Apps To Get You Through Last-Minute Holiday Shopping

7. Thrutu

Only few stressful days left to track down last minute gifts. Can apps come to your aid and get you through the day? Here's one man's shopping day from hell, plus apps.

I dial up the Thrutu app and call my brother. Now, this is already a small knock on the app. If I'd called him via the regular phone interface and had then decided I wanted to share the pictures of the wine rack via Thrutu, I would have had to call him back via the app. I couldn't just fire it up mid-call. iPhone apps are built in such a way that these sorts of silos are almost required, so its not as much Thrutu's fault as the way iOS was designed. But it is an annoying extra step.

Regardless, as we talk, Thrutu lets me call up the pictures that I'd snapped of the wine racks and share them with my brother. As we talk (on speakerphone which is a little annoying for the people around me, so I did walk to corner of the store), he flips through the photos on his end and gives me his feedback. He tells me about another wine rack he'd seen at William Sonoma. He quickly jumps on the web, and since the app also allows us to share browsers, I am able to see the model he's talking about. We decide that mom is probably more into the cherry wood than the metal.

I hang up, grab the wine rack off the showroom floor and realize that I can’t just buy this thing without making sure I’m getting the best deal possible.