Help us manage our Christmas lists

December 3, 2008 9:32 AM

I am trying to find a site that will help the family manage our Christmas lists. 6 family members. Unique logins. Each member can input their lists and everyone else in our group can see it. Now, when I buy a present for someone, I would like everyone else to be able to see that I already bought that present, EXCEPT for the person that I bought the present for. For example, if I see my brother wants an MP3 player, and I buy one, my sister can check the site/list and see the MP3 player has been taken. But, I do not want my brother to be able to see that anyone else bought that present. Emailing while viable, is messy. Any ideas?
posted by twistedmetal to Shopping (9 answers total)

Amazon wish lists provide this functionality, I believe.
posted by Tomorrowful at 9:35 AM on December 3, 2008

Yeah, Amazon. They now have a feature where you can add any item on the web to your Amazon wishlist (ie: it doesn't have to be sold by Amazon). The feature is called their Universal Wish List.
posted by anastasiav at 9:40 AM on December 3, 2008

Each family member could set up a wiki with his list, and then promise not to look at his own list as he's buying gifts for others and updating their lists. I've used pbwiki.com in the past with reasonable satisfaction.
posted by Dec One at 9:42 AM on December 3, 2008

Or WishList.Com.

Does anybody know - with Amazon's Universal Wish List, will it show up if someone purchases something from the third-party merchant linked from your page?
posted by canine epigram at 10:02 AM on December 3, 2008

nthing amazon and universal wishlists. it's what i came in to suggest.
posted by misanthropicsarah at 10:20 AM on December 3, 2008

Years ago, I got frustrated with how Mrs. Advicepig's family had a crazy list system for the holidays, so I wrote a simple web app that did all that you required. After a few years, that web host gave up the ghost and instead of rewriting it for php, we switched to Kaboodle. I couldn't be happier. It's really nice in that you can add things from any site and even add things that aren't online at all.
posted by advicepig at 10:29 AM on December 3, 2008

I don't have a specific suggestion, but depending on how web/tech savvy your family is, you may want to consider something that can be viewed easily using a cell phone or other portable device. That way, when they are in the store, they can check the list then and there.
posted by melissa at 12:51 PM on December 3, 2008

Amazon's wishlist is awesome -- but I don't like the Universal Wish List that much.. It just doesn't integrate as well..

Another option is Wishlistr
posted by majikstreet at 4:04 PM on December 3, 2008

You could do this very easily with google notebook. Everyone would have to have a gmail account. You can invite people to collaborate on a note (so then you would have 6 notes each with 5 collaborators). It would take a little while to set up but you could use it year after year. And for birthdays.
posted by cda at 6:32 PM on December 3, 2008