Here’s a reminder, just in time for the holidays: If your Amazon Prime membership anniversary (i.e. the date on which your membership renews) falls between January and April, be prepared for that $20 jump in your membership fee at the beginning of next year (2024). In May of this year (2023) the cost for an annual Amazon Prime membership jumped from $119 to $139.

Amazon Fresh, Amazon’s grocery delivery service, has announced that they are raising the amount to get free delivery from, get this, $35 to $150. That’s not a typo. We’re including the full text of the announcement, but the bottom line is that if you don’t spend at least $150 on your Amazon Fresh order, you’re going to incur a delivery fee (they are calling it a “service fee”) of as much as $9.95. And that’s on top of the tip you give to the delivery driver.

The price for an Amazon Prime membership is about to go up to $99.00 per year, a jump of $20.00 from the previous rate of $79.00, starting on March 20, 2014. But you can still get it this week for $79.00 including a 30-day free trial. Now, we have raved about Amazon prime for years. If you do a lot of shopping on Amazon, it’s well-worth the price to have otherwise free shipping, especially when it’s free two-day shipping. At least it was certainly worth the cost at $79.00.

YouTube (or “Utube” for those who are too lazy to type “Yo”) is preparing to launch channels with paid subscriptions to its video lineup. Channel owners can apply to have a premium channel, and YouTube is hoping that channels with specially designed content will draw more users. It looks as though premium channel subscriptions will cost somewhere between $1 and $5, with the first channels launching as early as the second quarter of this year.

The city of Philadelphia has taken that age-old pastime – trying to get blood out of a stone – to a new high tech high: trying to get money out of a hobby blogger. Philadelphia may be the ‘city of brotherly love’, but it’s certainly not the city of bloggerly love, especially not with Philadelphia charging bloggers what amounts to a $300 blogging tax. Oh sure, Philadelphia officials call it a “business privilege license”, but when you require it of someone who hasn’t monetized their blog at all, well, that’s not much of a business model, is it? Of course, it’s a dandy business model for Philadelphia, right up there with states charging an affiliate sales tax.

Verizon Wireless is upping its early termination fee – particularly for “advanced devices” – to as much as $350.00 for cancelling early in the contract. In addition, access that comes standard on many Internet capable devices can cost you more than $100 a month extra on a Verizon advanced device.

It’s official: Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, has announced that Twitter is gearing up to start charging businesses for business use of Twitter through a premium Twitter service.