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Almost anyone who lives outside the US but who has had to deal with US-based websites will have stories of hate about registration forms that complain that your state/zipcode/phone number is invalid, solely because it falls squarely outside the sphere of understanding of the parochial programmer who created the form.
When I still lived in Northern [...]

Amazon drink the kool-aid.
They should really support some form of auto-discovery - I can’t see yet how to find these if you don’t know of their existence. I also can’t see yet how to subscribe to someone’s wishlist, which would be a useful addition.

I’m a big suporter of websites doing proper validation. I even released a perl module to help people do it more easily (on the, perhaps naive, assumption that the easier it is the more likely it is people will do it).
But I’m an even bigger detractor of websites doing stupid validation. Yesterday I finally caved [...]

Back in the early 90s I got a bundled copy of Microsoft Money with a PC. At the time I had next to no money, and was pretty much living off credit cards. Keeping track of who I had to pay when was critically important, and so I tried Money, found it invaluable, and have [...]

So, earlier this evening I got email from someone I haven’t heard from in about 10 years, telling me that I was featured in last weekend’s Sunday Tribune alongside an article about BlackStar, in a “What I did after I made millions”(!) piece.
So, I dutifully trotted off to the Tribune website to see if I [...]

PHX News have a bizarre story about how Christians are moving their business away from Amazon to Christian-only online stores. This, of course, is hardly surprising.
The explanation, however, is:
Amazon.com on the other hand sells grace and smut mixed together. This of course is objectionable to a great many Christians. To illustrate her point, Zahn referred [...]

If you want to start your own videoshop on the internet there are a few patents you should be aware of…

The UK on-line DVD retail market is getting interesting again. Even ignoring imports, the Region 2 market was for a year or two pretty much a 2 horse race between Play.com and CDwow.
Play.com are based in Jersey and can take advantage of the no-VAT loophole. Recently, however, they’ve been gradually raising their prices, foolishly [...]

In 2002, thirteen ECCs participated in a shopping survey which involved 114 orders from on-line traders in the EU. Only 75 of these orders resulted in a delivery. That means that 34% of the goods were not delivered.
In addition to the shopping exercise, 262 EU web sites were examined for the purpose of evaluating the [...]

At the Emerging Technology Conference I heard Amazon staff say several times that Amazon is (or is striving to be) the most customer centric company on Earth. Every time I hear this it irks me more and more because I know that my dealings with Amazon have generally been pretty poor.
I don’t doubt Amazon’s [...]

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