16 holiday toy ideas for the kiddos you want to impress

The Non-Breeders Guide to Gifts

You may not be a breeder, but the one time you wish you had kids is now. At least so you would know what on earth to buy for your nieces, nephews and the children of close friends. Never fear. Here are 16 goodies that will delight kids and not annoy their parents.

Warning: If you give toys that require batteries, include them. Otherwise, you’re giving a gift of a holiday-morning tantrum!

Creative Baby i-Mat 2-pack With Voice Pen ($79.99) at Costco

The interactive i-Mat teaches babies different languages, shapes and animals, trumping whatever tummy-time mat the family already has. The included Voice Pen has a recorder to capture all of the verbal cuteness, and there’s a carry bag for easy transport. Two triple-A batteries are required.

Manufacturer’s suggested age: 3 months and up

Boogie Board 8.5 LCD Writing Tablet ($24.99) at TigerDirect.com

Who needs paper when you have an e-writer? This erasable, scratch-resistant tablet provides a temporary writing/drawing surface without the mess of chalk and waste of paper. This is a must for road trips or long flights. The tablet is available in blue, pink and black and includes a coin cell battery that never needs replacing.

Manufacturer’s suggested age: 2 years and up

Christmas Polar Bear Bunting - White - Infant for Christmas 

Old price: $29.59
New price: $15.81
(47% OFF)

Includes a themed plush bunting with attached hood/hat.

Shipping: This product ships Worldwide.

Availability: The colors/sizes above are confirmed in stock & ready to ship!

Material: 100% Polyester

Care Instruction: Hand Wash

Manufacturer: Underwraps Carnival Corp.

Product ID: 40507

To take coupon code for this product: Click to take coupon from Partybell.com

 Lost My Name book ($27.99) at LostMy.Name

This personalized book will become a beloved read for kids and their parents. Lost My Name is a magical tale that uses a child’s name in a clever way: It tells the story of a kid who must find his or her name by tracking down each missing letter. Along the way, the child will encounter fabulous animal friends.

Manufacturer’s suggested age: 2–6 years

Doc McStuffins Get Better Talking Mobile Cart ($49.99) at Toys R Us

Doc McStuffins lovers and pretend-play fans alike will enjoy countless hours of entertainment while pulling this checkup station from patient to patient. There’s even a special seat for small toys to get examined on as well as a gurney if the toy needs to lie down. Kids will love the motion-activated siren, light-and-sound EKG and working CB radio; parents might not adore these features quite as much! Doctor tools and a bandage-sticker dispenser are included. Two double-A batteries are required.

Manufacturer’s suggested age: 3 years and up

Build-A-Bear (prices vary)

If you want to spend one-on-one time with your favorite kids, take them to Build-A-Bear to create their own stuffed animals. They’ll get to choose from bears (obviously), puppies, tigers, a slew of animated characters (Hello Kitty, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and more) and seasonal pets. They’ll remember this special treat for a lifetime. Prices typically range from $25 to $50 per animal (accessories are additional).

Manufacturer’s suggested age: 3 years and up

Shopkins ($12.99) at Toys R Us

You and their parents may have no clue what Shopkins are, but kids know all about these quirky little toys. Why might a child want a tiny hot dog with eyes? Who knows! They just do. These little critters have been selling out all over the place, so if you snag some you’ll definitely earn “coolest aunt/uncle ever.”

Manufacturer’s suggested age: 3 years and up

Bright Eyes Blanket ($19.95) at Bright Eyes Blanket

It doesn’t matter if you eschewed the Snuggie, secretly owned one or embraced the sleeved blanket whole hog. The Bright Eyes Blanket is a Snuggie that kids won’t be able to resist! This ultra-soft blanket comes as a kitten, puppy, panda or duck. The paws provide a cozy pocket for little hands, and the eyes glow in the dark.

Manufacturer’s suggested age: 4 years and up

Everything Bag ($40) at Avery & Ethan

Children, especially those with siblings, love something that is theirs. The undeniably adorable Everything Bag is all your little friend needs for a trip to dance class or an overnight visit. There are countless designs to choose from, and the poplin bag can be customized with the child’s name.

Manufacturer’s suggested age: 4 years and up

Mutant Mania Rampage Arena ($29.99) at Toys R Us

Now kids can host their own mutant smackdown. This set comes with an arena, wrestler launcher, battle handles and two crazy wrestlers. Thanks to their flexible bodies, the wrestlers can be flung across the arena, and it’s pretty hilarious. To add more wrestlers to the mix, check out the Mutant Mania 4-Pack ($5.99 at Toys R Us) and 8-Pack ($9.99 at Toys R Us).

Manufacturer’s suggested age: 5–7 years

Roominate Studio ($29.99) at Toys R Us

I’ve been hearing a lot about STEM toys (playthings that focus on science, technology, engineering and math), and the new Roominate collection is on board. Kids can design their own rooms with walls, floor panels and furniture like tables, slides and beds. They can also engineer a spinning windmill, an elevator and more with the working motor circuit! Two triple-A batteries are needed. (For another problem-solving toy, check out GoldieBlox!)

Manufacturer’s suggested age: 5 years and up

Jazwares NBA Heroes ($12.99 each) at Toys R Us

A must-have for sports fans, the NBA Heroes action figure collection features basketball greats like LeBron James, Kobe Bryant and Kevin Durant. Each figure has removable parts that let the player channel his inner superhero. Great for pretend play!

Manufacturer’s suggested age: 6 years and up

Crayola Virtual Design Pro Collection ($33.59) at Kohl’s

This cool set is a fantastic gift for a budding designer. Choose between the car or fashion collection, and watch as kids create designs on paper and then bring those drawings to virtual life on a smart device (iOS or Android). Design paper, colored pencils, markers, stencils and a pencil sharpener are included in a cool carrying case.

Manufacturer’s suggested age: 6 years and up

Air Storm Firetek Bow ($29.97) at Walmart

Set your mini warrior loose in the backyard with one of these bows, and let the adventures begin. The foam arrows are easy to load and shoot. Plus, they can go as high as 125 feet! The bow glows, and the arrows whistle for endless entertainment. Two triple-A batteries are required.

Manufacturer’s suggested age: 8 years and up

Jakks Covert Ops Vibrasonic Walkie-Talkies ($39.99) at Kmart

These walkie-talkies are worn on the head and use vibrasonic technology, so that kids can hear their comrades from 250 feet away. Amazing! Four triple-A batteries are required.

Manufacturer’s suggested age: 8 years and up

Holiday Fluxx ($16) at Looney Labs

This puts a holiday twist on the popular Fluxx game in which rules and winning conditions are altered by the cards drawn. It’s a blast for kids and adults, as the game is never the same twice!

Manufacturer’s suggested age: 8 years and up

NERF Combat Creatures TerraDrone ($54.99) at Kmart

The RC trend is popular with kids, and every year the toys get better and better. I love the creepy spidery-ness of this dart-firing drone. Children can direct it to crawl around and shoot 12 darts up to 45 feet. The launcher rotates a full 360 degrees, so no one is spared. The drone requires four double-A batteries, and the controller needs two double-A batteries.

Manufacturer’s suggested age: 8 years and up

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Miley Cyrus Wears Sparkly Nipple Pasties, Tinsel Wig, Sheer Tights and Silver Thong to Art Basel Miami

That's not an alien, y'all—it's Miley Cyrus!

The 22-year-old singer and her new man Patrick Schwarzenegger went to V magazine, Tommy Hilfiger and art dealer Jeffrey Deitch's Art Basel Miami Beach Opening Night Party at the Raleigh Hotel in South Beach, Fla., Wednesday night. Miley performed at the event topless, with her boobs covered by disco ball nipple pasties. She even rocked a matching tinsel wig, sheer silver tights and a tiny thong worn on the outside of her hosiery.

The former Disney star joked to the audience, "You thought this [Art Basel] was a respected place where you could escape me!"

But they had no such luck. The reason for her invasion? "This year has constantly challenged me," she explained, "and that's why I started doing art."

Miley even lit up onstage, telling the crowd, "Usually I don't smoke weed and drink—well that's a lie...usually I don't smoke weed and drink on show days, but I felt like it was fine in Miami."

As for Patrick? He and his pals were in one of three VIP cabanas at the show, also hosted by Samsung Curved Ultra HD. "He was rocking out and having a great time," a source told E! News. "You can tell how much he's into he [Miley].  He could not take his eyes off her. He was just letting his hair down and having a good time."

Later in the evening, Miley and Patrick, 21, made their way out of the hotel to another party. Miley covered up (slightly) by throwing on a black bra and pair of denim shorts. Patrick, who was fully clothed, looked slightly concerned by his ladylove's outfit of choice, but he remained ever the gentleman, wrapping a protective arm around her as they made their way through a crowd.

And from there, the evening only got better! Miley Instagrammed a a tongue-out, bathroom mirror selfie (because of course) showing off her new black mesh top. Know where she got it?! She revealed in the sassy snap's caption, which read: "You know the nights been a good one when you stole a shirt from a stripper."

Attagirl, Miley, although there's a stripper somewhere in Miami who probably wants her shirt back.

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Meet the $7 smartwatch

(CNN) -- The Apple Watch will sell for $349 when it hits stores next year. Motorola's Moto 360 goes for $249 and Samsung's smartwatch, the Galaxy Gear, starts at $199.

Now, a Chinese company wants to sell you one for $7.

Fastfox, a technology startup, says keeping software simple and hardware minimal lets them offer a smart wristband starting at prices nowhere near their fancier counterparts in the growing wearable-tech space.

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The company has launched a campaign to release the watches on Australian crowdfunding site Pozible. They offered 100 of the wristbands at $7. All of those have been snapped up, but donors can still get a black Fastfox watch for $8. And for $9, they can get a Fastfox in the color and design of their choice.

The campaign's highest donation level, $684, gets you 100 of the smartbands in the colors of your choice.

The campagin ends on Dec. 24. As of Thursday it had raised more than $7,200 from 529 supporters.

"Smart wearables have the potential to be incredibly useful, especially in the data they can provide to people trying to forge healthy habits," Fastfox creator Liu Chao said in a news release. "But the price is a big turn-off."

Like some of its contemporaries, including the forthcoming Apple Watch, Fastfox's limited array of apps are, indeed, heavily weighted toward health and fitness.

"This is new technology. Many people just want to give it a try with minimal risk," Liu said. "We wanted to make Fastfox as affordable as buying a new workout t-shirt, and help people take the first step towards reaching their health goals."

Fastfox's native apps measure walking and running distances and record calorie intake. It synchs with an Apple or Android smartphone via Bluetooth and other features including lighting up if you miss a phone call, recording sleep data and hooking up with social media to let you share data with friends.

Its makers say it is waterproof and that its battery can last between four and six months.

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10 Things Android Phones Do Better Than IPhones

01

If you are looking to buy a new smartphone, your options are largely divided between two platforms: Android and iOS. While both systems have their own advantages and disadvantages, here we list ten things that make Android phones better than iPhones.

Take a look...

02

Every app downloaded on an iPhone has to be on the homescreen. Android phones give users the freedom to choose which apps go on the homescreen, while keeping the rest away from the view in the app drawer.

03

Android's visible file system gives users more control on our files. When you plug your Android phone into your computer, you can see a file system just like the one you'd work with if you were searching for something on your computer. It's as easy as drag-and-drop. Apple doesn't give you that kind of access to all your files.

04

Android phones offer one of the best customization options, with a large number of themes, launchers and live wallpapers. iPhones, on the hand, are limited to just the parallax effect and dynamic wallpapers.

05

Apps talk to each other in a better manner — Android lets developers integrate apps with the operating system at a deeper level compared to iOS. Sharing content across apps is also more seamless. However, with iOS 8, Apple has also addressed the issue with its Extensibility feature.

06

Android is better at image management as it automatically puts screenshots, downloaded photos and pictures saved from messages into their own separate folders. iPhones... not so much.

07

The notifications bar on top of an Android phone's screen is filled with icons, thus acting as an unobtrusive reminder of what you need to check and respond to. On the other hand, the top of an iPhone's screen is devoid of such icons.

08

Many Android phones support storage expansion via microSD cards, whereas Apple does not give this freedom in iPhones. Therefore, you can get a smartphone with as little as 4GB internal storage and save all the personal data on a microSD card.

09

Sure, the iPhone fingerprint scanner is cool, but Android phones have several ways to unlocking a smartphone, including the option to create a personalized pattern to unlock the device.

10

The Gmail app is much better on Android than iPhone (duh). For example, phone numbers aren't directly dial-able from Gmail on iPhones.

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Life in the rubble of Kobani

 Kobani, Syria 

(CNN) -- Kobani feels haunted by those who are still alive in it, trapped in limbo. It is a place so inhumane that the noise of coalition warplanes above is of strange comfort to those there. The destruction so near complete, the fight is more now for victory alone, not for its spoils.

One salient fact stands out: They have given up on hospitals inside the city. Yes, the lightly wounded are treated by the handful of doctors who remain, but since a huge car bomb near the official border crossing with Turkey obliterated their main hospital, they send the injured straight to the border. Another hospital would just be another possible target for ISIS.

In the past the Kurds battling the militant Islamists for control of the border city have claimed as many as 10,000 civilians remain inside. During our two days there we saw little to justify that large a figure. There are civilians here, but they eke out a life in the rubble, seeking food and fuel as winter looms, and likely number in the low thousands.

There are civilians here who refuse to flee or cannot. Turkey has closed the western crossing point through which many refugees left -- indeed many stand there now, trying to get out, looking at the Turkish soldiers to help. Those inside, however, are besieged increasingly by ISIS from all fronts.

Nothing can protect them from the indiscriminate, constant shelling. ISIS forces routinely use homemade mortars: gas canisters packed with shreds of scrap metal. They rain down on the Kurdish civilian areas, where fighters also mix.

U.S. options in Syria shrivel as Assad, Islamist forces make gains

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Yousuf, who is 12, lists the friends who have left Kobani. He also shows us what they do to protect themselves when the blasts begin. There is no shelter, just a room in their house where their uncle told them to run. They show us the cushions they use to hide. Some line the walls, others they put on top of them. Were this a game, it would not have any rules.

'She was 7 years old. She was so beautiful'

Ali is 60 years old and a week earlier lost one of his six daughters. She was 7 years old.

He walks us to the spot where the mortar hit her. "Three to four mortars fell near us. The first mortar we escaped from. The second mortar we escaped from. The third fell on us." He is interrupted by the thud of another mortar landing some streets away. "My daughter was 7 years old; 7 years old -- and she died. God bless help us."

They could not flee; the 150 sheep he tends are their livelihood, as is the family car they did not want to abandon. The animals stand helpless, too, near the spot where Ali's daughter died.

Ali and his family moved here when ISIS attacked their village, 15 kilometers from Kobani. Ali must live with these decisions. The day before, he sat at his daughter's grave for a half-hour. He kisses her photograph.

"She was 7 years old. She was so beautiful. Small. People who saw her felt the need to lift her up and down in play."

The graveyard on the city's outskirts also is a somber scene. It, too, is makeshift. Rubble -- bits of cinder block -- are used as headstones.

Next to the fresh graves lies a long trench -- ready for the next wave of dead. It, too, is the scene of children playing, clambering around the trench. The conflict's brutality may be beyond their reach, but the fight for Kobani will decide what kind of life they could be left with if they survive.

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'Gangnam Style' breaks YouTube

(CNN) -- 

The Internet is a vast and seemingly limitless space, but it's no match for PSY.

"Gangnam Style," the South Korean pop star's enduring video phenomenon from 2012, has surpassed 2,147,483,647 views on YouTube, maxing out the site's original view counter.

"We never thought a video would be watched in numbers greater than a 32-bit integer (=2,147,483,647 views), but that was before we met PSY," wrote Google, which owns YouTube, in a blog post this week. " 'Gangnam Style' has been viewed so many times we have to upgrade!"

For anyone who doesn't have an advanced degree in computing, that basically means YouTube's view counter was based on a 32-bit integer, a unit of data in computer programming languages, and the number 2,147,483,647 is its maximum positive value.

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When programmers built YouTube nine years ago, they probably never imagined that a video on the young platform -- back when several million views was considered a smash hit -- might be watched more than 2.1 billion times.

As of late Wednesday morning, "Gangnam Style" had breached the barrier, showing more than 2,152,512,000 views.

So how is this possible?

YouTube's software engineers saw the problem coming and recently updated to a 64-bit view counter across the site, Google spokesman Matt McLernon said. The view counter can now go up to 9 quintillion views (9,223,372,036,854,775,808, to be exact), which should hold PSY for a while.

"Nothing actually broke," McLernon said. "There was never anything that actually went wrong. It's just people having fun with the language."

Still, it's an impressive feat for PSY's trademark horse-riding dance video, which is almost 2½ years old. Uploaded in July 2012, "Gangnam Style" was the first clip to hit a billion views and is the most-watched video of all time. It was even the No. 5 most-played video on YouTube this past summer, McLernon said.

"People still play this video an absurd number of times," he said.

To commemorate the occasion, YouTube has added a new wrinkle: If you hover your cursor over the "Gangnam Style" view counter, the numbers spin backwards and forwards.

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Tickets To The Victoria's Secret Fashion Show Are Kind Of A Bargain (UPDATE)

UPDATE: President and chief executive officer of Victoria’s Secret Sharen Jester Turney told The Huffington Post that Victoria's Secret will not sell tickets to its show in a statement: “Victoria’s Secret does not sell tickets to our invitation-only show and does not authorize any third-party agent to sell tickets on our behalf. The only way to obtain tickets is by special invitation or through charitable contributions to pre-approved non-profit organizations."

Previously:

Have you always wanted to sit front row at a fashion show but just haven't had the spare $95,000 sitting around to buy the ticket?

Well then, you're in luck. According to the Telegraph, a seat at the highly-anticipated Victoria's Secret Fashion Show will only set you back about $16,000. In comparison, it's kind of a bargain.

OK, so $16,000 is still an absurd amount of money to watch beautiful women parade around in beautiful lingerie. But at least you have the musical acts and a theatrical factor. That's more than we can say for the pricier other shows. A source told the Telegraph that the high price is put in place "to keep out the riff raff, essentially," but we have a feeling it could also have something to do with offsetting the cost of the million-dollar bras that appear in the show.

Of course, if you're anything like us, you'll be saving your extra cash for rent and groceries, and watching both Paris Fashion Week AND the Victoria's Secret Fashion show from the privacy of your own living room.

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