In my house, Christmas and
Amazon.com are intertwined. Around this time every year, I update
my Amazon.com Wish List, let friends and family know, and one by one, watch my requested gifts transition from the "Unpurchased" to "Purchased". But Amazon.com's Wish Lists are often made public, giving you the option to send gifts to friends, family, or people you've never met - including some major names in the blogosphere.
Updated: Dec. 3rd at 7:00 p.m., editing Steven Hodson's list...While some of their lists are quite out of date, if you're wondering how can you make a leading blogger happy this holiday? Let's take a look...
1. Om Malik (
GigaOM)
Amazon Wish ListOm wants both a new digital camera and a camcorder. He's settled on the
Sony Cybershot DSCW55 7.2MP Digital Camera with 3x Optical Zoom and
Sanyo Xacti VPC-HD2 7.1MP MPEG4 High Definition Camcorder with 10x Optical Zoom. The first retails for $165, and the second, for just under $600.
He also wants some CDs, and has been waiting since 2003 for someone to buy him Jim Rogers'
Adventure Capitalist: The Ultimate Road Trip". Those last items are significantly cheaper.
2. Richard McManus (
Read/Write Web)
Amazon Wish ListThough he hails from Wellington, New Zealand, Richard's list is filled with U.S.-created music and books, ranging from Nirvana's
With the Lights Out box set to Michael Lewis'
Coach: Lessons on the Game of Life, and
Mediated: How the Media Shapes Your World and the Way You Live in It .
Most items are in the $10 to $40 range, something you just might be able to afford.
3. Kevin Rose (
Digg and
Revision3)
Amazon Wish ListKevin's pearly whites
made the cover of BusinessWeek in 2006 as he gave a goofy smile and thumbs up to the magazine's story on a new "brat pack of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs". Despite this, Amazon.com lets us know he still needs an
Oral B 7850DLX Professional Care Power Toothbrush, which retails at just over $100.
While he still may need the toothbrush, some of his older items I doubt are still on his most wanted list, including the
3rd generation 10 gigabyte Apple iPod, and
Pirates of the Caribbean - The Curse of the Black Pearl (Two-Disc Collector's Edition)> DVD.
4. Cory Doctorow (
Boing Boing)
Amazon Wish ListCory is looking for a
Walt Disney Treasures DVD on "Tomorrowland: Disney in Space and Beyond" from 1959, as well as a number of books from Jane Jacobs, including
Systems of Survival: A Dialogue on the Moral Foundations of Commerce and Politics and
Cities and the Wealth of Nations.
Sounds thrilling.
As fun as those may or may not be, they'll do him more good than the pair of Handspring springboard modules he asked for back in 2001 to deliver
GPS and
remote control capabilities to the line of now-extinct handhelds.
5. Guy Kawasaki (
How to Change the World)
Amazon Wish ListGuy is a simple fellow. He's looking solely to get
Total Hockey: The Official Encyclopedia of the National Hockey League. It looks like you can pick up a used copy of the 2003 edition for just under $5. Given
how little he opted to spend on making Truemors, maybe this budget is just what he's looking for!
6. Mark Zuckerberg (
Facebook)
Amazon Wish ListMark can probably buy just about anything he wants now, which explains why his Wish List is empty. However, when he was back in Dobbs Ferry, New York, before heading West to fame and fortune, he did ask for the
Unrated version of American Pie, and
Cruel Intentions, starring Sarah Michelle Gellar and Ryan Phillipe.
Maybe he'll refill his wish list soon. And maybe not.
7. Loic Le Meur (
Loic Le Meur.com)
Amazon Wish ListSimilar to Guy, Loic only has one item in his wish list, a 2004 book titled
We've Got Blog: How Weblogs Are Changing Our Culture. It retails for about $15. With his
Seesmic application growing like crazy, it looks like he's got this Web app and blog thing nailed, but I'd feel better if somebody bought him the book.
8. Maryam Scoble (
Maryamie)
Amazon Wish ListWhile Robert Scoble's Amazon.com wish list isn't easy to find, you can still support the family by getting his wife, Maryam, a good book. She's quite the reader, looking for help on
Babyproofing Your Marriage and solving problems with
the Baby Whisperer.
When not reading, Maryam wouldn't mind a pair of
ladies' Italian leather dress gloves (which Robert didn't get her last year, it appears), along with greatest hits albums by
Elvis Presley and
The Beatles.
9. Steven Hodson (
WinExtra)
Amazon Wish ListSteven, aiming to become the best Windows developer he can be, has asked for programming books on the Windows Presentation Foundation, including
Programming WPF and
Code + Markup: A Guide to the Microsoft Windows Presentation Foundation.
Unlike his prior list, which was stuck in the 2004 era, he swears this one will be updated more frequently.
10. Kent Newsome (
Newsome.org)
Amazon Wish ListLike Om, Kent is looking to upgrade his photographer cred by adding more hardware. Specifically, he's asking for a
Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM Lens and the
Sony Cybershot DSCV3 7.2MP Digital Camera with 4x Optical Zoom. Of course, they're not for the faint of heart. Buying either will set you back in the neighborhood of $500.
If you have a smaller budget, Kent also has a list of books he'd like, ranging from
The Long Tomorrow by Leigh Brackett to
False Dawn, by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro. Also, way back in 2004, Kent asked for a number of CDs from Howlin' Wolf that has yet to go fulfilled.
11. MG Siegler (
ParisLemon)
Amazon Wish ListNow here's a good list. MG Siegler wants Al Gore's book,
The Assault on Reason, the
Unrated version of SuperBad on DVD, and shockingly, an
AppleTV.
Unsurprisingly, MG also wouldn't mind if you bought him a new
MacBook Pro, worth $2,500, or some games for the Wii, which typically retail around $50.
12. Jason Kaneshiro (
Webomatica)
Amazon Wish ListIt's no secret Jason loves his TV and movies. That's why his inclusion of box sets for
Star Trek,
Superman and
Battlestar Galactica make sense.
He's also requesting one of my personal favorites, the DVD,
Startup.com. If you're buying one for him, buy one for yourself too.
Know more? Let us know, and we'll hope to add the Amazon wish lists of more famous bloggerati. It'd be great to show them we care by buying a few stocking stuffers. And if you're on this list, and your Amazon Wish List is in need of an update, let's get it done! The same goes for those of you who I searched for and couldn't find anything for certain. That means you,
Steve Rubel,
Gabe Rivera,
Michael Arrington,
Robert Scoble,
Dave Winer,
Pete Cashmore,
Mathew Ingram,
Ryan Block,
Duncan Riley,
Ross Mayfield and
Hugh Macleod!
When Facebook offered developers the opportunity to write applications on the company's API, the fast-growing social network set up an opportunity to break out of its friend-finding, networking roots, and become something entirely different - a platform for real interactivity, not just learning what a friend has done in a passive sense, but to engage directly, either in real-time or in more a "taking turns" mode.
While Facebook's initial applications have been much maligned for their absolute uselessness, enterprising developers are quickly finding Facebook is a great place for casual gaming.
While I've not been overwhelmed with many of Facebook's features, I have taken to playing Scrabulous against family members, including my brother, who's about 2,000 miles away, in Tennessee. While game play is relatively slow, to the tune of 2-3 moves a day, it's something we can do together, regardless of distance. And believe it or not, the competitors on Scramble are pretty sharp, making me work just to get in the top 5 (with more than 100 players per game) and displayed on the leaderboard.
Last week, after 
November 2007 In Summary (