Showing posts with label e-commerce 1.0. Show all posts
Showing posts with label e-commerce 1.0. Show all posts

20 May 2006

Good News Patently Comes in Threes

I've written often enough about patent absurdities, so it's been a real pleasure to observe this last week not one, but three promising decisions that might start to undo past idiocies.

First, the US Supreme Court ruled that patent owners do not have an automatic right to an injunction that could take out another business accused of infringement. This is fantastic news, because it delivers an extremely long-overdue kick in the corporate goolies to patent trolls, whose entire business method is to use the threat of such injunctions as a way of extorting money from companies who would really rather just get on with their business.

Next, the US Patent and Trademark Office agreed to a re-examination of Amazon.com's 1-Click patent. This is an example of an obvious idea that should never have been graced with a patent, but now it seems that there is even prior art that would argue against it. A plucky Kiwi, Peter Calveley, not only dug up the prior art, but also raised some dosh to apply for a re-examination.

Finally, one of the most idiotic patents given in recent years - for pretty much the entire idea of e-commerce, would you believe it - has finally been declared invalid. There's bound to be an appeal, but at least sense is starting to seep into the septic tank that is US patents.

17 May 2006

Micropayments? - Just Ask Millicent

Here's an interesting idea for academic publishing: micropayments as an alternative to standard subscriptions or open access. There's just one problem: micropayments have persistently failed to take off. Just look at what the W3C page on the subject says:

W3C has closed its Ecommerce and Micropayment Activity

and I don't think it was because of overwork.

Or take Digital's Millicent. I wrote about this in April 1997, when it looked highly promising. Afterwards, nothing happened, despite its evident cleverness. Today, the Millicent site is still listed on the W3C micropayments page, but so far has steadfastly refused to answer my insistent calls....

24 April 2006

Wikis, Wikis, Everywhere...

...Nor any stop to think.

The New York Times reports on the rash of wikis that are appearing on e-commerce sites. I've already mentioned the one that's popped up on Amazon, as well as that on Chinesepod.

But I really can't see this as turning into a general component of any old shopping site. Unless there is a clear benefit for users to contribute to this communal effort - and for most e-commerce sites there isn't - then customer reviews, which at least allow people to express themselves, seems the better approach.

19 April 2006

Amazon Plays Tag, Blog and Wiki

For all its patent faults, Amazon.com is one of my favourite sites. It has repeatedly done the right thing when mistakes have been made with my orders, to the extent that I can even forgive them for doing the wrong thing when it comes to (IP) rights....

So I was interested to see that Amazon.com now lets users add tags to items: I first noticed this on Rebel Code, where some public-minded individual has kindly tagged it as open source, free software and linux. Clicking on one of these brings up a listing of other items similarly tagged (no surprise there). It also cross-references this with the customers who used this tag, and the other tags that are used alongside the tag you are viewing (a bit of overkill, this, maybe).

I was even more impressed to see a ProductWiki at the foot of the Rebel Code page (it's rather empty at the moment). This is in addition to the author's blog (which I don't have yet because Amazon insists on some deeply arcane rite to establish I am really the Glyn Moody who wrote Rebel Code and not his evil twin brother from a parallel universe). Mr. Bezos certainly seems to be engaging very fully with the old Web 2.0 stuff; it will be interesting to see how other e-commerce sites respond.