safari.oreilly.com (Score 1)

This is a totally unsolicited plug:

Safari is O'Reilly's online, fully-searchable book database. It has about 350 titles available already, including some non-O'Reilly books.

They don't have a formal automated gift subscription yet, but if you go there and phone customer service you can have them help you set up an account that starts empty, is billed to you with receipts to your email address, but is owned by someone else's name and email address.

Only thing is, they bill monthly, so at some point you have to cut off the subscription manually. Hopefully by that point the giftee will be hooked :-)

I just did this earlier today, so I know it works.