Be careful with online payments following reports of a Russian hacker breaching 40 companies, an attack on an Amazon subsidiary, and critical security vulnerabilities discovered in IBM’s Net.Commerce e-commerce platform.
I recommend the Electronic Commerce Resource Center as a comprehensive directory for e-commerce, while suggesting Digital Commerce Center and internet.com for more in-depth articles and news on the industry.
I found a site offering free annual reports for public companies online. This resource is helpful for researching financial statements and corporate history without the need for physical copies or paid databases.
I found a collection of "abused" Amazon images showing creative and unintended uses of the platform's product photo system. These examples highlight the early web's quirks and how users subverted standard e-commerce visuals for humor.
Amazon cut technology costs by $17 million by migrating from proprietary systems to Linux. This early example demonstrates the massive financial impact of adopting open-source infrastructure at an enterprise scale for e-commerce operations.
I'm tracking Stephen King's experiment with self-publishing The Plant online in dollar installments. By bypassing traditional publishers and relying on an honor-system payment model, he's testing whether direct digital distribution is viable for authors.