Virtual Flower Delivery
Websites
By Sara J. Brenneis
Just as the U.S. Postal Service sweats out retro stamps in an attempt to alter
the decided swing of their clientele toward email use, so too does the Floral
Delivery Industry scramble to exotic flower arrangements in the hopes of
nipping the popularity of Internet Virtual Flower Delivery swiftly in the bud.
Virtual services will not wither, however, and Virtual Flowers seem to be
leading the way among the sentimental but lazy Internet user. In the interest
of replacing expensive bouquets containing cards with the misspelled names of
loved ones delivered to unsuspecting neighbors, eflowers (electronic or
virtual flowers, as they are commonly referred to) have gutted the Internet's
virtual
market. Free, easy and as fast as the click of a mouse, World Wide Web pages
that offer virtual flowers do not skimp on the pageantry and romantic schlock
most people have come to expect when sending flowers. Eflowers are actually
images of flowers attached to personalized greetings, sometimes accompanied by
a MIDI melody, sent via an emailed delivery notice. These virtual floral
arrangements can be visited for a week or two on the Web until they disappear,
saving the recipient the hassle of cleaning up actual flower droppings on
their kitchen table.
Among the very best of these virtual flower stores is Shawna's Virtual Flowers!,
a site reminiscent of the neighborhood flower shop. It contains just enough
frilliness to satisfy the hard-core romantic (sharing such sentiments as
"Smile! God loves you" and "For my Bubby") coupled with enough wittiness
(musical selections range from the Partridge Family's I Think I Love You to
that all-time romantic favorite, Devo's Whip it) to satisfy even the most
skeptical of virtual flower shoppers. A wide selection of flower images await
and, by placing all the flower sender's pertinent choices on one page, the
actual time it takes to send a virtual bouquet can be as fast as the time it
takes to download the site.
Rene's Renaissance, on the other hand,
crosses the line into virtual distaste. Overdone artistic renditions of
flowers along with a hyper-romantic credo opening the page ("Virtual Flowers
should be an art form that awakens the senses. These flowers were inspired by
Love and Romance. The sheer beauty of a single rose can bring life to the
most inanimate of objects. We hope they will reflect the feelings that you wish to
share with that Someone Special in your Life.") will drive any dignified
virtual shopper to drink. Downloading and sending time is long and
arduous, as each page contains multiple images and decisions for the sender to make. Put
simply, this page is no fun.
And, after all, the virtual world revolves around fun. Once the door to the
realm of virtual gifts and greetings is opened, the options are limitless.
Certainly a service like Shawna's has already begun to put FTD to shame.
Cheap Tickets
By Sara J. Brenneis
Travel agents are becoming all but obsolete as the internet takes over with free, speedy and easy ways to explore all the discounts and sales available for air travel. One method, of course, is to surf the individual websites of each airline. Through the haze of United, American, Northwest, Delta, et. al., anyone is liable to come up with a good deal, perhaps after five minutes; perhaps after a patience-trying day becoming much too familiar with the intricacies of each airline's web pages. In general, this method for discovering ticket deals is ineffective: after image maps that take ten minutes to load and mazes of pages that only sometimes lead to the actual price of the ticket, many consumers will find themselves either settling for a not-so-good fare or running back to the relative simplicity of their neighborhood travel agent.
There are, however, websites that bypass the need to hunt out every airline and wade through on-line pitches for frequent flier miles and "inexpensive" first-class travel by combining all the pertinent information into one clump. The best of these, Cheap Tickets, gathers cheap airline prices together in one listing, easing the process of sorting through fares on different airlines until it's virtually painless. Once registered at Cheap Tickets (a technique used to guarantee security and quick response by weeding out the casual surfer), the user is able to enter as many one-way or round-trip options as he likes, domestic or international, trying different airports and flight schedules to find the cheapest of the cheap tickets. Cheap Tickets then produces a list of ten to fifteen airlines offering a range of prices (dirt cheap to absurdly expensive, just so you can see how the other half lives) and allows the user to reserve, then order his ticket on-line. Once the user pays for the ticket by credit card, Cheap Tickets whisks it off via Airborne Express in a matter of days.
It's all very straightforward, though there are a few flaws. It is possible to find cheaper airfares by using travel vouchers, frequent flier miles or student prices, none of which are available with Cheap Tickets. Also, finding the really cheapest fare is often a crap shoot of which airport, which travel days, what time of day, etc., will provide the least expensive ticket. Cheap Tickets gives a limited amount of explanatory information: flying to Oakland Airport is cheaper than flying to San Francisco Airport, it tells us, but that doesn't help anyone figure out whether O'Hare is cheaper than Chicago Midway. These variables mean that the user must try every possible combination of dates, times and airports to come up with the best fare.
Still, Cheap Tickets is a convenient way to skip the trouble of tapping into endless airline Web pages. One stop at Cheap Tickets allows the user to get an overview of the prices flying around in the friendly skies without spending hours fighting their way through a virtual multitude of airline web pages.
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