ships

Terrible to look at, easy to use

Lading Manager Lite allows users to create professional-looking bills of lading (shipping). It's not the most sophisticated program we've ever seen, but it does serve its purpose.

The program's interface is perhaps its most unattractive feature; it's not entirely unintuitive, but it does look very dated. The built-in Help file is quite comprehensive, but most users who have any familiarity with creating bills of lading should be able to figure the program out quickly on their own. Users must first enter information for their company, carriers, origins, consignees, and equipment. Once these are in the database, … Read more

Amazon suspends wine sales effort

Amazon.com is apparently shelving its planned effort to sell wine online.

A little more than a year after word of the effort trickled out, a senior Amazon account manager told wineries about the decision to cork it in an e-mail last week.

"As you know, we were excited to work with you to build the AmazonWine business," Dini Rao said in an e-mail first reported by WineBusiness.com. "For that reason, this was a very tough choice for us. Many of you took the time and leap of faith to really support us."

Amazon representatives … Read more

Amazon offers same-day delivery to select cities

Amazon.com on Thursday announced that customers looking to get their packages sooner will have a couple new options available to them.

Amazon customers placing deliveries within the cities of New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Washington, Baltimore, Las Vegas, and Seattle, as well as "some surrounding areas," will now be able to receive shipments on the same day they place an order. The service will be coming to Chicago, Indianapolis, and Phoenix "in the coming months."

Amazon said "thousands of items" are available now to customers living in those cities. The new option, called Local Express Delivery, will have varied pricing that depends on the type of product purchased. Amazon Prime members--customers who pay $79 per year to receive unlimited two-day shipping from the online retailer--will need to pay $5.99 per item for the service.

In order to get an item on the same day it's ordered, customers will need to buy products prior to their city's cutoff time. For example, New York customers will need to order a product by 10 a.m. ET, while Seattle customers can purchase products by 1 p.m. PT. The other cities' cutoff times vary within that range. According to Amazon, it will list the cutoff times on each eligible product's detail page.… Read more

Versatile label creator

Label Flow helps create labels with its instinctive program. By providing a well-planned layout and a seemingly endless supply of labels, this program will meet shipping needs.

We jumped immediately into the program thanks to its intuitive wizard, which makes the interface a breeze to deal with. The strongest aspect of the wizard was its selection of labels. We were impressed that every brand from Avery to Wal-Mart was represented and couldn't imagine a brand name or label type not included. We eased through the entry fields for standard label additions like addresses and names, but were pleasantly surprised … Read more

Shooter fun on rails

Galactic Gunner is a fun, challenging, and well-designed arcade shooter with a quirky sense of humor and excellent production values. You don't pilot a spaceship but instead play the role of a gunner--so in this shooter "on rails," the action unfolds in front of you, as you must quickly tap the screen to shoot at fast-moving targets, whether asteroids, test drones, or enemy turrets and fighters. Not having to control your ship doesn't mean Galactic Gunner isn't challenging: because you're scored on both accuracy and the number of targets destroyed, you have to time … Read more

Kindle DX shipping June 10

Amazon.com says its Kindle DX e-book reader will start shipping on June 10. "The Kindle DX is currently available for pre-order and all orders are prioritized on a first come, first served basis," the company said Monday in a statement.

Not to much to add at this point other than we'll post a review on the 10th. In the meantime, you can check out our lengthy first take of the jumbo-screen e-reader.

Has anybody ordered one yet--or thought about buying one? Or is the DX just too pricey at $489?

Find 'filler' items to get free shipping at Amazon

Raise your hand if this sounds familiar: you have just under $25 worth of stuff in your Amazon shopping cart--not quite enough to qualify for free shipping--so you go trolling the site for something small and inexpensive to tip the scales.

Of course, finding the right something is never easy, so you decide to treat yourself to an item on your wish list...and end up spending way more than you'd planned. Amazing how easy it is to justify spending money to save money, no?

Superfiller makes it a snap to find "filler" items that bring your … Read more

Long waits for some Netflix Blu-ray customers

If you're a Netflix customer who's paying an extra $1 a month to rent movies on Blu-ray, you might have noticed that the discs aren't being delivered as quickly as DVDs.

Josh Lowensohn, one of my colleagues here at CNET News, was complaining that he's had Futurama: Bender's Game, in his queue for over a month. The flick Wall-E has been in the queue since November 18. Why is it taking so long for Netflix to ship?

I called Steve Swasey, Netflix's very accessible spokesman, and he said the Web video store simply doesn'… Read more

Amazon has Guitar Hero World Tour Guitar Kit for $60 plus free shipping

Amazon started its 15 Days of Deals off to the right foot today with "Guitar Hero. For those not familiar with "Guitar Hero World Tour," it's Activision's latest and greatest iteration of the fantastic series. Amazon currently has the game with guitar for the PS2, PS3, Wii, and Xbox 360 in stock for up to $40 off the list price. PS2 for $49.99 PS3 for $59.99 Wii for $69.99 XBox 360 for $59.99

Focus, focus, focus: Why Web retail is like a really cheesy mall

Years ago, for my wife's birthday, I bought her a terrarium for her orchids. You know where I got it? Terrariumsale.com. Because that's what showed up in Google. Now, Terrariumsale.com is not a business unto itself. It's one of several front-ends to a catalog of goods sold by FineWebStores. I was reminded of this today when I got a pitch for FreeShippingOn.com, a site that helps you find items available for sale online that you can get without paying shipping fees. I wrote back to the person who sent me the pitch: "You'… Read more