Despite being an unfortunate Amazon.com rip-off (and we all know how much I hate rip-offs) Startech, a computer accessory manufacturer, has an exemplary website in terms simplicity, product information, and something which is often overlooked, high quality, hi-res, kick-ass product photography.

Earth to other e-commerce sites: I’ve never seen product shots this good. It doesn’t cost much to get a decent digital camera folks. Especially after you’ve spent hundreds of thousands on your website and millions on marketing. I can’t buy it if I don’t know what it is.

They have actual customer service and very handy product finding wizards. You can’t order directly, but my local reseller is just down the street.

When it comes to useful product info on e-commerce sites, some big players just don’t get it. Check out this laughable details page for a similar product at OnVia.

As a token of the recent anniversary of my birth, a very cool person bought me ‘soft foam’ toy planes*. The planes are very cool and can easily achieve the advertised 10 meter + flight distance. What struck me as odd was the included illustrated instruction sheet that you see here.

Also included where the helpful instructions “Please retain this section for future reference”. I guess that’s for when I find the planes in my basement in 6 years and forget how to use them.

Shelcore, the company which produces the planes, advertises their website on the packaging. I’m not sure this is wise. You be the judge.

* I am not a child.

An excellent book review on Salon today concerning a new book on network security and its inevitable failure by Brendon I. Koerner. The review touches on one of my more frequent complaints about computer software in general:

There are an average of five to 15 bugs in every thousand lines of code, which means that Windows 98 is riddled with somewhere between 90,000 and 270,000 oopsies. Since software vendors cannot be held liable for faulty code, thanks to those licenses they make users agree to, they have zero incentive to create better products — much to the delight of computer criminals, who revel in exploiting bug-ridden programs.

This is a slight overstatement. In theory at least, software developers attempt to improve their code so they don’t lose out to competing developers. Nonetheless, it has always seemed bizarre to me that a user is required to sign a licensing agreement before they have ever used the program. Can you imagine any other industry operating this way? “Sure we’ll sell you this car. But first please sign this agreement stating you won’t sue us when something goes wrong. Would you like Firestone tires with that?”

I certainly don’t pretend to know how things should work, but it seems clear to me that any industry which has an exemption from customers taking it to task for failing to live up to its own promises will not produce as high quality a product as it would otherwise.

A beautiful look into the history of the desktop operating system: Check out these hand drawn prototype sketches of the Apple Desktop Interface starting in 1979.

Meanwhile, in a parallel universe billg was working on Microsoft Windows Version 1, Version 2, Version 3, and Version 3.1.

thanks to mastah programah isaac for the links.

The images in the news photo section of excite.com are helpfully divided by keyword. Thus one can click on blimp, or profile for example, and see appropriate images.

Currently the black images contains three images of black Americans, as well as a picture of a black bear. The white image section, on the other hand, contains five images of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.

This means something.

Matt suggested I try something, so I spent a few minutes doing this and I discovered something odd. Goto your favorite domain registering place and type three letter acronyms totally at random. I did this for a significant amount of time and never got a single three letter domain.

I was so depressed by this I went home and ate four bags of marshmellows.

A few amusing details about Rob’s ‘Hello Microsoft’ post below:

• Their server name was tide70.microsoft.com. How’s that for brand synergy?
• They were using Netscape 4.x.

Don’t worry, we only publicize your personal information when it amuses us.

While scouring our hightech counter information, it has come to our attention that somebody from microsoft.com is visiting us. I would like say “Hello!”.

I would like to give you big ups on some of your fine software products such as Notepad and Minesweeper. Neither have crashed on me and have made my life easier in some way.

I encourage you to continue visiting, and to encourage your friends to visit also. I also look forward to our first hits from cool .org’s.

Here’s to you, Steve. I’m raising a glass.