Our own Jane Tuv put FedEx, UPS and the US post office to the test for the latest savings experiment to find out how to best get your gifts to their intended recipients this holiday season. Her results may surprise you -- watch below and see how waiting it out in line at your local post office may not be the best option. For the details of her experiment, click here.


For more savings experiments, click here.

Does Chris Brogan not want to do business with you? Does he think you are not worthy? Maybe you just offended him by trying to poke him in the chest with your business card after he spoke at an event that you attended.

If you're in the new media business, you've probably crossed paths with Brogan, the co-author of New York Times Bestseller "Trust Agents," but your success in getting him to remember your name and maybe do business with you depends on knowing what he thinks about business card etiquette, which we learned when we stopped him at the hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center after his keynote address at Blog World '09.

The dismal viewer numbers facing TV networks and advertisers this fall are leading them to do all sorts of tricks to keep putting dollars in the pockets of the entertainment companies and products in front of the eyeballs of consumers. One ramped up approach this season is the integrated product placement that goes so far into the story that shows are weaving story lines around the items.

Of course, this is nothing new. Millions of people have been staring at Coke glasses in front of the judges on American Idol for years, and it was more than 25 years ago that E.T. parceled out Reese's Pieces on the big screen for big bucks. But this year's efforts, as detailed in the L.A. Times, go much further, creating side shows (pun intended) -- like Desperate Housewives extra scene involving Sprint and a Heroes subplot about a Palm Pre.

Now that they've gone through all the states, the US Mint is gearing up to release 56 new commemorative quarters called the "America the Beautiful" series starting in 2010 and running through 2021. The coins will go in date order of when the various parks, memorials and destinations were established, which means the first one up is Hot Springs National Park in Arkansas (which was actually designated before Yellowstone).

No doubt collectors will abound and you'll soon find collector's boards on As Seen on TV commercials. The AP reports that U.S. Mint Director Ed Moy has said 147 million people collected state quarters ranging from Delaware in 1999 to Hawaii in 2008, making the program very popular. But Vance the Coin Specialist from Marblehead, Mass. says it's going to be "a very, very long time" before any of these commemorative quarters are worth anything more than 25 cents. "Think about it as if you were living in 1850, and it's going to take until now before your coin is considered rare," he says.

The mint has yet to release the designs of the quarters (there will no doubt be much fanfare for that...), but in the meantime, we offer you photos of the first ten locations to be honored, to spark your imaginations. Send us your suggestions for designs (either your flowery prose or attach a sketch). And we'll see if we can influence the government for you!

Depending on the state you live in, your wheels may be more likely to be stolen. In Arizona, the most stolen vehicle is a Dodge Ram Pickup. In Washington, it's a Honda Accord. Based on a study from the National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB), we take a look at the 10 most stolen vehicles overall, and by state.

Click through our photo gallery and see which cars the thieves in your state fancy most.

Not all piggy banks are bad, but the old-fashioned kind with one slot for putting in coins have had their day. "Think about it – what does a one-slot piggy bank ask a child to do? Save? I don't think so," says Susan Beacham, founder and CEO of Money Savvy Generation, a company set up to teach financial education to children. "Nowhere on a one-slot bank is the word 'save'. Ah, you say, it is implied. Really? Ask a child the next time he or she places a newly acquired coin in the slot why they are making that deposit. Get ready for a blank stare."

Give a kid a one-slot piggy bank and they may actually save when you ask, but Beacham's theory is that they aren't actually aware of what they are doing when they are putting money into that slot. And they have no concept why they are doing it or what they are saving for. The money goes in the slot and you get a blank stare.

There was a time when I was addicted to soap operas, and the ones I liked were on two different channels. Children of the new millennium won't understand the dilemma here. But for a certain period of time, this presented an impossible challenge. My VCR could be set to record for a certain period of time, but it couldn't change channels in mid-stream. So I could get Days of Our Lives but not Another World, or vice versa, but not both.

What was a young addict to do? Technology saved the day in the form of a little gizmo that attached to my VCR with an infrared device that could be programmed to change the channel at a certain time. Then came VCRs that accepted codes from VCRPlus+ -- printed in your local newspaper -- that could tell your VCR to record particular programs and change the channel for you.

It all sounds so sad now.

How many remotes controls do you have in your living room? Three? Four? Seven?

And how many do you lose on a regular basis?

In my house, we've got four -- one that came with the TV, one for the cable box, one for the DVD/VCR player and one for the DVD recorder unit. And I can never put my hands on the one that I want when I want it. So imagine my chagrin when my sisters-in-law chipped in and got us an external sound system for our TV one holiday for a present. It came with four speakers, two boxy units that sat near the TV, and its very own remote. Just what I needed.

When I was a young and foolish bride-to-be, the main excitement I got out of filling out a registry was to concoct an ideal household; you know, the kind with matching dishes I could never afford on my own, linen tablecloths, and every known kitchen gadget. Also on that list, culled from weeks of researching all the advice available on the Web: an iron.

I had never had an iron of my own before. I'm not even sure my parents owned one. I don't remember ever once seeing my mother iron when I was growing up. I certainly never saw my grandmother with one (she didn't even cook). My father and grandfather? Forget about it. My dad wore a button-down blue shirt nearly every day, but my mom bought the kind of wash-and-wear shirts that magically were neat enough if you hung them up right out of the dryer.

But, yet, I felt compelled to add that item to my fantasy household of the future.

Always searching for the best deal around, we asked our readers to name the fast food items they thought delivered the best bang for the buck. We tallied up more than one hundred thousand votes and come up with winners! So click through to see who WalletPop fans picked for the best meal deals...