Recently a colleague at Citigroup handed me a thick book that eerily reminded me of the VBScript and Core Java tomes I used to tote around in my web developer days. The Purplebook 2006 is the “definitive” annual list of best online shopping sites. Kind of a Zagat’s for the web.

Considering the speed of construction and velocity of the restaurant failure cycle, the Zagat’s paper model is unlikely to survive for restaurants in major cities. The web, with no construction costs and built on fluidity, should not be attempted. Please cross-apply everything in the blogoshere about the long tail, access to distribution, etc. Now frown in a “wow, that is a really stupid idea” face.

The purple site offers icons to indicate when sites offer high, medium or low shipping fees. How they do this in a book in a book when shipping is a variable cost based on distance is beyond me. The only really interesting thing they do is measure the usability of various sites on the same high, medium, low scale. Interesting but hardly useful, considering that such nuances of site usability are a subjective matter. Not to mention, if you can’t use a particular site, you just move to the next hit on Google.
$29.99 for access, no way to promote users views and static. Three strikes.