Amazon: The Greatest Gift Giver of All

Looking for the next in the series of Rut Busters? Well, my laptop has died, so I'm delaying the next post. A preview of the title though: "Rut Busters: Preventing the Rut"

This is a longer post. My recommendation: Use Amazon Wish List for your Christmas list. 
Read below for some more specifics, and for details of how I evaluate new tools like Amazon Wish List.

Have you ever dealt with everyone in your family, and maybe even your friends, pestering you for a Christmas list, or a Birthday list?

Well, just in time for Black Friday (I hate that day, by the way)

Every year, it's a constant flow, starting around mid-November for me.
"Can you send a list"
"What do you want for Christmas"
"Do you have a list yet"
"I'm going shopping tomorrow, what do you want?"

I always dreaded these questions, because I never knew what I wanted. Usually, I would pull together a combination of DVD's I kind of wanted, a couple of books, and some gift cards. This was always nice, but it never captured what I truly wanted.

Solutions for Christmas (or other Holiday) Lists
I think there are a few criteria for a good Gift list. Whether for Birthday, Christmas, Hanukkah, Mother's day, Father's day, or any other day on which social protocol dictates that you exchange gifts.

The criteria for a good gift capture device is:

1. The ability to capture the gifts you want (duh)
2. The ability to access the list from multiple devices (sometimes you need it on your phone, sometimes your computer)
3. Easy to send off to family members
4. Easy for family members to read
5. Easy to capture where the item can be purchased

There are, of course, a few solutions for this problem. So, like any good nerd, I have a chart!

Typo: The "Note on your Phone" only scores a 2

As you can see, Evernote comes close. You can capture what you want, access it from wherever you have an Evernote account set up. You can e-mail a note from Evernote easily, and it's fairly easy to read. However, to capture where it can be purchased is a completely manual step, and if you make updates, you have to send out the note again. 

Close, but not perfect.

Enter Amazon Wish List

Amazon has a service which has been available for a long time, but just recently has caught my attention. It allows you to capture a list of items you want, and you can easily send them out to your family and friends (or even Facebook and Twitter) This way, you capture everything you want, all year long. If you decide you want something from your list at some point during the year, you can just buy it. Anything you don't buy is on your list for your Birthday, Christmas, etc.

When your friend or family member orders something from the list, it actually removes it from your list! It works just like a wedding registry. In order to maintain the surprise, though, when you log in, it will still appear in your list for a few weeks, to maintain the surprise. 

But Paul, what if what I want isn't on Amazon?

That's fine! There are widgets (extensions, widgets, etc.) for each of the browsers that let you add items from any online store to your list. Additionally, you can add any item to your list manually, even if you don't have a link! To get these widgets (available for: Chrome, Firefox, IE, Safari, and iPod) go to this link.

But Paul, what if someone buys a gift from another website?

Amazon can still be updated. However, it does require someone to click "buy it somewhere else", and then they can mark the item as purchased.

This gets your friends and family an up-to-date list all the time. Also, as the season moves along, you can make updates to the list, and they will automatically have those changes when they go to check it out. It really is the best solution available!

What does it look like?

Simple enough, my link is below, so you can see what I am wishing for, and also to see how it works.

Paul's Amazon Wish List

There you have it - the newest in my arsenal of tools!