A couple of new things of interest over at my favorite online merchant, Amazon.com.
They don’t have it linked up from the homepage yet, but they have a new Homeschooling Store.
Planning to educate your child at home? Looking for materials to enrich a public education? Are you a teacher needing materials to supplement a curriculum? Amazon.com’s Homeschooling Store provides hundreds of titles you need for reading, writing, ‘rithmetic, and much more, conveniently arranged by subject and grade-level.
It also includes a section on “Resources for Parents”, a lot of which is not exclusively for homeschooling. They say, “Find the answers and advice that you need with our selection of books for parents, including titles on parenting, teens, college, teaching, and more.”
If you haven’t checked out Amazon Grocery, it’s worth a look. The products are generally multipacks, but if you want 12-pack of Annie’s Homegrown Gluten-Free Rice Pasta & Cheddar Mac & Cheese, 6-Ounce Boxes or something else hard to find locally, give them a look. The stuff all qualifies for free shipping on orders over $25, which eliminates the big impediment to shopping for groceries online – paying 50 cents for an item and $2 to ship it. And they have some good buys in their Grocery Sales and Special Offers.
And the fun stuff…
They are taking preorders for the new Sony mylo Personal Communicator. This thing is described as an “ultra-portable, Wi-Fi-enabled personal communicator and multimedia player.” It has a web browser, email and instant messaging with Google Talk, Yahoo Messenger and Skype, a 320×240 resolution screen, and a real, though small, keyboard. Plays movies, shows pictures, plays MP3s. But all that isn’t the big deal. It works with paid and free WiFi networks and it includes Skype software. If you live in a city with a lot of wifi hotspots, you could chuck the cellphone in favor of the much more fun and useful mylo and a SkypeIn number.