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 by mathowie on Oct 24, 2002 - 26 comments

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 by mathowie on Oct 15, 2001 - 18 comments

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 by mathowie on Mar 21, 2000 - 1 comment

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 by mathowie on Dec 29, 1999 - 0 comments

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 by mathowie on Dec 24, 1999 - 0 comments

Wow, never pay more than necessary for anything! This is a nutty little app, it automatically queries dozens of ecommerce sites while you surf. The downside is someone might be convinced to buy a book after reading several reviews at Amazon, but their RUSure app would tell them that it's 2 bucks cheaper at Buy.com, so they'd get it there. Before a shopper had to do this deliberately, now it's done automatically. This app could be as big as ICQ, since the founders of both companies are family.
posted by mathowie on Oct 19, 1999 - 0 comments