When you have 160 gigs of iPod to fill, not only do you start to check out the video podcasts on iTunes, you also pay a little more attention to the audiobook sections of Amazon and the local library.

Which is what happened recently to me. I found a nine-CD set of Kurt Vonnegut’s “Welcome To The Monkey House.” But when I started importing the discs into my iTunes library, I noticed a lot of annoying inconsistencies.

Some CDs imported with a year assigned to tracks, some without. Some CDs gave track listings as the short story title and a part (example: “017 WMH Long Walk To Forever Part 2”) and others just gave random letters and numbers (example: “6i”). Some tracks list the artist as “Kurt Vonnegut Jr.” while others list the artist as “various.” The fifth CD followed the letter scheme noted above, but used “6” instead of “5.” Three separate tracks on disc 2 are listed as “Welcome To the Monkey House Part 4.” And so it goes.

This isn’t a problem just with audiobooks. Something along this line seems to happen with almost any multidisc set I import into iTunes. Come on, people. Is it really that hard to be consistent? Are you consciously trying to be aggravating? And who’s really to blame, anyway: the CD producers or the folks over at Gracenote? Either way, it’s really irritating.

Looking for 10 amazingly simple tricks to turn your brain into a powerful thinking machine? You’re in luck: I happen to have a link to just such an article right here.

I like this article over on the EmailLabs site about prechecking opt-in permission boxes. It’s worth the minute or so to read, plus the extra time to think about in terms of your own business … though if you’ve been in the email game for more than a few months, it should be second nature, anyway.

Takeaway for marketers: When it comes to your email list, are you more concerned about quality or quantity?

… there’s buzz about a bidding war between Microsoft and Google. For what? A piece of Facebook. A small piece. Five percent. For, oh, $500 million.

Which, if my math skills haven’t totally deteriorated in the face of such insanity, suggests that Microsoft and Google think Facebook might be worth somewhere in the neighborhood of, oh, around $10 billion.

Maybe eBay ought to get in on the price war.

Takeaway for (myopic) marketers (with fat checkbooks): I crunched the numbers. Given Facebook’s traffic relative to the dollars Microsoft and Google are discussing, LOHAD should command somewhere between a quarter-million and a half-million bucks on the open market. *ahem* That “Send me mail” link on the left over there is not a dead link.

This opinion piece by Alice Mathias in yesterday’s New York Times nails it.

Takeaway for marketers: When Facebook stops being Facebook and becomes something else, look for the school of fish to dart off to the next big thing.