This is WAY COOL. The Museum of Useful Things (which is an online store) is selling a product that I would have loved to have purchased six months back, and I thought would be a cute product. It is sticky tape with a ruler printed on it. They have it in inches only which would be fine for the plane. The only thing I would want more would be a finer scale on the thing.

WSJ.COM is reporting on their best flops from the DotCom era. My personal favourite is CyberRebate.COM which allowed people to buy at highly inflated prices on the promise of a rebate. For instance they could by a TV worth a few hundred dollars for over $1100, on the basis that there were rebates for up to 100% of the purchase price. Now, where they made their money was that they would not send the rebates out for 10-14 weeks (thereby earning a tiny bit of interest), but also assuming that some people would not send in their rebates.

Now, you tell me. If you purchased a TV for four times the retail price would you get around to sending the rebate in on time? That is the problem they had. There are a huge number of people who do not send in rebates for $20 items, but when the price gets much much higher… Well, human nature takes over! The WSJ also report on the worst use of computers in movies… Like an animated email sending which would really really infuriate you if you had to see that lots and lots of times a day.