The holidays are here—a time for love, peace, joy and shopping—when everyone seems to be hunting for the greatest gift, planning the perfect party, and enjoying the season with friends and family.

Here at GCI, we’re reflecting on the most memorable newsmakers and trendsetters of the year, the ever-changing ways we consume news and services, and the hottest trends on the horizon for 2011. Read on for a quick sip of inspiration and discover emerging concepts in art, design, music, fashion and culture by following us on Twitter throughout the season.

Happy Holidays and cheers to a dazzling year ahead!

- Denise Brunsdon, Director of Social Media, GCI Canada

1. 4-D Shopping

Consumers in NYC were recently treated to a spectacular and magical holiday shopping experience. In celebration of 10 years of digital innovation, Ralph Lauren presented the ultimate fusion of art, fashion and technology in an awesome visual feast for the senses. Watch as the flagship store is transformed into a series of objects and images rendered in 4-D space.

2.  Mobile Shopping Assistants

Retailers like Target and Steve Madden are making it possible for busy holiday shoppers to check product stock and pricing without having to flag down a sales associate. With downloadable apps and live texting support, you’re sure to have a far less stressful in-store shopping experience soon.

3. Artvertising

Improved reality or augmented reality is part of our near future and artvertising is a software platform for replacing billboard advertisements with art in real-time. It works by recognizing individual advertisements and replacing them with alternative images and video.

Twitterize for the Holidays

Looking for the perfect present for your social media intern or tweetheart little niece? Survival of the Hippest makes Twitter ID and hashtag accessories, including necklaces, key chains, pins and more. Prices start around $50 and depend upon the level of customization.

A Season of Graffiti

During the 1970s and 80s, photographers Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant captured the burgeoning New York City graffiti movement. Their bestselling book Subway Art is now available in a large-scale, deluxe format heightening the visual impact of their iconic images.

Graffiti artist Banksy has become one of pop culture’s greatest icons. Is he a genius or a criminal? Exit Through the Gift Shop follows the attempts of an eccentric L.A. thrift shop owner to capture the ever-elusive Banksy at work.

For the launch of his new autobiography Decoded, hip-hop artist and entrepreneur Jay-Z turned the marketing of his memoir into an interactive art show and scavenger hunt that rewarded his most die-hard fans and generated media buzz in the music world.

Excerpts and entire pages from the book appeared unannounced in various locales that were referenced throughout the book. Pages appeared on tablecloths at The Spotted Pig in New York, on a vintage Cadillac Seville in Queens, on a rooftop in New Orleans, a pool bottom in Miami, a custom Nets jersey, and even in a limited-edition black leather Gucci jacket. Fans who found any of the 320 pages of Decoded scattered through 13 different cities got a chance to win concert tickets!

How can you engage the public with your brand or product in a viral, artistic and unexpected way?

If you need to organize an impromptu meeting during the holidays, doing it online may be your only option. There are a host of companies offering web conferencing facilities, but DimDim is all-platform-friendly, 100% browser based and user-friendly.

Box.net enables you to access all of the digital content on your office computer online through a file and folder system, so you can avoid a Christmas morning trip to the office because you saved the latest version of that PPT on your desktop.

Flowdock is a team communication and collaboration tool. It offers features that enable you to keep track of what’s been talked about, shared and decided even if you weren’t online at the time. Within Flowdock, you can use @mentions and hashtags to monitor conversations, making it possible to know at a glance what the team has chatted about.

If you don’t want to disappear from the social media scene or miss mentions during the holidays, SocialOomph allows you to schedule tweets and Facebook updates, as well as blog posts to go live while you’re out of the office.