Amazon has eight more cheap (99 cent) movie rentals for download this weekend. These prices are good until Sunday October 21st. It looks like they’re hitting the horror a bit for Halloween.

As usual, you can direct the download of these movies to a Tivo that’s been associated with your Amazon account, or you can view them on Microsoft Windows or a supported portable device.

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Amazon has made several movie downloads available for rental at only $0.99 via their Unbox service.

Downloaded movies can be viewed once within 30 days of the rental date. Once you start watching one, you have 24 hours to finish it. You can view them on your Windows PC, a compatible Windows mobile device, or a compatible Tivo unit (which must have a high speed Internet connection) which is registered with Amazon.

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The start of the fall TV season means lots of free stuff at the iTunes Store. Click on the link to see it at the store, and remember that some things stay free for a long time, some don’t:

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Amazon is offering a nice discount on iLife ‘08 and iWork ‘08 for Macintosh. This is the best price I’ve seen on them, and Amazon ships them for free.

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Wes Anderson, writer and director of “Bottle Rocket”, “Rushmore”, “The Royal Tenenbaums” and “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou”, has made his own entire genre of quirky, dry films filled with eccentric characters. His latest film, “The Darjeeling Express”, looks to fit in perfectly, and is due out in limited release on the US on September 28th.

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At least, semi-officially. The store is now in “public beta”.

Click through here to check it out.

Salient points:

• Tracks are encoded as 256Kbps VBR MP3 files, without any DRM restricting your ability to use them
• Most songs are 89 or 99 cents, compared to $1.29 for iTunes Plus
• If you buy an album, you must download it using Amazon’s MP3 Installer. You can download individual songs with or without the installer
• Amazon’s MP3 Installer will automatically add the song to iTunes or Microsoft’s Windows Media Player
• Downloaded songs should be compatible with any iPod, Zune or other MP3 player or device
• You should be able to burn downloaded songs to CD if you want
• At this time, I believe that only EMI and Universal are offering MP3
• DRM-free is not a license to scatter them far and wide across the Internet. When you buy, you agree to terms and conditions governing the use of this music.
• Of course, you can’t get a refund on an MP3 after you download it
• Amazon gives you a free sample song - Energy, by The Apples In Stereo - in order to try out the downloader
• On my test download, Amazon’s MP3 Installer downloaded the file and installed it into iTunes without any interruption in what I was currently listening to
• It appears that you cannot re-download a song once you’ve downloaded it (you can with the free song - because it’s free)

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NBC and Amazon have made the pilot episodes for NBC’s new series “The Bionic Woman”, “Chuck”, “Life” and “Journeyman” available for free download. By free download, you can download them to a Windows PC and watch them on it or on TV via the TV out on your computer - or you can download them to your Series 2 Tivo (I don’t think they have Series 3 support yet). Links to the shows and an explanation of how to get them on your Tivo (it’s easy and it’s officially supported, no hackery involved) are after the cut.

NBC recently had a well-publicized kerfluffle with Apple over the iTunes Store, resulting in NBC deciding not to renew their contract to carry their TV shows on iTunes. Given that Apple can’t guarantee that those shows will be available for the whole season, they’ve decided not to offer any of NBC’s new fall programming (they wouldn’t be able to offer season subscriptions to shows).

There’s a lot of finger pointing. NBC says that Apple was inflexible in its pricing. Apple says that NBC wanted to raise the price on shows and wanted them to try to detect and prohibit pirated video and music from being loaded on iPods (which I can see no reasonable technical way to do other than requiring everything to be authenticate and DRM’ed, which is definitely well beyond “reasonable”).

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A week and a half ago I had the sad pleasure of enjoying the end of a long-running series that has entertained me for years. Yes, it was the end of Har… what’s that you say? Harry Potter?? No, no - Harvey Birdman, Attorney At Law! No mention on CNN. No midnight lines at Borders. No parties with little kids dressed up wearing fake wings.

“The Death of Harvey” (available on iTunes) wraps it all up, with Harvey having to retry all the cases he’s tried over the course of his three seasons as an attorney at law, with X The Exterminator seeking Harvey’s crest for the final time, with the return of the Incredible Pottamus and that thing - that thing I sent you - and even the return of Stephen Colbert. The only thing lacking was Reducto.

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Amazon’s trying really hard to get your Harry Potter business. The final book of the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, is out in a little over a week. As usual, bookstores are planning midnight parties on Friday night, July 20th, to celebrate the release of the book.

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The uber-gadget will be released at 6PM local time on Friday July 29th. You can barely read a Mac, computer or gadget blog without being overwhelmed by articles about it.

This article outlines what you need to know if you want to get one. And - stuck with a cellular contract for another year? Wired has a helpful article listing some slightly shady ways to get out of that contract - but let’s face it, if you can’t stick it to your cellular company, who can you stick it to?

Also - think it’s too expensive for you? If you have a Crackberry, you might actually find the iPhone cheaper.

Here are things you should know about buying the iPhone:

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