Ecommerce For Everyone

Ecommerce For Everyone allows people to sell Amazon.com products on their website. It’s similar to what the Amazon affiliates program offers, except that instead of signing up as an Amazon affiliate directly, Ecommerce For Everyone has three three at-cost packages to set it up for you: E-Commerce Lite for $9.99/mo; E-Commerce Pro for $19.99/mo; and E-Commerce Platinum for $29.99/mo. Discounts are available for those who get the bi-annual or annual plans.

The site features a demo video that better explains  how the system works.

Three good things about it:

• the website has a forum where users can interact with other users and discuss site promotion, ask for solutions or critiques, or air concerns;
• it also provides online and toll-free (386-8682061) tech support;
• nothing to download or install.

You can sign up for an Ecommerce for Everyone package, or you can sign up for the Amazon Affiliates program. I guess your decision depends on your comfort level with the net.

Crushing Someone on the Nets

It was 1991, my friend Jojo just turned 32 and discovered the internets for the first time. Specifically, Match.com We were necessarily skeptical but he met Ruud, who didn’t turn out to be a bogeyman. After a few real time dates, they ended up with two puppies and a hybrid car. Hurrah, internets.

That was in 1991. Nearly 20 years later, the internets became slightly freakier.

I can’t imagine how Jojo would even begin his search for true love today. Facebook, Multiply, blogs — everything is so out there and everyone is connected. Of course, friending someone who is a friend of a friend is infinitely safer than chatting up a total stranger, but I remember how Jojo literally found the strength to reach out because of his relative anonymity. The internets freed him from the bounds of friendship and his old self and left him able to reinvent and rediscover himself.

He had agonized over the then new issue of anonymity v. trust v. personal safety. He wanted to establish a connection with his new faceless stranger friends but he was aware that if he was being coy, then the other person could be concealing so much more. Oh, the juggling act of privacy and friending.

Fast forward to 2008 and we discover Crush or Flush. Chatting through text or YM, without the other person having to find out where you are. It’s another social networking site that lets people discover other people through their interests and social demographics. If you like someone, you Crush them. If they like you back, they Crush you and you end up with a Mutual Crush. (Awww, high school prom, anyone?)

The important difference is that Crush or Flush comes with its own “telephone operator” to block unwanted messages. If you want to drop someone, you Flush them, and they will never know that they got flushed because they don’t have your real digits. As the site promises:

If someone harasses you or causes a problem, we will block his number and that person will permanently disappear. No one every gets your e-mail address, real name, or cell phone number – they always remain private.

I guess people can always agree to be more open and truthful as the relationship develops but at least it’s a safeguard against freaky people who reveal their icky quirks too early. Me, I’m a believer in facetime and long relationships where you goad the other person into showing their worst, but yes, sometimes, even I wish for an intermediary to tell the other person, No.

The Russian Connection

Art Lebedev has a story about the role Russia played in the US Declaration of Independence of 1776 and

how one of the pillars of the US national pride happened to wind up in the Kiev archives, and why the document of historical importance was entitled “United States of Жmerinca”

According to him, Timothy Matlack, Assistant to Charles Thomson and noted calligrapher, was assigned with penning the Declaration of Independence prior to it being signed by the members of the US Congress.

Apparently, according to Lebedev, Matlack was actually Tomislav Matlakowski, a native of Kiev and born in a place called Zhmerinca. The theory is that Matlack wrote the title in mixed alphabets, with the Russian character Ж being overlooked for its similarity to the capital Latin letter A.

Lebedev illustrates his story with photos and scans of the original document. It’s worth a look and a grain of salt