Archive

Archive for July, 2008

Amazon Universal Wish List

July 30th, 2008

I recently discovered: Amazon’s “Add to Universal Wish List”. In a word: Awesome!

The Universal Wish List is pretty much just what it sounds like. You get a bookmarklet which pops up a div over a web page that has something you want to buy. You put in the price, pick a picture and a wish list (if you have more than one), and save it.

Yes, there are clear downsides:

  • It doesn’t track prices
  • It doesn’t know if an item is no longer available

But there are more and equally obvious upsides:

  • No more having accounts at every shopping website to keep a wishlist at those sites
  • Super easy to use
  • Ability to add to any of your wishlists (public and private)
  • Ability to add priorities to all items
  • Centralization!

Honestly, it’s a lot better than my current system of either creating an account at a site (some have stuff that I want frequently, but churn through stock before I make the decision to buy something) or bookmarking pages in del.icio.us (for sites that are probably only going to have one thing I want). I don’t look at my del.icio.us “wishlist” tag as often as you might think. And people who buy me gifts probably look at it even less. But those folks do look at my Amazon wishlist(s). And I look at them too. So, I’m more likely to check for price drops and notice if something is no longer available.

I am waiting to confirm, but it should also add the item to the Amazon Wishlist RSS feed, so then they can show up in things like FriendFeed, Jaiku, etc.

I’m not sure how long this has been around, but it’s great! Not as newsworthy as Amazon’s new Checkout and Simple Pay… but useful to an entirely different segment of the e-commerce market. I am seriously considering investing in some AMZN at this point.

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Netflix streaming on Xbox 360!

July 15th, 2008

That’s what I’m talking about! (TechCrunch)

Netflix is coming to the Xbox 360 this fall. Netflix subscribers will have instant access to over 10,000 movies and TV shows, streamed directly to the Xbox 360 console.

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Powerful Americans vs. Helpless Chinese

July 2nd, 2008

Yes, the title is intended to be dramatic.

First, there’s the feelgood part: Netflix has decided to keep separate profiles for single accounts. As a Netflix subscriber: Thank you. When I heard they were going to eliminate the profiles, I wondered (right after copying my 300+ DVD queue into a an OpenOffice spreadsheet) if there was really a time when taking away the profiles could be justified. I could not think of one. Even when everything that’s available on DVD has been converted to Instant Watch, parents (like the Netflix Product Manager known as “Todd”) will still want separate profiles to prevent their children from checking out the latest soft-core porn that Netflix uploads. (Not that they won’t be able to get it elsewhere, but at least the parents will feel like they have some control)

As they say, The Squeaky Wheel Gets the Grease. And so, as with Serenity, Americans get what they want.

Which brings us to the Chinese. While it hasn’t been confirmed, there are rumors that China has been blocking access to Facebook. Honestly, nothing scares me more than when China decides to block and/or redirect websites. As Cory Doctorow says in his latest Guardian column:

The internet is only that wire that delivers freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of the press in a single connection. It’s only
vital to the livelihood, social lives, health, civic engagement, education and leisure of hundreds of millions of people (and growing every day).

And the government of the world’s most populous country basically gets to control what people can do with that wire.

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Hot Christian Singles?

July 1st, 2008

Here’s a recent Facebook ad:

Okay, in truth, that was just an ad on an application in Facebook, which probably means they just show that to everyone who has the app installed. (Just for reference, it’s the Basketball Fan Application)

But here is something I just can’t understand: (No, not how I could just kill a man – raise your hand if you thought it, though)

And here’s the point of the post: Facebook has a ton of information about me, and I see this ad? Perhaps WooMe is actually what they say in the text: a new voice and video social network. (But with a name like WooMe, I kind of screams “Singles!”) Maybe WooMe just paid enough to override the whole “married” part of my profile, or perhaps they just didn’t think to check the “don’t target married people” box when placing the ad. I don’t know how many blog posts I’ve seen saying how personalized ads on Facebook are going to be the next big thing, but something tells me that isn’t it.

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