Amazon is slowly but surely taking over my life. If you look at the pie chart on my online banking, you'll see that the percentage of my income going to Amazon has increased exponentially. What they're doing--with Kindle, MP3 downloads, and TiVo, is absolutely brilliant.

1) My husband bought me a Kindle for my birthday. If you're a reader, particularly a multiple-books-at-one-time reader, particularly the kind of reader who has run out of shelf space, this gadget is for you. You really have to see it to understand why--interact with the super-cool screen and buttons and read on it--and see how badass the Whispernet download system is. (You can get a book anywhere, anytime you have a cellphone signal). So now I download books constantly--no waiting!--and though they're cheaper than the paper versions, they still cost a few bucks. Basically, I have no need to go to Barnes and Noble or Ukazoo anymore--none. Amazon owns this part of my life. (One caveat: the kindle list of books is not extensive, so until they get more content, I probably will still, occaisionally, find myself at the bookstore. But authors, agents and publishers ignore this platform at their peril.)

2) Tivo now offers Amazon Unbox--the ability to download, for a couple of dollars, all the shows you didn't or couldn't record. A full season of MadMen, say, or every episode of the Office I'd never seen. My email box is now full of Amazon confirms from these tiny purchases, including...

3) Portable MP3 downloads. ITunes needs to watch out on this one. I can play my Amazon MP3s ANYWHERE. Anytime. It makes them much, much more appealing than the ITunes store.

There hasn't been a lot of marketing around any of this--I guess amazon is relying on word-of-mouth (and here I am, playing into their strategy). But I suspect that once these three items catch on, Amazon's profits are going to go way, way up. After all, $5 here, $2 there, and 99 cents over here just doesn't seem like too much to spend... until you see that roughly 1/8 of your income is going into Jeff Bezos's pocket.