Many who shop online head to Amazon when it comes time to buy. Amazon has one of the largest product inventories online and makes shopping fast and easy. Amazon is always looking to make shopping on its site easier for users and has announced its first iPhone App.

The Amazon app will work on the iPhone and the iPod touch. Using the app users can browse the Amazon inventory, view Customer Reviews, and buy using Amazon’s 1-click Shopping and Amazon Prime.

This is news to our ears,fingers and teeth. Amazon is questioning the necessity of those rage inducing hard plastic containers that can presumably stand up to bombs and the jaws of life. They’re actually doing something about it. Starting today, consumers who are tired of fighting with this evil packaging can opt for products in Amazon’s “Frustration-Free Packaging,” which offers streamlined packaging that often includes recyclable cardboard.

19 products are currently available in friendly containers from companies like Fisher-Price, Mattel, Microsoft and Transcend. They have hopes of offering their “entire catalog of products in Frustration-Free Packaging” within a few years. Hopefully others in the gadget world will join in on this.

Just before the close of 2007 Warner Music Group joined EMI and Universal by dropping their digital copying restrictions on downloaded songs and offering DRM-free music through Amazon. Today Sony BMG, the last of the big four and the second largest music company in the world, has joined in and removed copying restrictions on their downloaded music and are offering their songs through Amazon as well. This makes Amazon the first online retailer to offer DRM-free song downloads from the world’s four largest music companies.

DRM’s previously had been required by these large music companies in order to prevent songs from being illegally copied which was believed to hurt overall music sales. The DRM would often limit the number of times and devices a song could be copied, such as a limited number of computers or a particular brand of MP3 player. Most consumers and rival media players manufacturers have been generally apposed to the restrictions due to these limitations.

Warner Music Group announced on Thursday that it would join the ranks of EMI Group and Universal Music Group as the third of the four large music labels to offer their digital music titles for sale without any type of copy protection software. Warner will offer its catalog through Amazon in the common MP3 formats that are free to copy to any player or computer, any number of times.

This move comes after Warner Chairman and CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr. defended DRMs at the 3GSM World Conference in Barcelona in February, stressing the importance of interoperability over DRM restrictions likely due to Apple’s DRM through iTunes which restricts music files to be played only on Apple devices.

Amazon.com went full steam into downloadable MP3s today, unveiling a beta version of Amazon MP3, its new digital music download store. Most songs will range in price from 89 to 99 cents, while albums will run you $5.99 to $9.99.

Amazon MP3 features over 2 million songs from more than 180,000 artists represented by over 20,000 major and independent labels. All downloads will be MP3s which are DRM-free, meaning there’s no restrictions on what device or music management software is used to play them. Songs can even be burned to CD.

It certainly didn’t take NBC very long to get over its break-up with Apple’s iTunes. Only a few days after NBC announced that they intended to pull their video content from iTunes, and after a well publicized dispute, NBC has now announced a new partner.

Today NBC Universal and Amazon announced that NBC’s video content will now be available on Amazon’s Unbox media download service. Amazon and NBC are offering a number of incentives hype up the launch of the new content, too. The pilots of the new series of Bionic Woman and Chuck are available for free, even before the first episodes air. Other shows will normally be available for download the day after they air and the companies are even offering 30% off for buying seasons in advance.

Askville is a question and answer website from Amazon that uses a system of Experience Points, Levels, and Quest coins to reward contributors. Askville is similar to Yahoo! Answers or the now defunct Google Answers in that you ask questions of a community of experts.

Questions submitted to the Askville community are open for 7 days. Depending on the interest your question drums up and/or the difficulty of the question you will get up to 5 answers back from the Askville community during those 7 days.

You can monitor new questions and view featured questions and most active discussions. At the time I looked at the site the top featured question was “Why do people drink alcohol for the taste?” Good question, I wasn’t aware that they did drink it for the taste.

To reward contributors, Askville …

TiVo and Amazon.com have announced a new service that will allow TiVo Subscribers to watch Movies and TV Shows downloaded from Amazon Unbox on Their TVs.

With “Amazon Unbox on TiVo”, subscribers will have the ability to rent and purchase movies and television shows. Television shows will cost $1.99 per episode and most movies will range between $9.99 and $14.99 for purchase with movie rentals starting at $1.99. The current list of supported major studios includes CBS, Fox Entertainment Group, Lionsgate, Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios Home Entertainment and Warner Bros.

Once live, subscribers will be able to activate the service on Amazon.com to establish a link between their TiVo Series2 or Series3 box. Once the service has been activated, eligible movies and television shows can be downloaded directly to the TiVo box. Downloaded content will automatically appear in the “Now Playing” list …

2006 was a banner year for Amazon.com. In an announcement released today, Amazon.com said 2006, its 12th season, was the most successful holiday season yet.

December 11th marked the busiest day of the season on which Amazon customer orders exceeded 4 million items and Amazon’s worldwide fulfillment network shipped over 3.4 million units to over 200 countries. Amazon.com sustained its reputation for reliability by shipping more than 99 percent of orders in time to meet holiday deadlines worldwide.

Some other interesting Amazon.com 2006 Holiday Facts include:

Amazon sold enough orange flavored Airborne health supplements to supply every passenger on 192 Boeing 747s.
Enough coffee pods were sold to make coffee for everyone in Austin, Texas.
Amazon’s Electronics store sold its most expensive MP3 player to date in 2006, the $19,999 Trekstor i.Beat Organix Gold 1GB MP3 player.
The last Prime order placed on December 22nd in time for Christmas delivery …

CustomFlix has announced that it is supporting Amazon Unbox, Amazon.com’s video download service, by adding video downloads to its current DVD and CD on Demand services. CustomFlix, a subsidiary of Amazon.com, is a manufacture-on-demand service for independent filmmakers and other DVD content owners.

Independent filmmakers and other digital media owners will be able to distribute their titles in more formats and expose them to a broader audience consisting of tens of millions of Amazon.com customers. CustomFlix members can add a digital download option to DVD titles available for sale on Amazon.com at no extra cost.

Amazon is a popular destination for movie enthusiasts and the CustomFlix catalog will certainly give Amazon customers a welcome variety of offerings. Unbox customers will start seeing the CustomFlix content early next year.

Amazon.com today announced the opening of its new Automotive Parts and Accessories Store which features over 1 million new, used and remanufactured parts from leading parts and accessories manufacturers such as: Actron, Fram, Holley, Hurst, K&N Engineering, Lund, Meguiar’s, Raybestos and Schumacher. The Store will also list parts from more than 250 independent auto, truck and motorcycle parts retailers.

“We’re providing a broad selection of products for auto enthusiasts, who are passionate about the appearance and performance of their cars, but also making the Automotive Store convenient for the everyday motorist who is looking for basic car care and maintenance items,” said Steve Frazier, vice president, Automotive at Amazon.com.

The new store features an innovative Parts Finder that allows users to enter the make, model, and year of their car. The system will leverage Amazon’s unique technology platform to find the auto part data from over …

Amazon launched its movie and TV download service earlier this month. The new service is called Amazon Unbox and will allow users to discover thousands of movies and TV shows in the Amazon Unbox video store.

The system works by installing the Amazon Unbox video player on your PC. Once the player is installed you can download the titles of your choice and watch the videos on your PC, portable device, or TV (through an s-video connection).

One hour of programming is roughly equal to 1GB of disk space. The common file sizes include: 30-minute TV episode=600MB, 1-hour TV episode=1.2GB, 2-hour movie=2.4GB. The Amazon Unbox player does allow you to watch the video while it is still downloading.

The price for downloading a movie is roughly the same as buying the DVD directly from Amazon. Movies can …