by Stephen Withers
Much packaging is designed to make products look good on the shelf or to discourage shoplifting. Neither is relevant to online retailing, so Amazon is moving towards “frustration-free packaging”.
free hit counters
How many times have you cut your hand while opening sealed plastic clamshell package surrounding a smaller product such as a memory card [...]

The pre-beta version of Microsoft’s Windows 7 operating system released to developers at the Professional Developers Conference has already made it onto prominent BitTorrent sites, where thousands of enthusiasts around the world are currently downloading it.
Well-known BitTorrent sites such as The Pirate Bay and Mininova were at the time of publication Friday hosting multiple downloads [...]

Netflix plans to stop selling DVDs that were rented by subscribers, another step toward expanding its subscription focus from DVDs rented by mail to include movies streamed over the Web.
In a Netflix blog posting Monday, the company announced that it would discontinue sales previously viewed DVDs on November 30:
As you know, our core business is [...]