Before the July 21 release of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” Amazon.com sent an email reminding me that I’d pre-ordered the book. The email recommended I upgrade my usual shipping option so the book would arrive on Saturday, July 21, the book’s international release date.

This was an excellent example of a company using e-mail notification based on my purchase data. If my daughter and wife had to wait several days for the book to arrive by the slower shipping option, they would have had to deal with the hype, the barrage of news, and the fear of plot spoilers all on their own without the book.
Kudos to Amazon for doing email notification right.

By the way, after finishing up a summer school project on Saturday, daughter Lisa started reading “Deathly Hallows” at 3:30 pm Saturday.
Stopping only to eat dinner, she finished the 795 pages at 3:00 a.m, just a few minutes shy of 12 hours. (sheesh.)