The thing about technology is that it isn't inherently good or bad, it's how we choose to use it that makes it so. This has been true since the first humans picked up a bone and fashioned a hammer. Some used it to build, and others to kill. So it is with the web -- except the killing part, maybe. We've seen some great stuff like Google's search engine, Delicious bookmarks and Pandora's music engine. But then there's the low barrier to making web pages, spawning the sort of nightmares you'll find at Alek's Controllable Christmas Lights for Celiac Disease.

Now look, I'm not trashing Alek's work with Christmas lights (personally I love web-controlled lights and the hobbyists who do these light shows are really dedicated) and I'm certainly not saying Celiac disease is a cause unworthy of attention. I only wish Alek hadn't chosen the following things for his site:

• Autoplay MIDI music
• Cutesy javascript cursor follow
• Dense text everywhere
• Wacky fonts from 1996

These are the web equivalents of polyester suits. Cute when worn as a joke, not so cute when used at a serious job interview. Same here: a redesign might bring more awareness to Celiac disease, a tough condition which requires a gluten-free diet.

Ultimately the question becomes one of content vs. presentation. Does poor presentation trump content, or does great content rise above bad presentation? I found a nice summary of this notion from 2006 at LukeW's site:

Many sites with a poor visual presentation remain popular on the merits of their content alone. But does their audience enjoy bumping through the site's awkward graphics and hard to read labels? No, but the personality of the content (it could be high quality, funny, worthwhile, and more) makes the rest bearable. Would their audience be happier if the personality of the presentation matched the personality of the content? Of course.

Perhaps a designer could donate some time to making Alek's site visibly more manageable? Alek's site is already pretty famous, so I can't help but think that a facelift would help his cause.

The whole thing started in 1955 when Sears misprinted a phone number to call Santa and kids everywhere got connected to the Continental Defense Command hotline. Instead of being angry, CONAD workers gave kids updates of Santa's progress around the world and a tradition was born.

In the 50 years since then, a lot has changed. CONAD became the North American Aerospace Defense Command or NORAD for starters. Since 1998 kids no longer needed to call Santa, they could simply get hourly updates on the internet. And this year, you can even hear about Santa's progress on Twitter!

Because NORAD has teamed up with Google you can see Santa flying over highly detailed Google maps. It is easy to pick out landmarks if Santa flies over an area you are familiar with. You can even see photos of places Santa has flown past with Panoramio photos linked to the map.

You can download a special KML that will let you track Santa in 3D this year and the site has lots off answers to questions kids might have. You can even check out the snack counter to see how many cookies Santa has had so far today!

Check out what we've written before about the Santa Tracker and find out how Google and NORAD teamed up to give us so many Santa tracking options. .

Do you need a quick solution for those Christmas cards you haven't sent yet? Grandma and Aunt Betty might not be ready for e-cards but I'm guessing a lot of people on your list will enjoy them. You can suggest you are being eco-friendly by saving paper if they complain.

The first important factor in e-cards is that they should be free. I am not interested in paying for them - for that I could send regular cards. Also required would be a distinct lack of hokey poetry and lame music. Here are some possibilities:

• Card Funk turns your photos into dancing, animated cards. The only annoyance I found here was that I had to resize a lot of my photos to make them usable. Card Funk is not into working with big files and images have to be less than 500kb to be usable. You can really customize the characters and layout of the card as well as the text and music.
  
• Phreetings (Photo + Greetings) is pretty basic and gives you a link to send for others to view the card you have created. Not quite as simple as a card arriving in the inbox but the photos available are pretty interesting and have a more international flair.
• Some ecards for "when you care enough to hit send" with sentiments like "I'll never be the secret Santa you deserve" and "Thanks for giving me a gift I don't have to return." No sappy poetry and lame music here. The site offers Christmas and Hanukkah cards as well as New Year cards in case you can't get others out in time for Christmas.

Where are your holiday cards coming from this year?

NORAD's Santa Tracker is back, and with only four days till the big day, the NORAD website has many fun things for your kids (and you, we won't tell). We've mentioned the site in previous years; Thankfully, there will be no semi-celebrity greetings section this year.

Visitors can take a stroll through Santa's North Pole village and click on the downtown shops for fun games and activities. Including Mrs. Claus' Alphabet soup typing test, an illustrated PDF Elf story and a snowboarding game.

After using Microsoft Visual Earth for last year's high-tech tracking, this year NORAD will display it's tracking info via Google Earth. Last year, Google provided its own tracking data, unaffiliated with NORAD. An iGoogle module is also available so you can track Santa from the comfort of your Google homepage.

The Santa Tracking Control Center kicks off operations on 2:00am MTN Christmas Eve and lets you track Santa live as he navigates the globe. If you're left wondering, as we were, why the multi-billion dollar NORAD defense operation would burn time and resources tracking harmless lil' Santa Claus, there's actually a rich and storied history behind it all.

NORAD's Santa Tracker site is up and running for 2006 and counting down the seconds until Christmas Eve. The site has been beefed up over previous years with info and history about NORAD and the Santa Tracker, some downloads, maps, music, and activities. Most interesting, perhaps (until the actual tracking begins, at least), is the Celebrities section, which features video greetings from folks like Dick Van Patten, Edward James Olmos, George Lopez, Joey Lawrence, Leeza Gibbons, Michael Bolton, and many more who I think will be far more recognizable to people younger than myself.

Last year Google got in on the act with a Google Earth Santa tracker, but there's no word yet whether there will be an encore for 2006.

Update: That was fast. Commenter Chris points us to Google's Santa Tracker and Toy Hunt site for 2006.

By popular demand--okay, by demand--we've collected all 24 of our 12 Days of Holiday Downloads posts into one convenient package. And just because it is the season of giving, we've included pointers to some of the other seasonal software we've covered, too. Because really, three days before Christmas, what's better than one-stop shopping?

I'll also give you my picks for the best of the bunch.

See the full list after the jump.

Are you right into the Holiday Spirit? Decorating everything in sight and singing good old fashioned Christmas songs? Or even if you have had it with all the crazy shoppers this time of the year, Google can brighten your season. If you do celebrate, Google wants to help you get into the festive mood with a list of holiday gadgets aimed at the holiday season. How would you like to decorate your Google Desktop with your very own Christmas tree, one that you can actually decorate yourself? Maybe you need a reminder to how many days are left in the year? Try out a Countdown to New Year's calendar. Or maybe you would like a pretty little clock with Santa in the middle that plays a Christmas Carol every hour? You can get them all care of Google's Desktop Gadgets.

For our 12th day of Mac downloads, I have a very merry Mac Christmas screensaver: Skyrocket Software's Frosted. Why is it so very merry Mac? Because it features a talking snowman and talking Santa that use the the Mac's built-in Text-to-Speech interface. And best of all for Mac geeks, they use two of the most traditional Mac voices: Bruce for the Snowman, Fred for Santa. Actually, the synthesized voices are a little creepy. Fun creepy, though, in a way that takes you right back to OS 9. The sprite-based animation will take you back, too. But isn't that what the holidays are all about, tradition?

All jokes aside, though, that Mac geek on your Christmas list (maybe your inner Mac geek?) will get a kick out of it.

The free version is fully functional and not even nagware. The $5.00 registration will turn on some sound options and let the snowman say your name.

Previous 12 Days of holidays downloads for OS X:
Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5, Day 6, Day 7, Day 8, Day 9, Day 10, Day 11

It's a sad day here at Download Squad: the final day of our 12 days of holiday downloads. But it's not goodbye, it's "'til next year." And since it's never to soon to start planning conspicuous consumerism--or at least conspicuousness--as our parting shot I leave you Holidaysoft's Holiday Lights Designer 3.

HLD will take a series of pictures of a building and form a 3D model on which you can hang lights and decorations to plot out your holiday display. There are a number of preset lighting combinations including minibulbs and old-fashioned C9 and C37 bulbs, or you can add your own lighting configurations and decorations. When you're done decorating, you can view the model in different ambient lighting conditions and even through snow and fog. And when you have it just right you can use the scale tool to figure out exactly how many feet of which kinds of lights strings to put where. For the true Christmas addict, this is an ideal way to weather those long months of withdrawl until the lights go back up next Novemember.

The free five day trial is fun to play around with. If you think $49 is too much for the full version, though, you're probably right. It's not that the designers don't deserve it; there's actually been a lot of thought and effort put into the interface and functionality. It's a pretty slick little program. But we're talking about Christmas lights. If you design light displays for a living and need mock-ups to show clients, though, HLD might be money well spent.

Previous 12 Days of holiday downloads for Windows:
Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5, Day 6, Day 7, Day 8, Day 9, Day 10, Day 11

Today's Mac download is A Very 3D Christmas Screensaver by Rob Bennet of Useless Creations. As 3D screensavers go, this one is pretty well done. You get to watch Santa fly through the sky and hop down chimneys from a number of different angles and the OpenGL rendering is fast and smooth. The saver will play your choice of Christmas carol (from a predefined list of 50+) and counts down the second to Christmas at you locale.

It is nagware (full version is $7.50), but it's not crippleware, and as an added bonus there's a Windows version, too, if you roll that way.

Previous 12 Days of holidays downloads for OS X:
Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5, Day 6, Day 7, Day 8, Day 9, Day 10

Today's holiday downloads is Free New Year ScreenSaver from Download for Free. It's not the world's most sophisticated saver, but it has falling snow, and anyone who's been following this feature knows I'm a sucker for that. And it plays the Twelve Days of Christmas, which just seems appropriate.

Previous 12 Days of holiday downloads for Windows:
Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5, Day 6, Day 7, Day 8, Day 9, Day 10

Santa is coming to Google Earth! And its up to you to find the treasures that Santa's elves have left all over Google Earth! Starting December 12th, and finishing up on December 24th, a clue will appear outside of Santa's North Pole workshop every day. If you can solve it, you will be lead to a toy hiding in Google's satellite imagery. Don't worry if you get stuck, the whereabouts will be revealed the next day, when the next clue gets dropped. What are you waiting for? Start hunting!

Today's Mac timewaster is Dracosoft's Christmas Sudoku. I'm not usually a big fan of Sudoko, personally. I don't need to spend my free time looking at numbers in a grid. Isn't that what Excel is for? The folks at Dracosoft, though, replaced the traditional numbers with colorful Christmas icons. That I can get into. If you're already into Sudoku, the three levels of gameplay should provide hours of fun. If you're not hooked yet, this may just be the thing that drives you over the edge into obsession.

The price tag is $5.99, with a one-hour free trial.

Previous 12 Days of holidays downloads for OS X:
Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5, Day 6, Day 7, Day 8

Today's Windows download is Desktop Christmas Tree from Drive Software. It's exactly what it sounds like: a little Christmas Tree that sits in a floating window. Now all you PC users who've been feeling left out since I posted the OS X Christmas Trees can get in on the fun. Or at least most of it: DCT isn't configurable like its Mac brethren. But it's cute and Christmasy, so who's counting?

Previous 12 Days of holiday downloads for Windows:
Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5, Day 6, Day 7, Day 8

Today's bit of Windows Christmas time-wasting is Christmas Tale from Alive Games. The objective here is to solve a bunch of puzzles that involve stacking gift boxes and blocks of ice to allow Santa to get to the tree. The trial comes with a handful of puzzles. If you get addicted, there's a full version with 20 or so levels.

Previous 12 Days of holiday downloads for Windows:
Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5, Day 6, Day 7