I am sure you are trying to shop that last minute Christmas gift online so it reaches someone by Christmas. If you shop at Amazon.com, would you like to find out how to find secret discounts at Amazon?

I have found 2 sites that share this money saving discounts and the timing can’t be better.

Secret Amazon Discount

Secret Amazon Discount works by offering you a search interface where you put in your search keyword and choose the discount you are looking for. (10% to 99% off) Amazon keeps track of their price drops and this tool helps you find those items with price drops.

It offers you a comprehensive result with discounts. You can also sort the results by relevant results or price like how Amazon lets you do it. The good part is that the results are browseable in your familiar Amazon.com interface rather than some other site. As you can see, it does let you search some international Amazon sites as well.

JungleCrazy

JungleCrazy is another great site to find Amazon.com items with deep discounts. I liked the tag cloud view this site offers as soon as you enter. On mouseover, it shows the product details and the discount % plus the rating a product has received.

Clicking on a product takes you directly to Amazon’s product page where you can find out more details about the ne you are interested in.

PriceAdvance

I know I said two services. But, who’s counting right? While you are trying to save money at Amazon.com, how about getting a price comparison from other businesses as you are shopping for an item?

PriceAdvance is a Firefox extension that can be enabled in the status bar when you want to compare prices as you shop. It works by comparing the item you are looking at with other retailers and showing you the prices elsewhere right that instant. This absolutely beats having to go to sites like Pricegrabber to compare prices yourself.

PriceAdvance works currently at major sites like Best Buy, Circuit City, Walmart, Amazon, etc. Although, reviews elsewhere have reported that they have some kinks to work out where it sometimes fails to show discounts offered or not show the current price, etc. A very interesting idea though and I am about to give it a try.

[via Lifehacker]

Hello newcomer, did I say welcome to ShanKri-la yet? Before you move on, just wanted to thank you for visiting and we hope you come back and see us again!

I am sure you have heard of, if not used Netflix for renting movies online if you live in the United States. The most attractive thing that made Netflix popular was the fact that you can keep a movie as long as you want without paying late fees. In fact, the sooner you send it the better value you get from your subscription.

PaperSpine.com has brought that wildly popular idea to books. I am not sure if they are the first one to try it but this is the first time I have heard of such a service for books. That probably says something about me.

PaperSpine (beta) is an online subscription-based book renting service. You subscribe to a plan and start renting books without incurring late fees.

PaperSpine Quick Facts

• Pick out the books you want to read and prioritize your queue
• You will receive books in your queue based on availability
• You can receive 2, 3 or 5 books at a time depending on your subscription plan
• After you have read the book, return it in the pre-paid mail bag.
• Paperspine (beta) is open for registration and you need a credit card to join
• Currently over 150,000 titles in stock and will improve over time
• Find books by author, title, keyword or ISBN number
• Different categories, genres and picks also help you find a book you like.

Should I use it?

Personally, I have not found the time to read books lately and one of the main reasons is I spend way too much time on the Internet, blogging or not. But, if I were to find that extra time to sit down by the fireplace with a paperback with cup of hot cocoa, I would absolutely subscribe to PaperSpine. One could argue that you get the same stuff from your local library for free. The convenience of receiving books in your mailbox will absolutely be attractive to a lot of people including myself.

I see a great future for PaperSpine as they build their infrastructure and address similar roadblocks faced by Netflix when they started out like minimizing turnaround times, having enough popular books in stock so people don’t wait forever to get a New Bestseller, etc. With movies, people could watch in a matter of hours and send it back. But, a book will take much longer for a reader to finish and send it back. It will be interesting to hear how PaperSpine plans to address that.

Can Netflix Jump In?

Netflix has already mastered the delivery system and already has the infrastructure. What if they started offering books as well as a part of their subscription model?

West Coast = Fast Delivery?

Right now, they have listed their contact address in Washington (the state) and my guess is that people in the West Coast or neighboring states are going to be happy campers to start with. Assuming their warehouse is listed close to the listed address.

I want to hear what you think of this service? Would you rather skip your local library or even purchasing books for a service such as this one? Also, what kind of turnaround time will be ok with you? 3 days? 5 days? 7 days?

[via KillerStartups]

If you are in the market looking for a solid 4GB USB Drive, Buy.com has a 4 GB Kingston DataTraveller USB Drive for $24.95. If you sign-up for a (free) new Google Checkout account, you can get it for $14.95 with free shipping.

This is the lowest I have seen for a 4GB USB Drive and Kingston makes some really good ones. Even if you don’t need one, it could be a nice Christmas gift.

Or, you could get a 2GB Kingston DataTraveller USB Drive for $14.95. With a new Google Checkout account, you could get it for $4.95 with free shipping!

If you are wondering, what you could do with a USB drive, check out my 12 Must Have Portable Apps for your USB Drive for some ideas.

If you are into finding nice tech deals, check out the right most sidebar from Buxr. I have started to keeping an eye on it as they are pretty spot on in deals like the one I have mentioned here. This is not a sponsored post or am I asking you to click on those ads but this has to be one of the most useful ad widgets I have ever had.

It’s Thanksgiving week here in the US next week and I will be posting lightly next week. I have scheduled a few posts to go live next week when I am away but I will resume my regular posting once I get back after the holidays.

I have mentioned previously that the one newsletter I love is the one from Buy.com. They truly give out some awesome deals!

I had purchased my Kingston DataTraveler 2GB USB Flash Drive from Buy.com a few months back. Now, it is again on sale for $16.95 with free shipping!

I have ordered another one to keep it as a replacement for my current drive when it decides to break. As I have it in my keychain, it goes through some pretty rough handling but it is looking good so far.

For those who have been wanting to try out portable apps or create a swiss army knife of portable tools, this is your chance to get in on a sweet deal. Or if you have been wanting to hold a blog contest, this is your chance to snag a cheap price!

How to get $10 off

I know I had mentioned $6.95 in the title and here is how you get it. Buy.com offers $10 off for new Google Checkout customers. If you already have used Google Checkout before, no worries. Take 2 minutes to create a new GMail account and use it to order this. You will get $10 off on this purchase. I use PassPack (review) to keep track of all the new accounts I create.

Enjoy the freedom you get with Portable Apps!

Farecast.com

Farecast.com is a fairly popular site that many of you might already know.It is an excellent resource to check before purchasing an airline ticket and get a buy now or wait suggestion.

Farecast analyses past historical data and provide recommendations on if the flight ticket price you are interested in is supposed to stay the same or rise or drop (even by how much). This can be handy when you are unsure if a good deal might come along after you bought the ticket.

Farecast also shows how high low the current price is to the previous average. As you can see, my flight to Vegas right now is $64 less than the average and it is predicted to rise.

Also, you can get an idea on when to travel to a place if your dates are flexible. Or you can find out where to travel on particular dates based on flight ticket prices.

Farecast has a beta version of Hotel room prices too. I haven’t tried this yet but it’ll be interesting to see how this will work for hotels.

PriceAmbush.com

PriceAmbush.com is a shopping service that tracks product prices and emails if the price product drops. If you think, the price of iPod Touch is high right now, go to PriceAmbush and search for it. Then just click on ‘Add Alert’ to enter your email address and target price.

Also, check out the cloud tag to see the top products being searched by folks. Here is a sample how a search for Canon Rebel XTi looks like.

What are you waiting for? If you already know what you are going to get your wife this Christmas, jump to PriceAmbush and set up an alert to watch for price drops.

If you are a AT&T DSL subscriber like me with a 3 mbps or higher speed connection, you can get free wi-fi access to over 10,000 hotspots in US. For lower speed subscribers it costs $1.99 for unlimited access which isn’t bad if you travel a lot.

This is especially good news for people who just bought an Apple iPhone with AT&T and already have AT&T DSL. AT&T’s EDGE network crashed earlier this week and when it works it is just a tad faster than dialup. With iPhone’s Wi-Fi capability, it just becomes easier for AT&T DSL subscribers to get free Wi-Fi access when they are on the move.

Good move by AT&T and they might as well make it free to all their DSL subscribers regardless of their subscription tier. GigaOM suggests that AT&T should provide free Wi-Fi to all iPhone customers which might ease the load on their EDGE network.

If you are in the market for a Wireless Router, you might be in luck. I just ordered this today and will be using this to track my shipment.

Buy.com has a TRENDnet TEW-432BRP - 54Mbps 802.11g Wireless Firewall Router for $9.99 after a $30.00 mail in  rebate. If you open a new Google Account and use Google Checkout, you can get $10.00 off which means you get this literally for free and with free budget shipping. Now, I call that a sweet deal. You have to purchase this before June 25, 2007 to get this deal.

The reviews for it are pretty good as well, so for the price I’m going to give it a try. Would you?

[via Buy.com Newsletter - this is the only newsletter to find some real deals]