Wired has posted its 10 best galleries of the year, including the BSOD Through The Ages, and Star Trek's 10 Cheesiest Creatures. One of the many problems with all the later Star Trek series has been the lack of cheesy aliens; in fact, the lack of any alien with an alien feature beyond a couple of ridgy lines across their forehead. Anyhow, the original collection is well worth checking out.

Cybershopping - offshore
The NZ Herald has a rah-rah front page headline today: Online Shopping Booms. Apparently the amount spent online surged during November to $585 million, or equivalent to 32% of the amount spent via eftpos cards over the counter. That does sound astoundingly high, but the $585 million does include used goods as well (that is Trade Me) as well as well as conventional retail. Cattily, the story completely ignores Ferrit.

I've been doing a bit of online shopping myself. But I ended up buying the hardcover edition of The Dangerous Book for Boys from Amazon.com (for $US14.97; actually $US1.04 cheaper because I bought it in tandem with The Daring Book For Girls). Even including shipping, that still worked out far, far cheaper than picking up the same book, in the same size hard cover format at Borders for $NZ50.00. In fairness, I should point out that our own Fishpond.co.nz is now offering Dangerous for $33.64 (marked down at some point from $57.99; I've seen it in Queen Street stores for up to $70).

Don't pay the ferryman (online)
I was caught out in the other direction this morning, however, when booking a car ferry ticket to Waiheke. While on hold to Sealink, a voice prompt told me to checkout online booking options. Being in front of my computer, I duly did so, and in fact managed to close my transaction before anyone answered my call - well, almost; the final confirmation screen just went blank for about 10 minutes before I gave up.

Calling the main number again, I got a prompt reply and bought a ticket over the phone - return with a car and four people, for $120. That was something of a surprise, as the "special online price" flagged on the site had been $164 (which had in fact gone through).

The Sealink rep was very polite about it, and immediately reversed the $164 charge, and explained that the $120 deal was available online. That's good, but following what I thought were all the default prompts, I missed that special deal on the site.