I just sent this suggestion to Amazon, I hope they listen.
It would make my life a billion times easier and better as a loyal Amazon customer if I could filter out results in the Advanced Search feature that did not qualify for Amazon Prime shipping. I pay for Prime, so I am going to use it 9 times out of 10. So why not let me filter out the stuff that doesn’t support it if I want to? I really don’t see a downside for Amazon on this.
It is also highly annoying when sorting search results “Low to High” and all the $0.01 items come up first even though they have a $5 shipping price on them (many of which don’t even have Prime). To me the searching should be an “as-shipped” price if I’m logged in. You know my address, you know how much the cheapest shipping method for that item is. So…?
Optionally just a switch on the search page that says “don’t show Marketplace items” would be fine too. Sometimes I want to search for Marketplace stuff but not every time. Even marking my search as “New” condition doesn’t seem to help, they still show up, since some people list their Marketplace stuff as New.
Basically, my whole problem with the way it works now is there is no way for me to just shop at Amazon if I want to. It’s like I’m in the Amazon store, but a billion other small-time vendors keep running up to me trying to hawk their wares. “Oh, sir, you’re interested in Star Wars novels? Well, I happen to have some right here, no, no, ignore that one that Amazon is selling, mine is NEW! And cheaper!” A real brick and mortar store wouldn’t put up with that, so why do you guys? The marketplace integration is nice, but I need a way to turn it off, too, if I want to.
If you feel the same way I do, please take the time to send them a note about it also. If you disagree, have a nice warm cup of STFU. 
I just signed up to a new (to me) game trading site, called Goozex. This one works a lot different than GameTZ (which is still the best one imho). On Goozex every game has a value assigned by the powers at be at Goozex based on market demand and such, and so each game is worth so many Goozex points. You can even buy Goozex points on your credit card or PayPal account if you want to just use Goozex to buy stuff. But you also get points when you agree to send out games to other traders.
A lot of the games on Goozex don’t have manual or boxes tho, but it’s up to you when you ask for a game what you’ll accept (either full-complete or maybe if you want just the booklet and game, or maybe just the discs). And when you put your games up for trade you state what you’ll be mailing out, that way the system matches you up to traders. Obviously if you are willing to accept disc-only games you will get matches faster. The one down side it seems is that it doesn’t give you much time to respond to requests.
What’s the catch? A trade costs $1, so that’s how the site makes money. If you’re interested in trying this out I get some free trades if you let me refer you so shoot me an email address to send and invite to if you want to check it out. Also at this time I am only pointing out the existence of this site since my experience with it is very limited. It seems like a good idea and a workable system but I can’t make a strong recommendation yet. The site limits newbs to 2 trades at a time so it’s going to take a while to build up a reputation before I can do a bunch of trading on it.
Google has put out some pretty incredible free software tools lately. The one I want to talk about today is Google Reader. Reader is a web based RSS reader, much like my old reader of choice, Bloglines. Reader has a bit slicker interface, however, and most importantly it has some very nice article sharing features. While reading my feeds, I can click a button to “share” that article, and that article will then appear on my shared news items page. Even better, Google has a little javascript thingy I can add to my blog which will put the articles from my shared news item page directly onto my blog page — see the “News Bits” over there in the right column. Google even creates an RSS feed just for my shared items, so if you want to subscribe to a feed that shows the articles I think are worth reading, then subscribe to this feed here.
If all of this RSS mumbo-jumbo is confusing to you, do yourself a favor and go try Google Reader right now. The web will never be the same for you. It’s frickin’ awesome. And be sure and add my blog to your feeds. Check the RSS feeds links to the right. And hey, if you do start using Google Reader, like you should, then once you get some feeds and read some interesting stuff, be sure and use the sharing feature and come back to tell me the link to it so I can find out the articles you think are worth reading.
A few weeks ago I signed up for a new online rental service that lets you put both games and movies in your queue for one low price. It’s called GamezNFlix.com, and for 3 at a time (anything, games or DVD’s) you pay $16.99, which is cheaper than Netflix’s 3 at a time and cheaper than GameFly’s 2 at a time plans. This all sounds really good, but there are some problems with the service.
First of all, the selection is nowhere near the level of Netflix. Expect to have to wait for a lot of movies before you get one sent. Even their game selection is poor compared to GameFly. Maybe that’s because this is a new service, so hopefully they will build up their library fast and have a better selection soon. I was able to get a few newish 360 games and a few fairly new movies so it’s not horrible, but just don’t expect it to be on the level of the reigning champs for movies or games.
Secondly the interface is really poor. The browsing seems to be completely random and useless. Movie genres are all mixed together, with anime showing up in action along with TV shows. The “coming soon” and “new releases” list old movies that happen to have a new reprint coming, even worse, it only shows you 60 titles on those lists, and so it’s only a small sampling of the new releases or coming soon titles. Most of the movies and/or games don’t have much of a description to tell you about it. Managing your queue is a pain, it’s hard to move things around in the queue compared to Netflix or GameFly. Even if you click the “move to top of queue” button I’ve found that it doesn’t always work. The queue doesn’t have a “buy it now” button for the things you have out. Heck, the queue doesn’t even tell you if the item is a game or a movie or what platform it’s on, it’s just got the title.
My recommendation at this time is that this service is just okay and not really worth the hassle just to save a few bucks. You’d be better off getting Netflix and Gamefly and paying more. If you’re on a tight budget you might give this one a look, however. If only Netflix would start renting out games, my problems would be solved.
TechDirt has an article asking how many websites do you visit daily on average? This got me thinking about my own use of the web.
For one thing, my surfing habits changed radically when I discovered RSS feeds (thanks Lyndal!). I use Bloglines as my RSS aggregator, and so I go to that site pretty much every day, and it helps me monitor some 71 websites at the moment. I have subscribed to as many as 150 feeds, but since I was marking a lot of them as read without reading them, I truncated that list down by about half recently. Without Bloglines/RSS, I would probably at best keep track of 20-30 sites.
Apart from Bloglines, I also visit the following web sites daily or almost daily:
- A9 - I use this as my primary search engine because it gives me a small discount on my Amazon purchases. I’ve also occasionally found the search history to be useful.
- Google - I use this on the rare occasion that A9 doesn’t find what I want.
- Gmail - This is for my public email address (knight37m at youknowtherest). I check it almost every day. Gmail is bar none the best email provider with the best spam filter. If you need an invite let me know.
- Wikipedia - I use this handy online reference all the time, when I find a term I’m unfamiliar with or whatever. I know it may not be the most authoritative source, but 99 times out of 100 it’s relevant. One nice thing about it is that it covers internet slang, and no print-media reference can come close to being as relevant as wikipedia in that arena.
- Merriam-Webster - I use this to check for spelling and rarely for a definition.
- My Bank and My Credit Card Sites - not listing what they are here but I regularly check my balances and recent transactions.
- GameSpot - great commercial-quality gaming news/reviews site, I subscribe to it.
- RPGdot - focuses on my favorite gaming genre, RPGs.
- FilePlanet - I subscribe to this premium download service (mostly gaming oriented).
- GameTZ - trading site, I regularly read and post in the forums, a great community there.
- eBay - I check on auctions here all the time, use it as a “value” guide for shopping.
- Amazon - Pretty much when shopping this is the first place I look.
- Froogle - I use this to check prices a lot.
- GoGamer - This site always has some great deals on PC games.
- PayPal - I use this site to pay for online auctions and such. Visit pretty regularly.
- Blogger - I use this site to post to this blog. Not as often as I’d like.
How many web sites do you visit daily? What are some of your favorites?
There is a new wiki site that is for user-created game strategy guides, called appropriately enough, StrategyWiki. So far there is not a lot of content for it yet. It’s not that easy to navigate yet, but they plan to add some functionality there. This could be a really great site if it takes off, since it would give anyone the freedom to add to the guides any tips they have for beating a game. A tip, the Works In Progress page is a good way to see what articles are in development there.
Quandary, the adventure game web site, has posted up a really cool guide for a bunch of different play-via-web free adventure games. Check it out here.
Step right up! Step right up! Over at Man Bites Blog check out the Carnival of Gamers III which is a nicely written sampling of various gaming blogs out there. Some good posts on there! Be sure to save an hour or so to do some serious gamer reading.
There is a really cool web site that I’ve been a part of for quite some time but have only just recently re-joined and started using frequently again. The site is http://www.gametz.com. Each user gets their own page there, mine is here. The site is a huge database of game traders, what they have available, and what they want. It facilitates game trading by showing you match-ups for what you have compared to other’s wants and vice versa. You can set up an Offer, where you suggest a trade to another user of the site, and it records what everyone agreed to do. It also helps by facilitating tracking of the packages, and everthing. Very cool stuff.
You can also enter in music CD’s, or DVD movies, or even books for trade as well. There is an active community and the site has a bunch of cool forums to read about games. The site also has reviews online for a bunch of the games and the user-written reviews on that site are usually better quality than you’d find on say Amazon, because there is an editor process so the reviews must conform to a certain standard.
If you want to find a way to get something out of that game you never play anymore, check out GameTZ, and tell ‘em Knight37 sent ya. Oh yeah, the site is free to use in a limited fashion, but to initiate trades you need to pay a subscription which is fairly resonably priced, or you can also try offering up something to someone in the Subscription Time forum and someone may trade some subscription time to you for something you have. If you’re reading my blog then I’ll set you up with a free week or two just for participating on my blog. 
Reply with a comment to this post with your GameTZ user name.
Just wanted to spread the word about a really cool blog for Xbox fans, MajorNelson.com. As a Microsoft employee, he posts stuff about the Xbox and has an RSS feed, and he also does a “podCast” (audio-blog). Listening to his weekly audio blog is a highlight of my week. You can pick up on all kinds of new stuff coming out for the Xbox and Xbox Live using by tuning in here.
Edit: This is all outdated, I do not update any of those sites anymore.
I have two other Gaming-related blogs:
Azeroth Days which chronicles my adventures in World of Warcraft, and also my city of heroes toons which chronicles my adventures in City of Heroes.
Also I have my Knight37’s Rants & Raves blog for general-purpose blogging (anything goes).
All of these blogs are published for RSS, so if you use something like Bloglines or FeedDemon then you can have my blogs (and hundreds of other cool ones) delivered to you any time they change and you don’t have to keep checking them all the time.
Getting ready to go make a post on Azeroth Days now, I just finished making a new toon on a PVP server.