
Although it may be too late to get
free shipping and receive your Amazon goodies by Christmas, it's never too late to save some serious dough on things you crave.
Want a good way to get the most out of your Amazon gift card? Try Amazon's
Gold Box Lightning Deals.

It's holiday gift-buying crunch-time. If you haven't finished your gift purchases (or started, ahem), then it's time to start thinking of ideas that can be bought or delivered quickly — and when I say start thinking about, I mean, I'm here for you. Here are a few ideas that don't rely on overnight shipping or getting your butt to a store.

I have to admit, I'm an avid Amazon shopper who would rather shop to my heart's content online than deal with the stress of stores and shoppers. Amazon has just
announced a new free app that will create visual lists of items that you see while out and about and want to look at later. And if it's a product, Amazon will try to find that exact same item (
or something similar) on Amazon — making it easy to purchase later.

My number one rule for reselling an item on Amazon or Ebay is to make sure you
take great photos of your item to post in your ad. Seriously, how many times have you passed up a classified because it doesn't have a photo? I do it all the time.

Starting today, Amazon has launched a new environmentally-friendly initiative called
Frustration-Free Packaging. What that means is that we can get products in new, easy-to-open packaging that's delivered in a recyclable cardboard box — therefore eliminating the need for extra packaging and annoying plastic cases (that I can hardly open anyway).
Already,
19 products from companies like Microsoft, Transcend, and Fisher-Price are working with Amazon to use less packaging when their products are shipped.

In case you missed it, Oprah announced that
Amazon's Kindle was her new faaaaaavorite gadget on her show on Friday. Now, when Oprah says something is her favorite, people don't just acknowledge it — they respond with consumer glee, often selling out that product (I bitterly recall not being able to get sold-out things like the
Clarisonic or Uggs because of their placement on Oprah's favorite things show).
So I'm really curious to see what Oprah's fans make of her endorsement of the Kindle, whose popularity has been moderate but not mind-blowing; will the exalted O's influence introduce a new audience to the eBook reader?

In the marathon of this election, we're three weeks from the big day. Those three weeks though, like the end of a big race, might make us all have to dig pretty deep to carry us over the finish line. We're thinking it might be the perfect time to take some of the advice in Liberty's
Election Survival Guide series, pick up some new news sources and reading material — the candidates' books, perhaps?

If our
electoral map were as red as Amazon's
map of our political book-buying habits, things would be looking up for John McCain. Yet while Americans are buying up conservative books, our electoral map is getting bluer and bluer each day.
I initially chalked up this discrepancy to how unscientific Amazon's map is.