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In an interesting twist, you are not suppose to make lemonade if you are given lemons, according to the Portland Health Department.

Julie Murphy, a 7 year old girl was slapped on the wrist for setting up a lemonade stand at a street fair by the health department. Apparently, she did not have a temporary restaurant permit to sell food at a public place. The permit cost $120. She was forced to shut down or face a $500 fine.

As opposed to selling lemonade, she gave the lemonade away for donations. The health officials came back when traffic started to pick up and gave her an ultimatum, “shut down or face a fine”.

She would need to sell or get donations that equate to 1000 cups of lemonade if she would to continue to maintain her booth, as she was selling a cup at $0.50.

In an ideal world, you would want to work yourself out of your job and hopefully retire in comfort. Well, the Season Ticket Sales Staff of the Miami Heat found out that they worked themselves out from their job when all the season tickets were snapped up after the Miami Heat recently signed LeBron James.
The Heat fired all 30 of its season ticket sellers. One seller acknowledged to the Miami Herald, “There was really nothing left to do.”

Hopefully, the Heat gave the ticket sellers some benefits from that as that saved the team a lot of money in wages for the 30 ticket sellers.

The year saw a few big acquisitions of online properties with the latest being Amazon buying Woot.com. Woot is a deal based website that focuses on discontinued, past season, refurbished, or slow moving items that manufacturers/distributors are looking to get off their books.

I was first exposed to Woot when somebody either sent me a link or posted a link to a Samsung washer which was 40% off retail. The catch 22 with that was the fact that those washers had a program issue but it never left the factory floor before it was reprogrammed and corrected. Same thing like the Camry recall where they reprogram the brain of the unit. Only difference with the washer are, those units are brand new and good luck trying to get the washer 100mph down Route 66.

Woot should not see any changes in the staff or operations per their blog posting. Nothing was announced when it came to the value that Amazon paid for Woot.

Recently Buy.com got acquired by Rakuten of Japan, parent company of Linkshare USA. Prior to that, Amazon acquired Zappos.com.

My guess on some big company to be acquired – NewEgg.com

Today Microsoft announced that they are officially going to cease operating the Bing Cashback program on July 30, 2010. The Bing Cashback program was setup as a loyalty program that offered consumers a percentage of their purchase at selected partner online store in terms of a cash back. The primary goal of that program was to support the Bing Search engine by cultivating loyalty through cash back and the partner online stores will have their Bing Cashback appear above the sponsored ads on Bing. At that time, Microsoft could have turned that application into an affiliate marketing network or become a super affiliate, but I have no idea why the executives did not have that foresight.

The birth of this program started with the acquisition of JellyFish in 2007, and that morphed into Bing Cashback when it launched in May 2008. When the program launched in 2008, they signed up 700 online stores or so from Sears, Overstock to eBay. Within the last two years, they signed on another 300+ online stores to have 1000+ online stores.

Bing Cashback was never thought out before implementation from strategy to execution. Although they announce the death of Bing Cashback, I would spin this around and turn the program and platform into something else which would see a positive cash flow in 6 months. They just need to think beyond using that to support the Bing Search.

6pm.com, a sister company of Zappos.com took a big hit last Friday; at the same time they made a statement stating that they will honor all orders. An employee’s error in the pricing engine overwrote nearly all of its products to $49.95 on Friday for six hours, from midnight to 6 a.m.

It took the 6pm team several hours to notice the mistake. From 12am to 6am on May 21st all sales were capped at below $50 and the site managed to rack up $1.6 million in lost revenue because of it. Most companies would basically void all the orders and refer the customers to the T&C of the website which contained some verbiage about price mistakes.

Aaron Magness, director of brand marketing and business development mentioned that

While we’re sure this was a great deal for customers, it was inadvertent, and we took a big loss (over $1.6 million – ouch) selling so many items so far under cost. However, it was our mistake. We will be honoring all purchases that took place on 6pm.com during our mess up. We apologize to anyone that was confused and/or frustrated during out little hiccup and thank you all for being such great customers. We hope you continue to Shop. Save. Smile. at 6pm.com.

Among the items available at a steep discount was the Humminbird 1155C Chart Plotter NVB GPS system the site typically sells for $1857.85.

This is above and beyond what you call “Customer Comes First”.

I wondered what happened to the employee that caused this error? If I was in his/her shoes, I would basically apologize profusely and hand in my resignation letter. This is not $16 or $160 where you can repay your company.

Zappos was sold to Amazon for $928 Million in July 2009. I wonder if Amazon had a say in this as any price mistakes on Amazon will never be honored per their website usage policy.

Every now and then, Google would change their homepage to reflect a certain event or cause. Today, you are able to play Pac Man on Google for free. This it to acknowledge that it is the game’s 30th anniversary.

Hey Web Searchers,

If you’ve visited our homepage today, there’s no doubt that you noticed our Pac Man doodle honoring the game’s 30th anniversary. If you insert the virtual coin, you can begin playing this legendary game or you can wait 10 seconds and it will automatically start. If you’re not a Pac Man fan or want to skip the music and lights, just enter you search query as usual and you’ll be directed to our normal search results page. Other options include:

1. Closing your browser
2. Turning the volume down or off on your computer
3. Playing Pac Man all day long (or at least until you beat your co-workers)

Happy Friday!

~Rubie

I think this is going to be a big shakedown in the online realm with Rakuten Inc of Japan agreeing to purchase U.S. e-commerce site Buy.com Inc. The all-cash deal, valued at $250 million, will offer Rakuten its first major direct-to-consumer platform in the world’s largest e-commerce market. The move will give Rakuten a larger footprint in the U.S.

In 2005, the company made its first U.S. move via the purchase of LinkShare, but has largely focused on Asia. For instance, Rakuten and Baidu formed an e-commerce joint venture in China earlier this year.

Buy.com has yearly sales of about $500 million. The deal marks the second time Buy.com has been acquired all or in part by a Japanese company. In 1999, a group led by Softbank Corp. paid $165 million for a stake in Buy.com. Buy.com went public in 2000 and went private again in 2001.

Buy.com currently host its affiliate program on Commission Junction, and I think that in the very near future, they will migrate off Commission Junction to Linkshare, as Linkshare is part of the Rakuten web property.

I got this e-mail from a dear friend and there is some truth in this. I am not sure who wrote it but it was well thought of.

NINE WORDS WOMEN USE

(1) Fine:This is the word women use to end an argument when they are right and you need to shut up.

(2) Five Minutes:If she is getting dressed, this means a half an hour. Five minutes is only five minutes if you have just been given five more minutes to watch the game before helping around the house.

(3) Nothing:This is the calm before the storm. This means something, and you should be on your toes. Arguments that begin with nothing usually end in fine.

(4) Go Ahead:This is a dare, not permission.. Don’t Do It!

(5) Loud Sigh:This is actually a word, but is a non-verbal statement often misunderstood by men. A loud sigh means she thinks you are an idiot and wonders why she is wasting her time standing here and arguing with you about nothing. (Refer back to # 3 for the meaning of nothing.)

(6) That’s Okay:This is one of the most dangerous statements a women can make to a man. That’s okay means she wants to think long and hard before deciding how and when you will pay for your mistake.

(7) Thanks:A woman is thanking you, do not question, or faint. Just say you’re welcome. (I want to add in a clause here – This is true, unless she says ‘Thanks a lot’ – that is PURE sarcasm and she is not thanking you at all. DO NOT say ‘you’re welcome’ .. that will bring on a ‘whatever’).

(8) Whatever:Is a woman’s way of saying F– YOU!

(9) Don’t worry about it, I got it:Another dangerous statement, meaning this is something that a woman has told a man to do several times, but is now doing it herself. This will later result in a man asking ‘What’s wrong?’ For the woman’s response refer to # 3.

* Send page to the men you know, to warn them about arguments they can avoid(if they remember the terminology).
* Send this to all the women you know to give them a good laugh, cause they know it’s true!!

With the economy bumping along, it seems like a good idea to sell some of the things you don’t need or want on eBay or craigslist but this turn out badly for a couple. A Washington state man listed a diamong ring on craigslist and that turned into a frightening evening that ended in murder.

Jim Sanders, 43, communicated with Amanda Knight who responded to the ad, saying she was looking for a Mothers Day gift. Amanda arrived with her friends; Sanders answered the door on April 28, three men and a woman stood on the doorstep. One of the strangers pulled a gun and the gang forced its way inside.

The night ended with Jim being killed and his wife plus two kids bounded. “These people were casing Craigslistings with this intent,” Ed Troyer of the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department told ABC News. “Their intent was never to buy that ring. Their intent was to go there and commit a robbery.”

Here are some tips to reduce the risk of this happening:
1) Meet in a public place
The likelyhood of somebody pulling a gun at a mall to rob you for a $1000 ring is less likely than a secluded area like your house where there isn’t a lot of people around.
2) Bring some friends with you
Strength in numbers. If you have two or three other people to accompany you during the transaction, it would deter people from mugging you.
3) Pick up hints from the buyer
If he/she is suggesting to meet at a certain location that is known for its crime, or meeting at 1am at a gas station, those are red flags. Or even if they don’t even ask about the item and just want to pay for it.

North Carolina’s Department of Revenue had ordered the online retailer to provide full details on nearly 50 million purchases made by state residents between 2003 and 2010. NC is looking to collect taxes from NC residents that did not pay tax for that item that they purchased off Amazon.

Amazon.com filed a lawsuit stating that the lawsuit says the demand violates the privacy and First Amendment rights of Amazon’s customers. Amazon has no offices or warehouses in North Carolina, it’s not required to collect.

Last year, Amazon discontinued its affiliate program in North Carolina, which provides referrers with a small slice of the transaction, after the state legislature enacted a new law that would have used that program to force the company to collect sales taxes. 

A North Carolina legislator said at the time that the state would be able to force online retailers to collect even retroactive taxes; tax officials have reportedly sent letters to online retailers in the last few months saying they’re required to pa