A few shopping-related items, in advance of Black Friday and Cyber Monday

By Scott Kirsner, Globe Columnist

• Custom jewelry maker Gemvara was featured last Sunday on Oprah Winfrey's "Favorite Things 2012" cable special; Winfrey picked a pair of "naked cushion triple earrings" that range in price from $1109 to $1688, depending on what gemstone the buyer wants. Gemvara founder Matt Lauzon explains that it wasn't a paid placement, exactly: "One of Oprah's people spotted Gemvara and the earrings at a party our PR team hosted, and brought them to Oprah." Winfrey wore the earrings on the show, and gave a pair to everyone in the audience. "That piece was very cool, because they were all spouses of members of the military," Lauzon says.

• Boston-based Kickscout released a new version of its mobile app earlier this month. It lets you snap pictures of products you might want to buy in a store — say, a group gift for grandma — and share them with others to get feedback. If your bigger concern is making sure you get what you want, you can also use Kickscout to keep a visual "wish list" of gifts you'd like to receive.

• FashionPlaytes, a Beverly startup, just introduced a holiday line of apparel and accessories for tween girls, above. All the items can be customized.

• A great destination for unique gifts is Lexington-based Daily Grommet. Paper robot kits designed by former Nintendo engineers? Ceramic bowls that look like cantaloupes and grapefruits? A hand-dyed silk scarf whose purchase helps support women's initiatives in India? This well-curated site is full of stuff you won't find at the mall.

• Likelii founder Radhika Dutt describes her Cambridge startup pretty simply: it does for wine what Pandora does for music, suggesting brands you may like based on what you already know you enjoy. The company raised $450,000 earlier this year, and Dutt says that Likelii will soon offer a mobile app, in addition to its website. Likelii offers free shipping when you order more than $100 worth of wine... and who doesn't need $100 worth of wine to get through the holidays?

• Earlier this month, I wrote about the two cable TV ads that Back Bay merchant Wayfair is running this holiday season. One was made by an edgy San Francisco ad agency, the other by a pair of Wayfair employees who are responsible for shooting all the company's in-house video. In my online vote, more than 80 percent of you said you preferred the one shot by the employees.

• Yes, this might be the final holiday season that Massachusetts residents can shop tax-free on Amazon.com. The silver lining: Amazon continues to add jobs at its Cambridge research-and-development outpost, and a Woburn division devoted to warehouse technology (Kiva Systems, which Amazon acquired back in March.) I counted eighteen open positions at those two locations.

• For gadget hounds who like to be the first on their block to get something new, there's the Equiso smart TV system. For $79, it turns your regular TV into a smart TV capable of viewing web video from sites like Hulu or Netflix; playing games like DrawSomething; updating your Facebook status; or bidding on an eBay auction. (Equiso requires that you have a WiFi network at home and a TV that has a USB port.) The Equiso package comes with a nifty remote control with a few simple buttons on the front, and a full QWERTY keyboard on the back. The Cambridge startup raised $240,000 earlier this year on Kickstarter.