A friend recently gave me a holiday gift which, to my surprised pleasure, was an item from my Amazon wishlist. He never asked me what I wanted, and I never told him. He simply found my wishlist (perhaps inspired by a previous SZ post) and got something from it. Genius! This is the way gifts should work, people. Not the only way, to be sure-- getting something you didn't know you wanted is an unparalleled delight-- but it's a sure-fire way to make someone happy and avoid the Frozen Smile of Fabricated Enthusiasm.
Those of you who don't have Amazon wishlists should make one forthwith, adding some personal facts about yourself so that your friends and family can find it easily. There are other sites, like The Things I Want, that let you create meta-wishlists that include items from any retailer, but unless you explicitly tell people about it nobody's going to know to look there. Amazon is the default online store for most people, so an Amazon wishlist gets you the most coverage. It's the gift to yourself that keeps on giving.
Posted by Peter at January 4, 2007 4:49 PM"...The Things I Want [lets] you create meta-wishlists that include items from any retailer..."
Good heavens, what gift could anyone both desire and rationally hope to receive that Amazon doesn't sell?
Posted by: Stephen Beeman on January 4, 2007 7:54 PMMy best buddy surprised me with a PSP for my birthday last year. I'm not used to getting (or giving, for that matter) expensive gifts, so it was a real shock. One of the best gifts I've ever received, because it was the sort of thing I sorta wanted, but would never buy for myself.
Oh, by the way, my BoardGameGeek wishlist is up-to-date. Just so's you know.
Posted by: Stephen Glenn on January 5, 2007 12:30 AMA similar thing happened to me this xmas. Appropriately, instead of Amazon, if was BoardGameGeek. Unfortunately my list was not up to date. And my list includes games my wife wants (she doesn't have her own BGG account.)
So, I ended up receiving a gift for my wife that she would have liked more a year ago.
(It's still better than that time we got Sequence, so I'm not complaining.)
Posted by: Steve on January 5, 2007 8:22 AMI had the same problem, my husband loaded my Amazon wishlist (I didn't even know I had one!) with a bunch of his "wants" - then one of my friends bought a gift for me off of it. When she gave it to me, I totally had a deer in the headlights look on my face as I unwrapped it - there is no good recovery from there!
Posted by: Danielle on January 7, 2007 10:22 PMIf you have multiple Amazon wishlists, you have to be careful - Amazon occasionally goofs. My regular wishlist somehow became invisible to searchers, and my father found my library wishlist instead (which I don't label "library" out of some surely mistaken belief that Amazon would take it off). So he sent me several books that I thought I would like enough to read just once, but not own. It was still very nice of him to get me books he thought I'd like, and I did like them - I just don't feel a need to own them. I'll probably recycle them on bookins.com or paperbackswap.com . And I didn't tell my dad (why make him feel bad?), but I marked my library list "private", and called Amazon to restore my other list to searches.
Posted by: Robin on January 10, 2007 10:10 AM"Good heavens, what gift could anyone both desire and rationally hope to receive that Amazon doesn't sell?"
Simply Fun games! I'm coveting one called LieBrary.
Posted by: Robin on January 10, 2007 1:45 PM