We all know The Rapture is coming soon (although "no one knows the day or hour"), and many of us will want to send out appropriate taunting messages from our heavenly perch to our loser buddies that didn't get chosen. At last, a service provider has arisen to serve this need. At You've Been Left Behind, you can store up to 250 MB of documents to be sent to up to 62 separate emails addresses in the event of the Rapture. Rapture is determined to have occurred when 3 of the 5 team members fail to log in to the site over a 3 day period.
posted on Jun 3, 2008 - View this thread

Why don't you get yourself a little something? It's only $10!
posted on May 12, 2008 - View this thread

HowItSucks.com rates products based on recent reviews from other users. The rating system is simple: the longer the red bar, the more it sucks. Just in time for Xmas. Also, comes free of charge with blog, which also sucks.
posted on Nov 30, 2007 - View this thread

Add to Cart, Buy, Buy Now, Add to Brown Bag? 107 clickable shopping cart buttons on one page. Most popular colour: red. I only recognize the Amazon button--clearly I need to hone my online shopping-fu.
posted on May 15, 2007 - View this thread

Don't Buy this Book! Seth Godin, author and marketing guru, has his book, Everyone is an Expert, for purchase on Amazon. The problem? He wrote it as an ebook in 2005, and it is downloadable for free. And it isn't even illegal, as it was licensed under a Creative Commons license that allows for for profit reproduction.
posted on Feb 10, 2007 - View this thread

The whiskey containing the scorpion is left for several months, which then imparts a unique flavour into the whiskey; it is quite an acquired taste. Tasty pregnant small crickets in salt water brine. Real Cobra Snake whiskey is infused with a real farm raised Cobra snake, ginseng roots and seed pods. All these and more, sold here.
posted on Oct 10, 2006 - View this thread

T-SHIRTS T-SHIRTS T-SHIRTS! Funny T-shirts, user-designed-and-voted T-shirts, artistic T-shirts, geek T-shirts, just cool T-shirts, hacker T-shirts, more artistic T-shirts and even offensive T-shirts (NSFW). Like comics? web comic T-shirts. Still not right? make your own T-shirts. Or maybe you'd just like to read about t-shirts.
posted on Sep 22, 2006 - View this thread

Polluting the blogosphere businessweek is writing about a new company that is basically paying bloggers to write about products --- disclosure is optional... congratulations marketers --- you ruin everything
posted on Jun 30, 2006 - View this thread

This flash demo for IKEA's kitchen stuff is kinda fun to play with. Takes a bit of time to load, when it does, click the mouse & hold down on the right or left halves of the photo, it's interesting. Note - the flash stuff contains audio, so careful with speaker volume
posted on Jun 3, 2006 - View this thread

As a proud patriot & supporter of our nation's armed forces, my greatest personal shame comes from the fact that my pugs aren't fit for service (Lola has cuddling issues that would prove a hindrance on the battlefield, whereas Oscar would run afowl of the "don't ask, don't tell" laws). Fortunately, the good people at Pets In Uniform will gladly do an awful photoshop job to make it look like they actually served their nation proudly.
posted on Feb 8, 2006 - View this thread

woot.com One item per day, until midnight, or until they run out of stock. Innovative ecommerce at its best.
posted on Jan 10, 2006 - View this thread

CribCandy.com is a thumbnail blog of cool stuff for your house, like Uncrate, but just for house related purchases.
posted on Oct 10, 2005 - View this thread

Buy a celebrity's soul! For the demon that has everything.
posted on Mar 3, 2005 - View this thread

How to Sell Your Book, CD, or DVD on Amazon [From Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools: he has a knack for asking the best questions]
posted on Feb 28, 2005 - View this thread

Now THIS is an eCommerce shopping cart. Holy crap. Ruby and Ruby on Rails: You officially have my attention. (Documentation includes a free first edition book. Intro for OS X friends fiends) and all.
posted on Feb 25, 2005 - View this thread

Thingster is an open-source weblogging service for locative media. It's also the backend for BooksWeLike, which describes itself as "activist e-commerce" and is sponsored (partially) by AlterNet. It's part of a movement for social sharing services, which seems to be an extension of what was previously discussed here.
posted on Jan 24, 2005 - View this thread

Russian may have solved Riemann hypothesis. Financial disaster ensues.
posted on Sep 7, 2004 - View this thread

Scott McCloud and Clay Shirky are trading ideas on Micropayemnts again. Clay Says user-pays schemes can't simply be restored through minor tinkering with payment systems, because they don't address the cause of that change -- a huge increase the power and reach of the individual creator.. Scott Says micropayments, well, BitPass are here to stay this time.
As a content producer I like the idea, but as a content consumer I'm just not sure yet.
If mefi went Micro, would you pay?
posted on Sep 13, 2003 - View this thread

A small company with an obscure patent is suing e-commerce site owners. If you sell something on the web, you may be next. It's hard to tell if they have any legitimate claims or if they're simply extorting money from the people they threaten.
posted on Oct 24, 2002 - View this thread

Escrew Service. Worried about getting scammed on an Internet auction? "Just use an escrow service," is the customary advice. Not so fast. The latest auction scam is an elaborate swindle involving creation of fake escrow services, complete with convincing Web sites like www.escrow-is.com
posted on Jul 9, 2002 - View this thread

The Shy Girl's Guide to becoming a Whore is an online tutorial for women considering becoming an escort by using the technologies of the Internet. The web has changed the nature of prostitution offering women more opportunities than the traditional street walker, escort. or brothel models. We now have the 21st century CyberWhore model, and this is an overview as to how it is done.
posted on Mar 20, 2002 - View this thread

The founders of Webshots.com sold out to Excite@home in '99 for $82.5M, they just bought it back--for $2.4M. $6.7B Excite.com goes for $10M and Blue Mountain Greetings ($780M) goes for $35M. A billion here, a billion there and pretty soon we're talking more than pocket change.
posted on Jan 8, 2002 - View this thread

Is E-Commerce dead, past its prime, or just resting? This journal special issue has some interesting thoughts about the future of E-Commerce. I especially liked the paper by Peffers. The conventional wisdom at this point is that B2C E-Commerce is viable only for certain types of products or contexts. Others (e.g. Andy Grove, Michael Porter) seem to think that in the future, all commerce will be E-Commerce and will be integrated with physical companies. Then there is the M-Commerce angle- e.g. DoCoMo. What do you make of all of this? How will we be shopping and communicating in the future?
posted on Dec 11, 2001 - View this thread

From the ashes, rises the phoenix. A company named WhyRunOut has taken over where Webvan left off (or they just bought my personal data from the webvan firesale). Hopefully they'll expand slowly and get profitable, it'd be nice to see Kozmo and Webvan like services come back.
posted on Oct 15, 2001 - View this thread

I always knew that the proper supply chain management ebusiness plan could free me from the hell that is cleaning those pesky pig intestines.
posted on Oct 14, 2001 - View this thread

"Sony Corporation of America and Yahoo! Announce Multi-Faceted Relationship. Agreement Includes Co-Branded Web Site, E-Commerce, Enterprise Advisory Services, and Content Integration and Promotion".
posted on Jul 31, 2001 - View this thread

The Cluetrain Manifesto gives real insight into the future of commerce on the net. Anyone with a stake in the online business scene should study this document.
posted on May 21, 2001 - View this thread

Wine.com Inc. ceases operations and refers customers to eVineyard, billed as the largest online wine retailer. The email they sent doesn't make it clear if we are now eVineyard members or if we have to sign up again -- and recreate my my 10-page wine.com wish list. Ugh.
posted on Apr 28, 2001 - View this thread

Tupperware type parties promote e-shopping
Does this method make it easier for newbies to get comfortable with e-commerice? Will the dot.coms go for this method along with other advertising methods?
posted on Mar 27, 2001 - View this thread

April 3rd is "Take Back the Net" day. Only 12 days until they ask you to buy something from your favorite online store, or buy stock in the company to send a message to the world that the Internet Economy will survive. Does anyone smell a cute marketing scare tactic? "I gotta buy TiVo, or Amazon will die and I need my books and movies $3 cheaper!"
posted on Mar 22, 2001 - View this thread

ever wish those new laptops were a little cheaper? hackers have found a simple way of changing the prices on e-commerce sites and then submitting a purchase order with the new price...all in the "edit page" feature of your browser... suddenly network security is not the only thing to be aware of with online transactions.
posted on Mar 21, 2001 - View this thread

One million credit card numbers stolen! News at 11! The FBI has gone public with a rather dry account of a huge organized attack on ecommerce sites, exploiting security flaws in NT which Microsoft fixed and offered patches for nearly two years ago.
posted on Mar 9, 2001 - View this thread

A short critique of "Boo 2" at Evolt. With a change in business model at Boo.com comes a new problem: 'pogo purchasing,' in which each product must be ordered separately through different retailers.
posted on Jan 31, 2001 - View this thread

Shop Mandiberg!! eCommerce or performance art?
posted on Jan 26, 2001 - View this thread

DotComGuy leaves house; world fails to care. For those who weren't paying attention to this, The Story Of The Year, some schmuck renamed himself DotComGuy, moved into a house, and lived off e-tailers for an entire year to prove that the Internet helps commerce. Or something. The experiment proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, nothing.
posted on Jan 2, 2001 - View this thread

Finally, a product that Amazon.com doesn't sell. Now that the holiday season is over, it's time to start saving for next year's gifts. Just the thing for the couple that has almost everything.
posted on Jan 2, 2001 - View this thread

"That wasn't me, that was the guy before me!" This is like "A bear walked in the door and ate it" from a little kid... What scares me is that people are stupid enough to fax him pictures of their credit cards. Wait until they see their next bills!
posted on Dec 3, 2000 - View this thread

Crazy Eddie is back, and he's on the Internet. Rising from the ashes of what the accountants call "one of the twentieth century’s most infamous financial statement frauds," the consumer-electronics retailer is offering once again to "beat any price you can find," along with all-new radio commercials! Just like being in New York in the 80s again.
posted on Dec 3, 2000 - View this thread

talk about a captive audience 'AT&T Corp. is mulling a plan ... [that] ... would charge for each customer that accesses an Internet retail site using AT&T’s communications network. It would receive an additional commission when customers buy something, analysts said.'
posted on Oct 9, 2000 - View this thread

While I can see how this is beneficial, it still completely creeps me out. Oh, sure, I'm getting used to the fact that I can buy anything and everything on the Internet now, but the idea that I can go to DiseasedOrgans.Amazon.com and toss a coupla pounds of cancer-ridden spleen into my electronic shopping cart is just a little too much for me...
posted on Sep 1, 2000 - View this thread

Amazon.com to offer online car-buying service. I guess this explains why they've changed their navigation once again. A little more information for those hungry for it. I wonder if I can 1-click a car? Will it be shipped within 24 hours? And I don't want any damn bookmark!
posted on Aug 23, 2000 - View this thread

Sears Expands Web Business, nobody notices Sears claims they've doubled their product categories. Well, they now offer one MP3 player. What did they have before, half of one?
posted on Jul 25, 2000 - View this thread

An undoubtedly unintentionally ironic message that pretty much sums up the sad, sorry state of e-commerce today. "You have reached www.24-7.com. Unfortunately, we are now closed."
posted on Jul 6, 2000 - View this thread

A former Boo.com employee describes some of the challenges they faced . Multiple currencies, multiple languages, on-the-fly tax calculation, integration with multiple fullfillment partners, no development plan, and ignorance of technology issues on the front end. Blech.
posted on May 23, 2000 - View this thread

Observe a startup. Some startups use a combination of openness and secrecy and while they're getting their act together. REMO (a quirky independent retailer who used to run a popular shop font in my hometown of Sydney) is letting the whole world see everything while they make the transformation to a web-only up-market general store for the whole world.
posted on Mar 29, 2000 - View this thread

Offshore pharmacy sites selling prescription drugs to US customers were shut down this week. I wonder if the cat is already out of the bag on this one, will there ever be a way to regulate prescription drug traffic on the web? There's no worldwide organization to watch over things like this, nor are there laws that every country can agree on. Something tells me that getting steroids and "date rape" pills online is going to be a problem that's never going away.
posted on Mar 21, 2000 - View this thread

Amazon is approved for a patent on the technology behind their affiliate program. Wow, this really has the potential to shake things up a bit. Will software patents like this destroy internet commerce?
posted on Feb 27, 2000 - View this thread

Presto Technologies is hard at work on Presto Pass - an example of the growing m-com (mobile e-commerce) market. SF Gate has an article about it which is (according to my source within Presto Technologies) not entirely accurate WRT which company does what in the process, but covers the actual product pretty well. Will this be a vector for the rocketlike Shopping-Cart-At-A-Time grocery store checkouts we've been promised, or just another way to track consumer demographics for Madison Avenue? Can I have one of these implanted in my scalp, so that I can find my head even when it isn't attached?
posted on Feb 8, 2000 - View this thread

Well, the eToys/ETOY fiasco may be over. Although, I don't like it when their lawyers say they're not pushing the case any longer, and specifically saying they're not dropping the case. As if the threat will always be there or something.
posted on Dec 29, 1999 - View this thread

Red Envelope.com claimed that if you ordered your gifts before midnight last night (Dec. 23), they'd have the package to you by noon today. I was listening to an NPR radio program where they tested this and it failed miserably, with nothing showing up as of 5pm today. Looks like e-commerce's weakest link is still the final, but most important, step in the fullfillment chain.
posted on Dec 24, 1999 - View this thread