Really, flying cars are all that's needed now for the future to officially be here, because yesterday I tried a service that obviously represents a major milestone for humanity: I bought groceries over the Internet.
Amazon Fresh is an experimental project that has been running in a limited trial mode for over a year now. It allows you to buy pretty much anything you'd find in a traditional supermarket and have it delivered to your door, usually the same day. You can also elect to have items delivered before dawn the next day, so they're on your doorstep when you wake up. Delivery is free on orders over $30, but currently they will only deliver to a few Seattle-area zip codes. The Amazon offices are of course covered, and so one thing led to another…
The items arrived neatly packed in classy sturdy brown paper bags with good handles and the Fresh logo down the side. Chilled items were packed in insulated bags with ice packs (Amazon Fresh branded ones, no less), and frozen items came in separate containers with Styrofoam insulation and a block of dry ice. Overall it's a very impressive service, and I can only hope that the delivery area grows over time. I just cannot stop grinning about the fact that I bought groceries online… and liked it.
While on the topic, I just want to say that there is something very awesome about working for a company where a “partner networking event” is not some odd business-card based ritual, but rather a technical seminar about factors to keep in mind when setting up a new network infrastructure for communicating with new services, and different possible router, load balancer, and firewall configurations.
