Today I added a new Gift Ideas section on the blog (just look up at the top) because I thought it might be helpful to share things that I’ve found which would make for birthday, anniversary, wedding and other gifts. I get a lot of catalogs, and I do a lot of shopping in general, so as I come across cool things I’ll add them into the Gift Ideas page.

The underlying technology behind the Gift page is an Amazon Shop. Any affiliate can set one up, and most people would usually do it to try to earn a little cash. Please remember, I donate ALL proceeds from OMB, so I didn’t set it up for that reason.

So, check out the new tab, and remember we’ve got it the next time you’re pressed to come up with a gift idea for that someone special.

I’m a big, big fan of Amazon.com. They really won me over when I bought a $4,000 camcorder from them a while back, and I’m also a member of Amazon Prime which is an $80 annual fee for unlimited next day shipping.

Amazon has now launched a new service they call Unbox which I suppose is a competitor to Apple and WalMart’s movie download services. Anyway, I haven’t had time to check it out fully, but it looks pretty cool. One really interesting feature is that you can “rent” a movie for $1-4 and play it back on a Tivo, iPod or whatever. Hmmm. That would sure beat Blockbuster by a mile! No more driving to the video store, paying $4 per night, and them not always having what you want anyway.

Also, I like this little widget they’ve put together which serves as a sort of virtual bookshelf and lets you scroll through and watch video previews without having to continuously reload the page. Makes it very easy for me to remember which movies I want to add to our current library of hundreds! (Yeah, we’re movie addicts at the Pozadzides’ hacienda.) Also, when you are watching a trailer look at the right bottom corner of the video window and you can click on the little square to make the video take up the full window!

Anyway, if anyone wants to try it out the download / rental thing and give us a review please share the info!
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I got a call today from Abe’s of Maine that was quite disappointing. But let me start with a little background info…

At 1:30am on Tuesday morning (4/10/2007) I ordered a new $3,379 Canon XH A1 Prosumer Camcorder from Abes for two reasons.

1. First, I’ve purchased from them in the past (about 2.5 years ago) and things went OK, although the extremely high end Sony Receiver I bought from them ended up having problems and needing service I felt I couldn’t hold that against Abe’s.
2. Secondly they were offering the Camcorder for about $100 less than Amazon or NewEgg.

Now, the problem started today around 6:30pm CST when I’m shopping at a retail store and I get a call on my cell phone from a “customer service” (732-225-1777) representative from Abe’s “…just wanting to verify my shipping address”. He asks me if I’ve ever purchased from them before and when I say yes, he is surprised and “can’t find me in their system”. After he “verifies my address” he begins pressuring me to purchase all sorts of add ons. And remember, this is a three and a half THOUSAND dollar purchase.
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Lists are funny things. Often they are interesting enough to catch your attention, but without any real meat in them they aren’t enough to hold it. Take for example, The American Film Institute’s Top 100 Movie list. They actually published it on the Web without so much as a single link to external reference material!

Well, I wanted to check out the movies, and searched everywhere for a modified version of the list, but came up empty. So, I sat down and built one myself. After about 20 hours of adding 300 links, I now present the list in an actually useful format. I hope someone other than me gets some enjoyment from it too.
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