If you ever want your home to look like you're a super spy that lives in a 1960s supercomputer center, Lensvelt has the pefect thing for you: monolithic filing cabinets that look like mainframes. How cool would it be to have a living room that looked like this, or an office that was this clean? [via mocolo]
posted by mathowie on Apr 7, 2004 - 28 comments

No shopping, no presents, no guilt! End compulsory consumption by resisting xmas. It's never too early to start campaigning for next year.
posted by mathowie on Dec 29, 2001 - 65 comments

PayPalWarning.com serves to caution potential customers and those using PayPal for auctions or business of PayPal's faults. From their dicey terms of service to their unhelpful/unavailable tech support, to story after story of PayPal's wrongdoing, to a whole list of links to other people having PayPal problems.
posted by mathowie on Dec 10, 2001 - 28 comments

The Lot, a New Zealand e-commerce site, has a hilarious commercial (2.7Mb mpeg) that a friend sent to me with the title "Shopping in LA." The NRA could not be reached for comment.
posted by mathowie on Feb 11, 2000 - 3 comments

I buy a lot of stuff online: books, music, stereo stuff, clothes, camping equipment, watches, and computers, but I can never find shoes online. Yeah, I know it's pretty hard to try on shoes over the web, but I have big feet (size 13 or 14 depending on shoe manufacturer) and finding shoes in a store is usually a problem. So I found some skate shoes at Fogdog the night before last, and I noticed the package is going to be here tomorrow. They only charged me $2.99 for shipping, but they sent it 2nd day air. Does Amazon share their records with anyone? Does Fogdog have access to my VISA records? I'm happy to get my stuff quicker and cheaper than I thought, but it seems a bit weird. I keep thinking I'm flagged somewhere in a database as the gullible impluse buying type...
posted by mathowie on Nov 5, 1999 - 0 comments

Proof that you can find *anything* for sale on the web. If you ever need human bones, and your local human bone dealer is too far away, or closes early, use the internet to buy your bones!
posted by mathowie on Oct 21, 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

Pricescan.com is pretty cool. Check out this entry for a Sony Walkman. Like shopper.com, this site compares prices of a product from several outlets. What this site does that the other don't is graph the price trends of each item over time. Looks like I should wait to buy that walkman until the price comes down...
posted by mathowie on Sep 24, 1999 - 0 comments

A great story on IBM.com's redesign. I have rarely used IBM's former site because it was so hard to find things. I just revisited, and I could find several products I own in only three links off the index page. It's a lot better now.
posted by mathowie on Aug 30, 1999 - 4 comments

Attenion hipsters! Your vintage eyeglass frames are only a click away.
posted by mathowie on Aug 5, 1999 - 1 comment