Hasta La Gadget!

The internet is often renowned for its amazing bargains, but in the uncharted waters of cyberspace the best deals are usually too good to be true. This isn’t one of those times. Recently, a bogus coupon for 90 percent off at Razer’s UK store went viral, which resulted in a frenzy of online purchases. While internet scams are all too common, the company’s response to this matter is somewhat shocking. Instead of canceling the shady orders, Razer has decided to honor them, but with some limitations. The company will uphold the discount on individual purchases for different products, but void repeat transactions on the same item. Due to some back-ordered items, Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan warned that it’ll take a few months to fulfill all the orders, and professed that his outfit would incur “an insane amount of losses” in doing so. Good form, Mr. Tan, but we can’t help but cringe when trying to fathom how many of these were sold for around £11.

Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals

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Source: Min-Liang Tan (Facebook)

Each week Joshua Fruhlinger contributes This is the Modem World, a column dedicated to exploring the culture of consumer technology.

Back in the ’90s — before many of you were born — the internet was much better than it is today. I’m only halfway kidding, too. Let me explain.

At the time, we were sure anything was possible. We were also pretty stupid. We launched sites that just sold socks. Others sold balls. Social networking was just something we did — we didn’t need a site or a name for it. We were happy to go out at night and create real-life memes over drinks regarding the 2-minute video that took all afternoon to download.

Every site was new and fresh and daring. Two of the most shameless sites of the time introduced something that I am afraid we will never get back. Those sites were Kozmo.com and Urbanfetch.com. Some of you will remember them fondly. Others might recognize the names. Others, well, sit down and listen to a story of yesteryear when unicorns roamed the earth and virtually anything was available to your door within an hour at any hour.

Both Kozmo and Urbanfetch — we’re still not really sure which one came first — would deliver items to your place within an hour. If they didn’t get it to you within an hour, you got a discount or a gift certificate code. You could rent a DVD that was returnable to any mailbox-like receptacle on street corners. You could order a pint of ice cream that came sealed in its own freezer bag. You could order a stereo and make some poor soul carry it up five flights to your walk-up apartment on the Lower East Side. You could order a case of beer.

And we did.

Oh, how we did.

We ordered frozen pizzas in the afternoon, shampoo at midnight and boxes of fresh coffee in the morning. We were crazy addicts, sucking at the teat of ridiculous convenience. We were sure this was the future. We didn’t step inside real stores. Who needed real stores when it all came to you?

And then it all ended. Someone realized that selling stuff at a discount, warehousing it, paying couriers to carry it around major cities and doing it at little to no cost to the consumer wasn’t a very sustainable business plan.

The first few months without our citywide concierge services were rough. We were incredibly spoiled by the whole thing, and walking into regular drug stores to buy cold medicine felt foreign, ancient and wrong.

We didn’t know it then, but we had emerged from the magical era of the internet and into the rational, present one filled with marketers, social networking experts, advertising schemas that made money and business plans that placed a premium on profitability rather than straight-up awesome. The sorcerers were gone, replaced by search engines and cookies.

Some other reasons the internet was better:

1. Not everyone was on it. While there were plenty of trolls and not-so-smart people already, there was a certain headiness to it all. Maybe it was pretentious — who knows — but there was a lot more interesting experimentation going on. Sites like Word.com, Charged.com, Suck.com and Slate.com were changing the way we were entertained.
2. There was no social networking. Your high school friends weren’t online, weren’t posting pictures of their children and weren’t announcing their relationship status.
3. It was slow. As much as we love instant streaming video, the slowness of the internet forced people to return to the real world and find other forms of interaction.
4. Cool Site of the Day. The internet was so small that we looked to this one DJ-like site to tell us what was new and noteworthy. It was exciting, surprising and sometimes amazing.
5. It was innocent. The world was still super optimistic, the economy was irrationally on fire and criminals hadn’t yet realized that the internet was a great place to do all sorts of nasty things.

Yes, it was a silly era, and yes, it had to end. But we enjoyed it while we could, and someone out there like me still keeps a Kozmo bag in the back of a closet just for memories. And because it’s great for picnics.

Joshua Fruhlinger is the former Editorial Director for Engadget and current contributor to both Engadget and the Wall Street Journal. You can find him on Twitter at @fruhlinger.

Filed under: Internet

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Google has just snapped up BufferBox, a Waterloo, Ontario-based startup that offers temporary lockers for online purchases much like the ones recently deployed by Amazon. Instead of 7-Elevens and RadioShacks however, the relatively young startup has only just started a deal to install parcel kiosks in Canada’s Metrolinx GO Transit stations. The Mountain View company hopes to keep BufferBox alive through the acquisition, with plans for 100 kiosks in Greater Toronto and Hamilton in the next year. Of course, we can’t help but think this could all be part of Google’s master plan for a rumored same-day delivery service that might make Amazon a touch nervous. Hopefully this means future Nexus deliveries will be a just little faster, eh?

Filed under: Misc, Internet, Google

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Source: Financial Post, BufferBox

For folks who prefer to get their retail therapy in digital form, Google Catalogs is a godsend. In case you forgot, it’s an aggregation portal with digital catalogs from myriad merchants that lets you browse retailer wares without killing trees and now it’s available on the web. When Catalogs first debuted, it was only available as a tablet app for iPad or Android. The new web-based catalog browser, however, lets users peruse wares from over 300 merchants — including Crate&Barrel, Brookstone and even Fredrick’s of Hollywood — on any device with an internet connection. The holiday season’s approaching folks, so head on down to the source and get your shopping out of the way early — or, at least flesh out your personal wish list.

Filed under: Internet, Google

Google Catalogs makes web-based catalog browsing a reality originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Oct 2012 01:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Who knew that a company which makes a lot of money on the web would be keen to pitch the web as important to the US economy? Google thinks it’s as natural as breathing, as it just took significant credit for fueling real-world shopping. About 97 percent of Americans reportedly searched online for a local business — it’s safe to say Google was involved in a lot of those hunts — and spent an average of nearly $2,000 per person at brick-and-mortar stores last year. The search giant extrapolates to argue that the web pumped about $500 billion into the US economy, even while excluding internet-only sales. That’s certainly a staggering number that shows how much of a cornerstone the internet has become for American business, although it comes across as slightly insecure: a company that’s reportedly under tight scrutiny from regulators might be eager to show just how much good it’s doing for the public in tough economic times.

Google shocker: American web company says web boosted American economy by $500 billion originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 02 Jul 2012 16:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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