amazon Archives - The Handbuilt City

AliExpress: The New Amazon? Or, Close, But No Cigar?

April 7, 2021April 7, 2021 Nat M. Zorach 0 Comments ali, ali cloud, alibaba, alibaba vs. aliexpress, aliexpress, amazon, amazon distribution center, backmarket, cainiao, capitalism, china, consumer culture, consumerism, coupang, distribution, ecommerce, eRetail, free market, late capitalism, logistics, mass consumption, PRC, products, retailers, supply chain, TPP, trade, trade relations, trans-pacific partnership, US China relations, us china trade war, US-China trade, value density, value density by volume, value density by weight, value density per volume, warehouse, world trade organization, WTO

An exhaustive review of AliExpress, the Chinese Amazon and the “foreign office” of global giant AliBaba.

Business & Economics

Trying To Bump Up Those Margins? Have You Considered… Stealing?

March 4, 2021March 4, 2021 Nat M. Zorach 0 Comments amazon, amazon prime, AMZN, billionaires, copyright infringement, customer reviews, customer service, ecommerce, everyday sling, jeff bezos, litigation, millionaihs and billionaihs, peak design, peak design everyday sling, reviews, shopping, stealing, theft

Amazon has a long and sordid history of stealing the designs of companies that sell on its platform– and making their products themselves, to be sold at a lower price. One company decided to troll them in response.

Book Reviews

Platform Revolution: Understanding The New Economics of the Interweb

March 3, 2021March 2, 2021 Nat M. Zorach 0 Comments algorithms, amazon, Amazon Web Services, asset-lite, AWS, book review, disruption, disruptive innovation, end-to-end principle, filters, geoffrey g. parker, linear value chain, marshall w. van alstyne, matching, matching algorithms, network effects, parker alstyne choudary, platform, platform business, platform company, platform economy, platform model, platform revolution, platform software, platforms, sangeet paul choudary, software-as-a-service, uberland

The platform economy dominates the economy today. This book offers numerous valuable lessons for how we can think about the architecture of systems in public infrastructure.

Urban Planning Mobility

Book Review – Ghost Road: Beyond the Driverless Car

February 4, 2021February 3, 2021 Nat M. Zorach 0 Comments amazon, anthony townsend, ArgoAI, artificial intelligence, Autonomous, autonomous vehicles, AV, AV tech, AVs, BRT, car culture, cars, connected cities, connected vehicles, cruise automation, distribution, driving, Ford, fulfillment, fulfillment centers, GM, infrastructure, infrastructure deficit, infrastructure spending, integrated, jeff bezos, jeff bezos skull keg party, lidar, machine learning, microsprawl, public transit, self-driving, self-driving car, self-driving cars, smart cities, smart city, tech bro, tech bros, transit, trucks

Can autonomous cars save us? Well, no, but they can provide some vital innovation to our society. Provided we play our cards right, that is. Anthony Townsend’s book gives us the lowdown.

Business & Economics Lifestyle

Streaming, Torrents, and Market Fragmentation: Will p2p Filesharing, Unlike The South, Rise Again?

July 10, 2020July 10, 2020 Nat M. Zorach 0 Comments amazon, amazon prime, apple, downloading, DRM, film, itunes, market fragmentation, mp3, music, netflix, streaming, streaming services, torrents

Digital piracy has made a comeback in recent years as the market for content streaming becomes more crowded and more expensive, leading to serious questions about the long-term sustainability of the sector.

Urban Planning Public Health Seattle Tech

Did Cities Ever Need Tech, Anyway? Seattle vs. the Post-COVID Economy

June 9, 2020June 9, 2020 Amanda Spiegel 0 Comments amazon, coronavirus, covid, crime, homelessness, housing, housing crisis, housing insecurity, housing security, missing middle, public health, seattle, tableau, tech, tech bubble

Long a sleepy seaport town, Seattle was enjoying a fraught, decade-long flirtation with explosive growth– and inequality. Will COVID bust up the party forevermore?