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Eye-Fi has invited a few guests to write blog posts on a variety of topics providing information that we hope you will find useful. This week we’re featuring Carley Knobloch of Digitwirl.com, who has some great smartphone app recommendations to help you save time and ease stress during the holidays.

‘Tis the season to be jolly, and every year I vow to keep a calm, joyful disposition through the holidays. But whether it’s hosting a family get together (stress!) or buying the perfect gift for everyone on my list (pressure!), or keeping my cool in a crowd-infested mall (stress and pressure!), it’s just a matter of time before I start to lose it. Luckily, everything I need to remedy my holiday angst is right in my Smartphone. Here are a few of my biggest holiday headaches, and the apps that help me survive with my sanity intact.

Keeping track of gift ideas (and budget).
Gift Plan (iPhone; $2.99)

When holiday time rolls around, the pressure is on to get the perfect gift for everyone on your list. Why not ease the burden and use Gift Plan, a gorgeously-designed app that makes easy work of tracking what your friends and family like, what their clothing sizes are, and what gift ideas might be perfect for a birthday, anniversary, holiday, or any other occasion you want to track. As you move Ideas into your shopping list, it tracks what you’re spending by occasion, so you can be mindful of how much the holidays are costing you.

Finding last-minute gifts locally.
Milo (iPhone, Android; FREE)

As the holidays get closer and closer, at some point ordering stuff online is no longer an option… unless you enjoy exorbitant fees for expedited shipping. For all you procrastinators who clamor to find last-minute gifts, the Milo app is for you. It scans the shelves of local retailers (American Apparel, Toys’R’Us, Nordstrom, BestBuy and JCPenney to name a few), and will tell you exactly where you can find the item you’re looking for— nearby and in stock. No more fruitless wild-goose-chases around town!

Negotiating the airport.
Kayak (iPhone, iPad, Blackberry, Anroid, more, FREE)

Remember when airline travel was a care-free way to kick off a holiday? Yeah, me neither. From keeping track of my itineraries (ALL our relatives are on the opposite coast, so we always have a trip or two pending), to searching for flights, hotels, cars on the fly (pun intended) to tracking flights while they’re in the air, the Kayak app is my very favorite travel companion. Well, that and hand sanitizer.

Sharing and storing the memories.
Eye-Fi App (iPhone/iPad, Android, FREE) and Eye-Fi X2 Wireless Memory Cards ($49.99 and up)

The elation of digital photography has a dark side… the time-consuming chore of downloading those pictures from the camera, storing and sharing them. If you’ve ever wished you could combine the gorgeous pictures from your D-SLR with the “instant share” convenience of your smartphone, then Eye-Fi has the solution. Just pop one of their memory cards into your camera and then snap holiday pictures to your heart’s content. Using the Eye-Fi mobile app and the card’s Direct Mode technology, the pictures are instantly (magically!) transferred from your camera to your iPhone, iPad or Android device, where they’re a tap-swipe away from being shared to the web, via text-message or uploaded to your computer.

Getting a good night’s sleep.
Sleep Cycle Alarm Clock (iPhone, $0.99)

The holidays can really compromise my sleep schedule, what with the relentless schedule of all-night partying (okay, more like all-night gift wrapping and sugar cookie baking). I desperately need to wake up fully rested and ready to face the mall sales, but a RRRRIINGGGG!!! isn’t exactly a soothing start to my day. Sleep Cycle Alarm Clock aspires to solve my sleep woes. Tuck your phone under your pillow and it monitors your sleep cycle and picks the least-disruptive time to wake you up. And the stats it keeps help you evaluate and improve your sleep habits over time, so you can keep up the good work into the new year.

Carley Knobloch is a personal tech expert and Chief Twirler at Digitwirl.com. Digitwirl is the go-to source for busy women who are too busy to read manuals and want technology to “just work”. Carley is a regular contributor for Lifetime’s The Balancing Act and she’s offered her tech tips on ABC News and Fox News. When she’s not scouring the virtual globe for next revolutionary gadget or life-changing website or app, she can be found wailing on her RockBand drum kit. Her husband and two children are often allowed to play too.

Inspired? We love hearing about how you use your Eye-Fi card. Our User Highlights allow you to share your Eye-Fi story with us. If you’d like to be showcased, please send us an email at mystory@eye.fi. We’ll even throw in some cool stickers!

This week, we’re excited to introduce Greg, a DJ who livens up parties with the help of Eye-Fi.

Name: Greg Barrett Location: Birmingham, Alabama Website: www.myeventdj.com Owner of: An Eye-Fi Pro X2 with a Nikon D60.

What’s your favorite Eye-Fi feature?
The ease of the transferring pictures in real time from the camera to the PC.

What’s your Eye-Fi story?
I own a DJ business and part of our services at weddings is to take candid pictures of the reception and display the pictures in a slide show with a monitor on the DJ table. Before, my wife would walk around, take pictures, and then come back to me and hand me the SD card. I would take the card and insert it into my PC and download the pictures. Now – with the Eye-Fi card, she can continue to walk around taking shots, the pictures are automatically downloaded to my PC, and the slide show is updated in real time. This makes her job easier and makes the enjoyment of the pictures instantaneous. The Eye-Fi card was a great addition to our equipment and makes things so much easier for us. Thanks for such a great piece of technology in such a small package!

A photo recently uploaded with Eye-Fi

If you could gift an Eye-Fi card, who would you give it to?
A fellow DJ that is trying to do what we do.

Inspired? We love hearing about how you use your Eye-Fi card. Our User Highlights allow you to share your Eye-Fi story with us. If you’d like to be showcased, please send us an email at mystory@eye.fi. We’ll even throw in some cool stickers!

This week, we’re excited to introduce Beau, blogger of local culinary traditions.

Name: Beau Dealy Location: Hays, Kansas Blog: somethingedible.com Microblog: bitesof.somethingedible.com Owner of: An Eye-Fi Pro X2 with a Nikon D90.

How did you hear about Eye-Fi?
I’m a bit of a gadget hound. I’ve known about Eye-Fi for a while, and remembered to check it out when I was looking at photo workflow solutions.

What’s your favorite Eye-Fi feature?
The flexibility to send a photo wherever I need it to be. It’s why I bought the card!

What’s your Eye-Fi story?
I’ve been using my card as a part of my regular blogging workflow for the better part of a year now. I blog weekly over at somethingedible.com, but for those smaller daily updates, I also microblog at bitesof.somethingedible.com. My microblog is posterous-based, so I author mostly from my inbox and my mobile device.

After a few weeks of working in the format, it was pretty apparent that my camera phone wasn’t going to cut it in the quality department. So I took a chance and bought an Eye-Fi Pro X2. Now, when shooting food photography on the go or in the kitchen, I mark the my good shots on my DSLR, which in turn emails me a copy (via PixelPipe) that is accessible anywhere I can get to my email. With the power of Eye-Fi, I’ve been able to post quality content to my blog from laptops, netbooks, tablets, and smartphones alike. Blog posts come together quickly, and I still get that professional look to my photos. In short, Eye-Fi has become an indispensable tool to the way I blog. Thank you Eye-Fi!

One of Beau’s amazing culinary creations

I have a family to feed, they don’t wanna wait for me to process pictures while dinner gets cold. Whether it’s meatloaf or taco night, with Eye-Fi, I’m able to instantly send those perfect ‘keeper’ shots to my laptop while I’m slinging hash.

Microblogging is all about those ephemeral sparks of inspiration. If I want to share the best pizza I ever made, or give friends a taste of hamburger nirvana, I just tag my photos on my D90 to send ‘em straight to my inbox to share after the dishes are done.

If you could gift an Eye-Fi card, who would you give it to?
I’d love to see what other aspiring food bloggers could do with Eye-Fi. There’s a lot of potential for creativity in content delivery!

Inspired? We love hearing about how you use your Eye-Fi card. Our User Highlights allow you to share your Eye-Fi story with us. If you’d like to be showcased, please send us an email at mystory@eye.fi. We’ll even throw in some cool stickers!

This week, we’re excited to introduce Travis, who uses Eye-Fi cards to share his sports photography with fans.

Name: Travis Lang Location: Alexandria, Minnesota Websites: tlangphoto.com Owner of: An Eye-Fi Pro X2 with a Canon 1D Mark III.

How did you hear about Eye-Fi?
A few years ago I came across the Eye-Fi website and instantly realized the potential of the card.

What’s your Eye-Fi story?
I use my Eye-fi Pro X2 card with my iPad to instantly transfer photos from my camera during soccer games. I keep my iPad in my shoulder bag while I’m shooting a game and at any time I can pull it out to show players or parents pictures of something that just happened on the field. No waiting or trying to show a group of people a picture on a tiny 3″ camera screen.

Pairing my Canon 1D Mark III with the Eye-Fi card opens up a world of possibilities past what any other system can do!

A photo from a recent soccer game.

If you could gift an Eye-Fi card, who would you give it to?
I would definitely gift a Eye-Fi card to Tommy Czeschin, Pro snowboarder & wakesurfer. He is a friend of mine that I have met many times and he is always on the go. He is also currently on the show “The Amazing race” so the convenience of an Eye-Fi card would fit perfectly with his lifestyle.

Inspired? We love hearing about how you use your Eye-Fi card. Our User Highlights allow you to share your Eye-Fi story with us. If you’d like to be showcased, please send us an email at mystory@eye.fi. We’ll even throw in some cool stickers!

This week, we’re excited to introduce Janice, who tells the story of how her husband discovered the magic of Eye-Fi cards.

Name: Janice Allen and her husband Bob Location: Scottsdale, Arizona Owner of: An Eye-Fi Explore X2 card with a Canon PowerShot SD1200 IS.

What’s your Eye-Fi story?

For his birthday my husband was gifted an Eye-Fi card from friends. We tease Bob all the time about not being very savvy with technology. He calls me his LAN administrator because I have to fix his computer if there is a problem. When his office first got computers, they gave him one and he tried to get them to take his away. One of the comments he made was: “Why do you have to click on the ’start’ button to turn the computer off. There should be an ‘off’ button?”

Not surprisingly, “Computer technology is not user-friendly” is my husband’s common complaint. Not true with Eye-Fi, however! It is absolutely user-friendly. He calls it ‘magic’ whenever he walks into his office and turns on his camera. ‘Magically’ the pictures appear on his computer!

A photo from a recent trip…

Taken in Venice … of the friends (Betty and Bill) who were the generous souls who bought Bob the Eye-Fi card. They got an Eye-Fi card for themselves and realized how perfect it would be for Bob, so they bought him one!