Amazon.com

I remember the first time I visited about Amazon.com. It was amazing. It worked. I could order anything.

They were an innovator. And they continue to be. Most of the interesting ideas about e-commerce either start at or are fully exploited by Amazon.com, from wish lists to easy charitable giving. And their ordering and fulfilment experience is always being refined. They are the market leader.

One of the nice features of their website is that you can see the history of your Amazon.com orders all the way back to 1995. Chapters has the same feature (I largely switched to them because their shipping is cheaper and faster in Canada). It’s an interesting voyage through my last half-decade to see what I ordered when:

• 1995
  • How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive: A Manual of Step by Step Procedures for the Compleat Idiot
  • The Urban Survival Handbook
• 1996
  • All’s Fair: Love, War, and Running for President
  • How Buildings Learn: What Happpens After They’re Built
  • Focus : The Future of Your Company Depends on It
  • The Death of Common Sense: How Law Is Suffocating America
• 1997
  • Monster: Living Off the Big Screen
• 1998
  • The Parenthood Decision: Deciding Whether You Are Ready and Willing to Become a Parent
• 2000
  • Second Opinions: Stories of Intuition and Choice in the Changing World of Medicine
  • Anna Leonowens
• 2001
  • Paris to the Moon
  • The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual
  • The Last Voyage: The Story of Schooner Third Sea

As proof of my comments above, the Amazon.com account history lookup is much more elegant and useful than the Chapters one. Small observation: 8 of the 13 books I’ve ordered have colons in their title.