I second the Eye-Fi. I keep begging my mother to let me set her up with one, but she's resistant to technology change.

It's too bad, because for people like my mom, the Eye-Fi is magical. You simply bring the camera home, sit it on your desk, and power it on. All the photos are automatically transferred to the computer in a folder structure you define (I have it set for YYYY-MM-DD). Like Phoenix42 said, you then have the My Pictures directory (or wherever they're saved) set to backup and it's all automated. Much easier than having them move SD cards around.

I have one in my camera, but I'm probably going to move away from it because I want to shoot in RAW+JPEG, and RAW files take an eternity to transfer. JPEGs are pretty quick, though.

The other primary selling point of the Eye-Fi, though (at least the high-end ones) is the automatic geotagging. On the high-end cards, you get a lifetime geotagging service. It's not GPS, but it does an amazing job at estimating based on surrounding WiFi. Honestly, it's pretty impressive. It's fast, and it seems to get the location in even the most unlikely places. Anyway, it's a great feature for the parents.