 debuts other minor but useful changes. The most noticeable of these is tab stacks, a tab grouping mechanism similar in concept to Firefox's Panorama but completely based in the tab bar. To use it, drag one tab on top of another. The bottom tab will disappear and an arrow will appear to the right of the tab. Click it and the tabs in the stack will slide out to one side. To break up a stack, drag a tab off the stack. Mouse over the stack to see previews for all the tabs in the stack.

Another tweak made to tabs is that when you pin a tab, it will automatically jump to the left side of the tab bar. The personal bar has been replaced by a bookmarks bar, both pulling the browser into parity with the competition and making bookmarks accessible with one click.

Plug-ins such as Adobe Flash can now be set to load on-demand, via a check box under the Content section in Preferences. This will allows pages to load content faster and minimize somewhat third-party-plug-in-based exploits, and was impressively smooth in its implementation.

Opera claims the tweak can improve performance up to 30 percent, and that the browser's performance in general has been improved. Opera says that Opera 11 beta 1 is 15 percent to 20 percent faster than Opera 10.63 on Linux, and that the browser size on disk has been reduced by almost one-third.

Opera's security badge system marking sites as verified safe has received an overhaul, too. Click on the gray "Web" globe icon to the left of the URL bar to check a site's status. Getting information returned was quick with some sites and slow to stalled with others in the beta. Other color-coded badges include yellow for "secure" and green for "trusted." Opera's take on the feature is interesting because it provides quick links for reporting a site as fraud or malware. When browsing with Opera Turbo on, the badge will display estimated data savings.

Finally, the mouse gestures tutorial has been given a visual refresh, making it easier to learn them.

Opera's extensions gallery has 131 extensions at the time of writing, which sounds tiny except for the fact that extension support has been available only in a limited alpha release for the past month and appears to be mostly sourced from Opera's internal development team. Now that the feature is ready for a wider release with the beta, expect the number of user-contributed add-ons to jump.

Much like the WebKit-based add-on network, Opera's extensions install as buttons to the right of the search bar and auto-update. Though they might seem to some users to be in conflict with the browser's existing widget network, Opera spokesman Thomas Ford says that's not the case. "Widgets are stand-alone Web-based applications. They are meant to showcase the browser as an application platform. To that end, widgets work across PCs, phones, TVs, and other environments. Extensions are really there to let you tweak and customize your browser experience."