Five Apps to Make Your Holiday Shopping Easier

Holiday shopping can be stressful and time consuming. Fortunately, in this age of the mobile device there are several apps to make the shopping experience easier. For example, if you get to the store and find that the item you had on your list for your sister is sold out, you can whip out your Droid or iPhone and see where else you can find it on sale or look up a different gift idea altogether via a customized record of your sister's likes and dislikes. Here are five apps that are particularly helpful.

Gift Plan enables you to keep track of everyone on your list. You can save gift ideas and also track what you have bought them already so you aren't giving Aunt Kate the same thing every year.

Price Check lets you compare the price of a product in any store to what it's selling for on Amazon. You can take a picture of the item or even just scan the barcode and the Amazon price will be displayed instantly.

Shopkick is a rewards program app that gives you points ("kicks") for simply walking into stores. You can turn your kicks into gift cards or use them to make donations to charitable organizations. Stores that are currently participating include Target, Macy's, Old Navy, Best Buy and others, with more being added all the time.

The viewpoints app puts millions of product reviews at your fingertips. Use it to look up the actual opinions of other consumers before you buy, or to help you choose between several brands while you're standing in the store looking at them.

Holiday Gift Guide is a app that has 70 plus age-appropriate gift ideas chosen by the editors of Common Sense. This is very handy when shopping for people you don't know very well.