Hot on the heels of news of Apple soon offering rental movies via iTunes, Amazon has some even better news (in my opinion). Another sign that DRM (Digital Rights Management, music with restrictions) is on its way out: Amazon MP3 now offers DRM-free MP3s from Warner Music Group’s catalog.

This makes Amazon’s MP3 download store the first to offer DRM-free music from Warner Music and brings Amazon’s library up to 2.9 million songs, all without restrictions. And Warner’s catalog includes some of the most popular artists: Led Zeppelin, Metallica, Madonna, Green Day, Red Hot Chili Peppers, etc.

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While this holiday season has been met with record online shopping, remember that many retailers (even the online ones) don’t necessarily offer their best prices leading up to Christmas. I personally did much of my Christmas shopping via Amazon. And today being the day after Christmas, I thought I’d check the current prices on all those presents I bought and shipped. Here’s what I found:

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The Economist, via numbers from Comscore, tells us that since the beginning of November online spending is up by 18% compared with 2006. And Thursday December 6th was the “biggest online spending day yet” with sales of $803m, which made for a weekly online sales record of $4.6 billion (see chart below). Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal today explains that traditional retailers are making a final big push before Christmas (why would they ever not make a big push at this time?).

The articles cites a study/survey, which shows that approximately 71% of shoppers were done shopping as of December 23rd while past holiday seasons have had more like 85% of shoppers done by the 23rd. Part of the article reminded me of my own situation:

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In theory, Blockbuster has a better offering than Netflix in that it “lets you rent online with the flexibility to exchange movies in-store, so you never have to wait for a movie.” That is, according to the marketing pitch plastered all over its homepage. But I decided to see just how “total” Total Access is, and I found it pretty lacking. In short, over half the movies in my Netflix queue are not available at my local Blockbuster.

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Have you ever stopped and wondered about how PayPal makes their money? Let’s review: With PayPal Personal you can send and receive money electronically to and from other PayPal accounts for free. You can also transfer money to and from your regular bank account at no charge. Sign me up!

The other account type is PayPal Premier. With this this type of account PayPal charges a fee, $0.30 plus 2.9% of each and every dollar received. So why would anyone sign up for a PayPal Premier account when they can have a PayPal Personal account which can send and receive funds for free? This is where they have done something clever. It’s actually kind of boring, really, which is why few people have noticed the fact that since buying PayPal, eBay has nearly doubled it’s revenue for each auction that uses PayPal.

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It wasn’t too many years ago that people wondered whether or not anyone would really buy things over the Internet. If you are still wondering, then you just might be an idiot. There should no longer be any question. Let me share two stories to illustrate why online shopping is here to stay.

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The popularity of adding some sort of quote as part of your email signature is on the rise (see discussion here and here). But some can be taken differently than intended. For example: “Too often we underestimate the power of a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.” Quotes like these can come across as a bit preachy by presuming readers are insensitive and complacent.

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TechConsumer News is a feature we started out of a hobby of tracking the latest happenings within the consumer related technology sphere. The goal is to provide a concise, compiled overview of the most intriguing stories from the last few days. Feel free to give us feedback or send us tips. If you like what you find, you can subscribe via email or RSS.

Here’s the latest in TechConsumer news:

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We pretty much know which users seem to get stories to the front page, but that is only half of the Digg experience. The other half is the dry, witty, insightful, or interesting comments about the submitted stories.

If you’re fast, or submit a ton of stories, or know how to uncover that hidden gem in a sea of web pages, you can get a story to the front page. But what does it take to garner a lot of diggs on one of your comments? In my personal observation, I’ve noticed several factors that will get your comment dugg, or buried, faster than you can say “all your base are belong to us.”

Note that the following guide applies to any social network or blog that allows voting on comments, but Digg is the quintessential example of how this works.

Comments that get dugg:

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This post is in reference to Bob’s post on Internet Video and TV. It started out as a comment, but quickly became too big for that. So here is my $.02. The problem isn’t technological at its heart, it is the content producers and distributors that are at fault, and here’s why. more…