I’ve got too much stuff. So I’m cleaning, trashing and selling 500 pounds of “stuff”. I hope to do this in a month, but we’ll see how that goes.

I’m also reading (as one of many changes) in an attempt to keep my place cleaner neater.

I’m starting with books. I’ve got a lot of them, I’m listing a few on half.com (eBay’s sister site) and I’ll see what I can get for some old ones and some newer ones. For the old ones, I’ll have to see if it’s worth the effort to actually sell something for a dollar or two (plus shipping). I think if I can do a dozen books, CDs or DVDs, I’ll be able to get a better feel on selling these smaller things. I might just be better off donating them to Goodwill or the Salvation Army (but I’ve got no clue what to estimate the value at) which would be minimal effort to do compared to labeling and shipping items out.

Also, Amazon has a buyback program which gives you gift card credit (click the book above and you’ll see an image similar to the left). That might be significantly easier for newer items (but I have less of those to get rid of), but I’ll try that too (maybe).

I guess I should actually put some in the Amazon used section too…

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So “What do you think of holiday wish lists – tacky or useful? Do you make one for anyone? For whom if so? What is on your wish list this year?” is this week’s Friday Question.

I’ve always been hard to buy for, so I like the Amazon wish lists. It gives people some idea of what I want. They don’t have to buy off of it, but don’t act you have no idea what to get me when I’ve got a list of items from $10-$1000 :)

This is my wish list: a few books, Blu-Rays, a bike rack, a camera lens and a few other things. Feel free to shop for me *.

There is always concerts and such too, but it’s hard to surprise me with those kinds of things since you need to make sure I’m available (or didn’t already buy tickets). Plus, I’d rather be surprised.

On the other hand, do not tell me what to buy for you or some other family member. You can suggest something, but if I say yes, please don’t tell someone else the same item. Point me to a wish list if you like, but it’s my option. Although I do like it when children tell me what they’d like, especially if they don’t tell anyone else…

* The wish lists also have the option for someone you don’t know to buy you an item and have it shipped to you even if the sender doesn’t know your mailing address. Although, I’ve never received anything that way before.

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Amazon is offering one free Christmas song download each day for twenty-five days.

Of course for offering the free music to you, they’d like you to check out their other Christmas album sales, considering buying an Amazon Gift card or some of the best music of 2009.

These are all affiliate links, so if you do buy anything from Amazon, please consider following these links before any kind of purchase at Amazon.com and I’ll get credit. Thank you!

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Amazon released a Kindle for iPhone and iPod Touch application (that link is to the US iTunes store, not sure about international release).

With Kindle for iPhone, you can:
* Buy a Kindle book from your Mac, PC, or iPhone using a Web browser and wirelessly transfer the books to your iPhone.
* Read first chapters of any book for free before you buy.
* Download the Kindle books you already own for free (they are automatically backed up on Amazon.com).
* Adjust the text size, add bookmarks, and view the annotations you created on your Kindle device.

Kindle for iPhone also includes Whispersync, which allows you to seamlessly switch back and forth between your Kindle device and Kindle for iPhone while keeping your bookmarks and reading location synchronized between devices

Wow! Now you don’t even need a Kindle now to read the eBooks. I’m assuming the “digital paper” display is easier to read on the Kindle, but this is very cool. I wonder if the images look better than on the grey-scale Kindle? It looks like it will “show books in color that were developed that way“. I’ve liked the idea of a Kindle but not the cost and I’ve also been afraid of not having it with me everywhere; if I can start syncing to other devices that’d be very useful. Even if you don’t want to read a whole book on your iPhone/Touch, you can read the first chapter of all the Kindle books for free! ANd it doesn’t appear to sync magazines or newspapers, only books.

And did I mention that it’s free at the Apple App store? Of course you have to buy the books.

Update:

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So Amazon opened the Amazon MP3 store which has been getting some good reviews and (most importantly) it semi-integrates by pushing your purchases into your iTunes which is great for automatic syncing with your iPod. They’ve had tracks for download for ages, but this is their big jump into the market (you do need their downloader for this).

I actually spotting it yesterday when searching for some music but I didn’t realize the format change of my search results indicated a whole new service. I did notice that the tracks were only 89 cents though!

Keep in might for 89 cents they are a dime less than the iTunes music store for regular tracks but since there is no encryption (DRM) and it’s encoded at a higher quality (even than Apple I believe) these are 40 cents less than Apple’s $1.29 a song. That’s about 1/3 less if you’ve been getting the DRM-free higher quality songs (and that’s what I’ve been getting lately). And they are MP3s, so they play on just about anything (but higher quality does mean larger songs). Buying whole albums will generally discount the price.There are exceptions to the 89 cent price for the individual songs, but I can’t figure out the rules to tell you. And like the iTunes store I believe there are tracks that can’t be purchased separately from the album, I thought I saw that yesterday but I can’t find an example of that today.

And to be fair to Apple, their DRM free $1.29 songs are generally much cheaper if you buy the whole album (the 14 track One Cell in the Sea – by A Fine Frenzy is only $7.99 (which I think is the same as the iTunes DRM version) which is the same price as the Amazon mp3 store, except Amazon doesn’t appear to give you the booklet.

So the end result, IMHO, it’ll never beat the seamlessness of the iTunes Music Store but but with it’s downloader (which does give you a free song), Amazon mp3 might be a good alternative or at least a second place to check when shopping for songs. If you’re not an iPod user it’s probably a great place to consider for your mp3 shopping (I think the downloader will push the tracks to other players but since I don’t have any I”m not certain). The downloader does work pretty good, I did try it. It would be nice if it were smart enough to add it to an “Amazon Playlist”.

I fully expect to see them selling movies, television, music videos, audio books or distributing podcasts via the same mechanism in the future….

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