Why Amazon, why?

I don't make a lot of money off my Amazon.com associates account, about $15 every six months, but what I do earn I happily receive as Amazon.com gift certificates. Works for them right? They pay me and I just funnel it right back to them. Well, no more. Here's the e-mail I just received:

Greetings from Amazon.

In September, gift certificates will no longer be available as a disbursement option for sellers. This disbursement change applies to all sellers and is not a reflection of your seller eligibility.

As a seller who has used the gift certificate disbursement option in the past, we want to be sure that you are aware of this upcoming change and take the necessary action to avoid any disbursement disruptions.

Future disbursements to you will be made through your bank account and will be based on the most recent bank account information you have provided in your Seller Account. Please review the bank account information in your Seller Account and update as necessary. Be aware that when you change your bank account information, there will be a 14-day holding period before funds can be disbursed to your bank account.

...

Because you have used the gift certificate disbursement feature frequently in the past, we are interested in hearing from you about your experience. If you have feedback or suggestions, please write us at gc-changes@amazon.com.

Thank you for selling on Amazon.com!

CIL2008 Twitter Icon Contest - Fine, there's a prize too.

It seems that many of you are asking me what the prize is for winning the CIL2008 Twitter Icon contest is. What, getting your icon used isn't enough? Ok. Fine. Winner gets a $10 Amazon.com electronic gift certificate.

Is Amazon.com spying on me?

This morning I watch three short videos on YouTube featuring ventriloquist Jeff Dunham. Several hours later I added a book to my Amazon.com wishlist and get the resulting 'here's what else you should buy" page. Oddly enough a Jeff Dunham DVD is one of the items suggested to me. Quick looks thorough my browser's history (shown below) Dunham only came up from YouTube and I'd not previously looked at any Dunham related items in Amazon.com. Coincidence? What do you think?

Amazon.com Widgets

Amazon has recently released Amazon.com Widgets which allow you to easily connect your blog to your Amazon.com and Amazon Associates accounts. Here's just a quick example of their WIshList Widget:

Testing the Insert Amazon Link plugin

I poked around the Windows Live Write plugins and found a few more interesting ones. This one does an ISBN search in Amazon.com and inserts the book information, cover, and link (including your associates ID). Here's the plugin interface:

Here's the result:

Amazon.com: The First Quarter : A 25-year History of Video Games: Books: Steven L. Kent ISBN: 0970475500 ISBN-13: 9780970475503

The code is a tad messy as it includes some specialized MS code, and is a non-CSS table but it sure does make for easy insertion of this content. (From a validation standpoint, it is close. The only errors are no alt attribute on the cover image, an 'unselectable' atribute which MS seems to have made up, and the code itself is HTML, not XHTML (i.e. mostly missing the trailing slash on empty elements). This last one is only a problem since my blog is XHTML. I'll probably write to the author of the plugin asking for fixes in the next update.)

Amazon.com offers feeds of tags

RSS web feeds for tagged products (syndication)

Wishlists via RSS

I just noticed that you can subscribe to someone's Amazon.com wishlist via RSS!