The link emailing sounds like a nice idea. To be honest I'm kind of fishing for a Christmas present too. I think a book would be a good way of introducing it to him. It actually seems quite odd that there isn't a book that performs this function, or even a website that gives you a guide to getting set up on the net from the ground up.
There must be thousands (millions?) of people out there who'd like to get involved, but are stuck outside of the net.