A $7 shopping spree
Using a new online system for making small-money purchases called Peppercoin, and a few of its competitors in the "micropayments" space, we attempted to fill an Internet shopping cart for $7.
1. We started at MusicRebellion.com and for $1.19 picked up an MP3 of a holiday classic: Frank Sinatra singing "O Little Town of Bethlehem." Then we skipped over to CelebrityRants.com, a website with embarrassing, nasty sound clips. ("Governor Clinton, have you had an extramarital affair?" "If I had, I wouldn't tell you.") All set to amateurish, choppy animation. We decided to grab all 45 for $1.99. It sounded like a bargain, until we found out that we get to see them for only 21 days before we have to repurchase them.
2. Then we clicked over to an Internet bazaar organized by BitPass, a Peppercoin competitor. We grabbed a "digital dime novel" (appropriately priced, of course) titled "The Blue Narwahl." The excerpt appeared to aspire to be a cross between "Moby Dick" and "The Matrix." While we were there we picked up a more expensive volume, "Gabriel on the Moon," for 25 cents. Part one of an "online graphic novella about math, sex, obsession and phone numbers," called "The Right Number," was also 25 cents. Then we bought the rights to watch a three-minute digital comedy film, "Broadband Love Jones," by the co-author of the cult musical "Bat Boy," for 25 cents.
3. Our last stop was at PayLoadz, a New York micropayment company that has organized its own eclectic group of vendors. A crossstitch design of Queen Nefertiti was only $1.99; construction plans for a rustic-looking garden bridge sold for $1. But by far the cheapest, and most befuddling, purchase was a digital picture, "Rope," for exactly 1 cent. We figured there must be more to it than just a downloadable photograph of some rope, but for a penny it turns out there wasn't. That was the deal: one
picture, one penny.
After our penny purchase, confidence started to swell. Even with nine purchases (53 if you count all of those Celebrity Rants), we thought we were going to be able to stay under our $7 limit. But when we got out the calculator, we discovered the micropayment dream is more elusive than that. We were disappointed to learn that we had gone over budget by 3 cents. That's enough for three pictures of rope!
