Amazon Kindle
I’m a huge fan of the Kindle. It brings a bookstore to your fingertips, allowing you to browse and download free samples of hundreds of thousands of books. And you can subscribe to blogs and magazines, browse the web (in a clunky fashion, but still pretty cool), and add notes and bookmark all of your stuff. Most of all, it’s an extraordinary device that lets you access a galactical amount of information and entertainment. And, what’s more, the applications are endless.

Xbox 360
The Xbox 360 is about way more than gaming, though you can of course certainly gorge yourself on any and all manner of gaming goodness (I’m just getting into Left 4 Dead 2 myself so that I might blast a few hundred dozen drooling flesh-eating zombie when I’m of a mood).

What’s more, the Xbox is making huge strides in becoming a central nexus of the webby home.

BlackBerry Curve
Yes, yes, I understand and am all for the glory and wonder and apps ahoy of the iPhone. But if you’re a web cultist, in my book nothing beats the BlackBerry Curve for e-mail and web browsing and texting with a fury.

Amazon Video On Demand
There’s something delightful about watching a movie on your computer or laptop screen, and I’m sure I’m not the only online media cultist who enjoys having Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince or Terminator Salvation or Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian playing on one corner of the screen while a hundred browser tabs are open in another.

A great pair of headphones
If you’re web working, you need to block out those distractions. Music is often a must, and the right headphones let you block out the screeching traffic and yelping dogs and mental sonic alien manifestations from pan dimensional climes (is that just me?).

My recommendation: the Sennheiser RS120 926 MHz Wireless RF Headphones with Charging Cradle.

Sirius XM Satellite Subscription
This’ll take care of the music and audio entertainment part.

Site Meter: premium subscription
Nothing beats Google Analytics for insane depth and detail of website and blog analytics, but nothing beats the joy of good old Site Meter for your webby stats junkies. The premium subscription allows you to track recent visitors, inbound site searches, and more to a much greater extent than the free version.

Netflix
Netflix is a great service that keeps getting better. The streaming service allows you to watch a fairly large selection (though it would be nice if it would grow over time) of movies and TV shows online and via Xbox and other devices.

Mountain Dew: And lots of it
There’s a reason why tech and web geeks love Mountain Dew: the stuff seriously kicks a huge quantity of adrenalized and over-caffeinated ass. Just the stuff to get you through a late night online gaming, blogging, or production build sesh.

Wordpress: An expert to help us figure it out
I just went through a painful site redesign. It began with a seemingly simple operation to get tagging to work again, as the feature had been broken for far too long.

Let me say this: it would not be a bad idea to start a paid service where a wordpress expert is on 24-hour call, available via IM or Skype, or something.

Okay, here’s a bonus Number 11…

Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City
A great edition to an all time classic game. Rock on, Rockstar Games.

Well, it would seem that 11 days in that this is a big deal already.

Says CNET:

Microsoft on Monday said that millions of Xbox Live members have used the new social-media features that the company pushed live a week ago.

In June, Microsoft announced it would begin offering Xbox Live users access to Facebook, Twitter, and Last.fm. And while the manifestation of each of those services is scaled down on Xbox Live, the rollout has been one of the company's big pushes this fall for its hugely popular online system.

And of course it’s causing the bloggers to get their blog on:

• Kotaku: Earlier this month, Facebook went live on Xbox LIVE. Loads of people have logged onto Facebook via LIVE. "Loads" is not very descriptive. "Two million" is.

• Destructoid: [David] Dennis didn’t have numbers for the amount of people who got bored with both apps and went to play Modern Warfare 2. He also didn't have a number for the amount of people using the Twitter app, but we’re guessing a lot of people signed into that as well. Not many can resist sending that, "Hey, I'm doing this over LIVE" tweet. Not many at all.

• CrunchGear: In related “social” news, Microsoft says that around half a million Last.fm account were created with the launch of Xbox Live-Last.fm compatibility.

• TechSpot: Meanwhile, the Zune marketplace — formerly called Xbox Live marketplace — served videos to 1.7 million users in the first week available. No figures for Twitter's usage were offered, but Dennis did say that there have been "tweets from nearly every market where we have Xbox Live."

• Edge Online: With around ten per cent of Xbox Live’s 20 million user base accessing Facebook, the service may be the most heavily adopted of the new features introduced with the most recent Xbox 360 system update.

On a personal note, I have yet to play with the Xbox’s new social features as I’m suffering through a bout of the dreaded Red Ring of Death. If the stars align brightly and correct-like I will receive my receive my repaired and newly undead Xbox this very night, a Thanksgiving Miracle if there ever was one I’d say. Well, in geeky terms, anyway.

(this post originally appeared on Technorati)

I fully assumed that since I had returned the rental while having picked up a new version, that I would lose the progress I had made, losing my points and starting with a crappy jalopy once again, etc. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised that my Xbox profile remembered exactly where I was in the game, so I was able to pick up right where I had left off.

That, my friends, is a great user experience.

That was yesterday. This week’s round of Xbox news out of E3 leaves me very impressed as well:

Facebook and Twitter coming to Xbox Live as Microsoft beefs up other entertainment on Xbox 360 – This is the one that really got my attention. The potential to make the Xbox a center for both digital media *and* social media in the home is simply killer.

Xbox Live Full Retail Games on Demand: Download Mass Effect, Bioshock and More – Not having to drive the store to buy major titles is amazing. Will gaming stores need to exist in a few years?

Microsoft announces “Project Natal” motion controller for Xbox 360! – If Natal ends up being half as cool as it looks, it will at the least be a major competitor to the Nintendo Wii.