I don’t know about you, but I kind of feel like the holiday shopping madness actually got a little easier this past Christmas. Sure, it was a hassle trying to buy the right thing for everyone on my list, and when you combined that with the traffic and the crush of people at the malls, it could have really worn me out! But instead of getting worked up with all of the stress, I found out I had a new friend to help with my shopping: my wireless device. I used it to help me track down a couple of things online that I couldn’t find in a store I was in. I used it to find another store and get directions to it from where I was shopping at the time. And yes, I used it to find the closest coffee shop once to take a break and savor a Double Chocolate Chip Frappucino (what the heck… it might be 500 calories but after all of that shopping, I deserved it right?).

Apparently I wasn’t the only one going mobile over the holidays. The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project conducted a survey on how different people used their cell phones to make purchasing decisions over the holidays (the folks over at TechCrunch do a good job at summarizingthe findings). More than half of the people surveyed said they consulted their mobile device for information to help them decide what to buy. Not surprisingly, the younger generation relied more heavily on their phone consultations than the older shoppers. One thing I found interesting is that non-white respondents were more likely to say they used their phone to look up a product than white survey respondents. This goes along with previous findings from Pew that shows minority cell phone users are more likely than their white peers to use their mobile phones to access the Internet. In general, what I think the survey shows is what many of us are experiencing in our lives every day. Wireless makes life easier for us in a lot of different ways, helping us be more productive and efficient than ever before. It also means less-hassle holiday shopping, and who doesn’t love that!