So, I took a couple years off from maintaining the supersite, instead just sending wastedinc.com to cp.wastedinc.com, known also as CafePress.com/wastedinc.

For a while, that made some sense: since we’ve been outsourcing to CP since 2001, the overwhelming majority of our stuff can be found there. But there’s an old adage about eggs and a basket; and, in the absence of the basket itself, things were about to become a little scrambled.

I took that metaphor too far, didn’t I. Let’s catch up….

CafePress.com started up in 1999 [technically, about four years after Wasted, Inc. started up; but that's irrelevant] as approximately the first fulfilment service of its kind. By 2001, when we started using them, they’d expanded to—I dunno—maybe a dozen types of things they could print jpegs onto, which worked since that’s about what we’d been looking for. A couple of jpegs we’d uploaded in 2001 are still available somewhere at CP, I think; so we’ve been in a comparatively unique position to watch CP evolve over the last eight years, becoming for better or worse what they’re beginning to be now.

Now, CP have something like 120 types of things onto which they can print jpegs and, more usefully, .pngs: black shirts and FlipMinos and so on. That’s the good news.

The bad news, as mentioned below and a couple years ago, is that they’ve also been expanding and modifying their infrastructure, and frankly getting greedy. In a couple days, they’re adopting a soviet pricefixing scheme because…I might as well just show you….

The shorthand: You the Customer are Too Stupid to grok why a shirt wacomed over the course of hours, days, or weeks could possibly outcost a shirt reading NOT MY PRESIDENT in Times New Roman. Something we at Wasted don’t quite agree with [a case could be made, I suppose: there are some painfully stupid people on this planet], and therefore something we don’t particularly support.

Also this, from the same inhouse FAQ:

The shorthand there: We at CafePress.com are tired of making less than ninety percent before taxes and shipping, and figure You the Little People will put up with this midrecession paycut because, hey, we’re CafePress.com and we have no real competitors.

Which just isn’t true. They have competitors; their competitors’ backends suck and annoy me all to hell, but they have competitors.

And so, we’re back to the supersite, retaining the outsourced services of our uppity soviet overlords, and acknowledging that their competitors are in cases better at printing up specific product types, and are generally better at understanding a freemarket economy…which is ironic, since one’s in HongKong.

In any case: for the moment, everything’s still pretty much about CP here. The next step is to upload and install the new blogueware skin, which is easy enough [notwithstanding monumental miscalculations in its design], followed by less easy a task of splitting up sources: PrintFection.com’s ability to print black shirts on both sides, zazzle.com’s ability to make skateboards, et cetera.

Probably won’t have all this done tonight. Might have it done this year. But it’s all near the top of the whiteboard, so it’s officially at least as important as KILL EVERYONE.

Keep an eye on the site. There should be more changes soon….
—Gremlin

Good news and bad news.
The affiliation system we’ve been relying on for the last year or so is about to die. That’s the bad news.
It’s being replaced by CJ.com. That might also be the bad news. But, maybe not.
Personally, I’ve never been too thrilled with CJ.com. Though, to be fair, I hadn’t even thought of them for ten years until this announcement hit me. Which in fact meant that, when I went over there to see whether they’ve ever improved, my account had died after being ignored for a decade. I set up a new one, for better or worse.
Functionally, this won’t change much of anything around here. In about a week, the system we’ve been using with CP all this time will simply end; then anyone with a CJ.com account will be able to send people to our CP stuff using their linkstructure; I’m not sure yet what the margin will be on that, but I’d assume it’ll still be 20%.
Also, mall.wastedinc.com should keep working, though I’ll have to give it my CJ.com number in the next few days.
I suppose that, if there is good news in all this, it’s that CJ.com already have a large network of places, handing out percentages for everything from HotTopic.com to Zappos.com. So, for affiliates who are in it for the money [there are probably other reasons, but I won't try to guess], this ultimately just expands their options quite a bit.
The less good news is that, at the moment, I’m not sure what the specific linkstructure is going to be. Though there should be a fairly simple wizard somewhere in CJ.com’s backend allowing you to set them up in a hurry.
If there’s more information in a week when this officially switches over, I’ll explain it here. For now, just be prepared to have the system which has worked perfectly since sometime in 2005 evaporate for some reason which is currently being called progress.
More later….
–Gremlin

More good news: CP just folded.
Or, in fact, they folded on Wednesday; but the EMail they sent me was so completely buried in an uninteresting subjectline that I didn’t notice it until now.
Here’s the really funny story. The first hint that they’d folded was that I was talking to a trademark lawyer three hours ago [yes, I'm cool enough that trademark lawyers talk to me at eleven at night on Saturday] and tried WiFiing to ZOMBIE: eat flesh in the store to show him what Subway were pretending was trademark infringement. For all it matters, he agreed, based on the jpeg at http://wastedinc.com/2007/01/17/swyndlechicks, that anyone claiming that, under penalty of perjury, was risking prisontime through desperate amounts of bravery, stupidity, or both.
That I’ve since got home and found an EMail reporting that an agent of Subway alleged under penalty of perjury precisely that prevarication is at minimum amusing, to me.
So. Since I live in the US, I’m now given the choice of spending oodles of money attempting to prove my innocence in this misreported crime, or inferring with ironic humour that Subway are terrified of losing their trademark relative to selling human flesh to stupid people while otherwise letting it go and moving on to something else. And of course that’s all I can infer, since they went after my zombie parody and those of various copycats, while ignoring everything from uninspired petarded vegan shirts to Quizno’s using what appear to be ACTUAL SUBWAY WRAPPERS in adverts alerting zombies to the availability of more meat over at their place; to my thinking, that suggests a problem specifically with the element of human flesh, not the trademark itself.
That said, I’m not terribly concerned about it. As far as I care, I just do this sort of thing to get myself a shirt without having to dump large sacks of cash into buying the requisite gear and devoting thousands of square feet in the basement to the operation; those who wanted one of these shirts but never got one might learn to act a little more quickly next time something cool temporarily happens in the world.
Mostly I’m thrilled by the implication, under penalty of perjury, that I stole Subway’s trademark on ‘eat flesh’; time’ll tell if Soylent Green, Inc. accuse Subway of something out of pure karma.
More later….
–Gremlin

I know: I disappeared again for a couple weeks; it’s just something I do.
In fact, there wasn’t a lot of news until today. And the major news of the day is that Swyndle [the guy behind Predacious Moments who has to date evaded capture and statesanctioned therapy] has returned; and he’s brought along the SwyndleChicks.
For the moment, at launch, the ninja is already online; though, by the time You the Visitor read this–presuming I haven’t updated the site with more news by then–there might well be more SwyndleChicks to collect. At present, I think we’ve got about thirty basic vocations [I'm allowing herein that being a ninja is a sort of career] planned for the whole line; to date, the first five or six are pencilled out, awaiting only the timedraining task of inking them in vector and colouring in the various fleshtones…and clothes, as they might apply, however rarely.
As I write this, the SwyndleChicks are a bit exclusive to CP, largely because their backend currently makes more sense; once I get done writing this [and don't worry: that should be sometime today], I’ll jump over to PF and see what sort of damage I can do on that storefront.
That, of course, is being called into question at the moment. And I’m not entirely certain why. Here’s the story on that….
Several months ago, I got ZOMBIE: eat flesh added to CP; and that was fine. More than fine: it was successful. At this point, it’s beginning to match damnit.wheelchair in overall popularity. And that’s good news.
So, when I got PF added to Wasted, I added ZOMBIE: eat flesh to PF. And that was really good, to my thinking; here, in fact, was the result of that effort:

Click for Biggerness

The two on the right [meaning the one on the right and the one in the centre] were made by PF; the one on the left [meaning the one on the left] was made by CP; the mess on the floor was made by me, but that’s less important. And PF’s products were frankly better than CP’s, as far as I’m concerned. So adding the shirts over at PF was a good idea.
So, here’s the interesting part: my lawyers were okay with this; CP’s lawyers seem to remain okay with it; PF’s lawyers, best I can figure, were okay with it when I added it, remained okay with it when I ordered a couple of testrun shirts to make sure I was okay with it, and then, as of yesterday, stopped being okay with it. To this extent:

Thanks for using Printfection.com. Periodically, we review content uploaded to our servers to ensure it complies with our User Uploaded Content Policy. One of the images you’ve uploaded does not comply with this policy. This image has been marked as “pending” in your image basket. You will not be able to create new products or sell products with this image. All products featuring this image have been removed from your store (if applicable).

To see what image has been marked as pending simply login using the following link. Pending images are marked in red:
http://www.printfection.com/account/image_basket.php

Our User Uploaded Content Policy prohibits you from uploading any content that
is:

1) generally offensive or inappropriate as determined by Printfection.com in its sole discretion;
2) obscene or pornographic;
3) libelous, slanderous or otherwise defamatory;
4) designed or intended to harass, threaten, or intimidate others;
5) in violation of any applicable, rule, law regulation or ordinance;
6) exploits the images or likeness of minors;
7) infringing on any right of a third party including, but not limited to any rights relating to trademarks, copyrights, trade secret, trade dress, patent, right of publicity, or rights of privacy.

For the complete policy, please visit:
http://www.printfection.com/help/legal/content_policy

If you have any questions, please e-mail our content review team:
copyright@printfection.com

Thanks,
Printfection.com Content Review Team

To hazard a guess, ZOMBIE: eat flesh violates Clause#7, regarding trademarks. At least in the minds of PF’s lawyers, beginning this year. Why it was okay last year, when I ordered a couple testruns to ensure that PF were good enough to use, is anyone’s guess. But, in this business, them’s the breaks. They’re still okay over at CP, so there’s still time as of this instant to run off and buy them up before they’re outlawed globally.
That said, to my knowledge, the SwyndleChicks, while on the border of Clause#2, remain as of now less pornographic than a lot of things available at PF; hopefully, once I add them over there, they’ll remain available eternally.
And that, I think, is the extent of the news for now. Once we’ve got more SwyndleChicks to talk about, and/or whatever else I manage to get added in the near future, I’ll try to remember to get back here and update the site with whatever information is newer by then.
More later….
–Gremlin

Okay, so it’s not really all that happy; and, in fact, it’s not terribly new; but it is a site. One outta three ain’t…well, you know….
So, here’s the situation: Wasted, Inc. have been around for a bit [twelve years now, scary as that happens to sound], and wastedinc.com have been around nearly as long; this all dates back to the twentieth century, with its analogue mobilephones and wired videogame controllers: early Mesozoic, really.
So, the site’s not new. But this iteration is all shiny. Version…I dunno…ninish, maybe.
So, what’s changed this time? Mostly just that we’re back on the server again. For the last five years, with a couple of exceptions, wastedinc.com has just redirected to CafePress.com/wastedinc. And that worked pretty well for us, until now.
Now, we’re expanding a bit: outsourcing also to a couple of newer places, like PrintFection.com and lulu.com. In fact, WastedDiscourse.com has been hitting lulu.com for some time now; but, by rewriting the site, it’s simpler to admit that.
Each PoD company we use has its own benefits and downsides. For my money [and it's literally my money, since I tend to order merch from these places to test it out and, more importantly, end up with cool swag], CafePress.com being the oldest, best known, and best stocked of the PoDs, they’re pretty much the industry standard at the moment; and, since we’ve been outsourcing to them since 2001, the majority of our stuff is available there, on the widest range of products.
PrintFection.com are newer–currently less than a year old–and yet, they’re already somewhat better, based on my own testing, at printing on shirts; your results, of course, might vary…especially as time goes by.
As for lulu.com: they mostly do books. And they do them well. I’m not sure whether they really belong in the list with the shirt people; but, since I’ve got a couple of titles listed with them, it doesn’t hurt to consolidate everything into one site.
Finally, if you’re looking up to the right under links, you might notice mall.wastedinc.com; that’s also CafePress.com at the moment, but additionally includes a few thousand things we’ve found at competitors’ stores. Of course, they’re not really competitors, since they’ve all got different sorts of stuff than we have. So, if you can’t track something down within a few thousand of our things, you’ll probably find something you like in the mall.
And…that’s about all the news I’ve got at the moment. Oh, except: over there in the menu under categories [and also at the bottom of this page], you’ll find the RSS link. Feel free to subscribe to be alerted to periodic updates around here. Probably, there’ll be some eventually.
Have a good new year; and remember to buy lots and lots of stuff: otherwise, the terrorists win.
….
That line doesn’t really work anymore, does it. I’d like to think that it never really did. Sadly, I know better. Pity.
More later….
–Gremlin