e-commerce

I think I understand textual mark-up a little better, at least in concept but I'm still not 100% sure about it purposes within digital culture. I guess it's just a way of efficiently organizing and synthesizing information. In a sense, everything is "marked up," even this text I'm currently presenting. This and the study of databases previously seemed pretty boring but afterwards, I think studying linguistics in the context of technology would be pretty nifty.

If copyright laws on the internet reminded me I don't want to be a lawyer, e-commerce reminds me I don't want to study business. It seems everything is getting increasingly complex. A lot of the assigned reading focused on the larger picture - corporate trading, overall business trends - rather than impact on the consumer. I know I should be less apathetic because it does indirectly involve me, but I'm not so interested in how huge corporations wish to squeeze more money out of the internet or the resulting perils. It seems when they get a little too greedy and overzealous (buy! buy! buy!) they forget their purpose and then we have dot-com busts (but again, I'm no economist).

Reading some of these articles, it seems again, corporations are wanting a larger piece of the internet pie. Apparently NBC and Universal want to begin pulling content from Apple's iTunes and offer it up on their own sites. I really don't feel like this will be successful, as it's not looking out for the consumer. It seems the sole good thing about iTunes is the range of obscure media available for purchase in one centralized place. It eliminates the hunting down of things. If these companies begin to splinter, consumers aren't going to want an account at 8 different media sites. It removes the convenience which the users seem to be all about (otherwise, they'd just spend a lot of time hunting for rare things for free, like me). Maybe I'm just a picky and lazy customer, but I only use online businesses to the extent they benefit me.

Speaking of online business, one I kinda like is threadless.com. Basically, they print t-shirts. Anyone can upload a design and users vote on individual designs. The most popular designs are put up for sale for a decent price, as far as aesthetically appealing t-shirts go. I think it's so popular primarily because of this interactive model (omg web 2.0!)...users are encouraged to upload pictures of themselves in the shirt for store credit, keep blogs on designs and be part of an overall large community.