About This Particular Web Site
Welcome to the second appearance of About This Particular Web Site . I hope you liked the first one. Please feel free to send comments about the general usefulness of the column and length of the individual entries to editor@atpm.com. Should the descriptions be longer? Shorter? Please let us know. Remember, the Web sites mentioned here are not endorsed by ATPM ; they are just suggestions for your browsing pleasure. Well, let’s get started:
Do you like good food? Most people do. But sometimes you just don’t have the time to cook. Take-out and delivery are alternatives. But where do you find the food you are longing for? Food.com is the answer. First you select the city you live in—currently Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas-Ft. Worth, Houston, L.A. Miami-Ft. Lauderdale, NYC, Philadelphia, S.F., and Washington D.C., and their surroundings are covered. More will be added soon. Then you select a restaurant you like (they can be filtered by type of food), browse the menu and place your order for take-out or delivery. In Boston and its surroundings alone you can select from 475 restaurants. Food.com is actively working to expand its offerings, for example by partnering with “frequent eaters” programs and offering office meals.
So we have whetted your appetite for e-commerce? If your computer has a DVD drive capable of playing DVD movies and you don’t know how to get them, Netflix might be right for you. You can rent DVDs from a wide range of available titles (3,600 right now). You select the movie (or movies) online and pay with your credit card. They arrive by mail in two or three days. You have one week to watch the movies, then you put them into the prepaid envelope that came with your rental and return them via the US Postal Service. DVD rentals are $3.49 per DVD ($4.99 for reserved movies). Shipping charges are $0.95 per DVD plus $0.99 per order. If you want to keep the movies for another 7 days, you have to pay $0.99 late fee per disk. I found Netflix’s customer service very friendly and helpful. If you’d rather buy DVDs, Amazon.com and DVD Empire have a wide range of titles available for purchase. Netflix offers a “like it, keep it” program that lets you buy a rented DVD from Amazon.com and refunds the rental and possible late fees. New Netflix customers get three free rentals. It’s possible to prepay for 10, 25 or 40 movies (Flix Value Pak) and receive further discounts that can be used to buy movies later on.
Still don’t have enough food? Find out everything about cheese at Cheese.com. They currently have information about 652 different kinds of cheese, and more are being added. The information provided consists of a description, country of origin, milk, texture, and producer. You can find cheeses by name, country, texture, and milk, as well as vegetarian cheeses. They have a cheese bookstore and even cheese news. Like they say, “It’s all about cheese!”
Do you want to experience the full power of e-commerce? Try Mercata. By pooling your buying power with that of other shoppers, Mercata can achieve substantial savings over retail prices (50% and more is common) on selected products. You set the maximum price you want to pay by making an “offer”. The more people participate, the more the price will drop. You can observe the most current price online. If your offer is accepted, you pay the lowest price achieved by the group. I have not tried it myself, but it certainly sounds interesting.
So you are an Apple fanatic and want to see, know, and have everything connected to your favorite brand? The Apple Collection has everything. Icons, art, design, prototype pictures, postcards, and collectibles.
If you want to personalize your Mac even more, Woody’s Classic Wallpaper has wonderful fine art images for wallpaper, desktop pictures, backgrounds, and screen saver images. Of course, with our desktop pictures, who would want anything else! ;-)
For those of us who could not make it to this year’s MacHack, the best hacks can be downloaded from the MacHack 99 site. Proceed at your own risk!
If you want to learn more about Apple’s past, check out the Apple History site. Providing a concise history of Apple and a gallery of almost all Macs ever made, this site is a must for every Mac fan.
Our last Web site has, of course, to do with the upcoming solar eclipse on August 11. Exploratorium.edu has a special page called Solar Eclipse dedicated to the fascinating phenomenon. The site will feature live coverage as well as plenty of background information (e.g. where and how to see it and what an eclipse actually is), pictures, and even more eclipse links.
Copyright © 1999 Daniel Chvatik, dchvatik@atpm.com. When he’s not spending all of his waking hours surfing the Web while claiming to be doing research, Daniel finds time to volunteer as ATPM ’s Managing Editor.
Also in This Series
- About This Particular Web Site · August 2007
- About This Particular Web Site · May 2006
- About This Particular Web Site · December 2005
- About This Particular Web Site · May 2005
- About This Particular Web Site · April 2005
- About This Particular Web Site · September 2004
- About This Particular Web Site · May 2004
- About This Particular Web Site · January 2004
- About This Particular Web Site · December 2003
- Complete Archive
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