Last week I started noticing how much use I get out of things that are available for free on the web. The Open Source movement has brought about a lot of good, free software - or donation-ware, if you're serious about Open Source products. There's a number of free things I use, but these are my "Fab 5", the ones I really want to share!

For a long time, Miva Merchant developers have had to deal with the "exclusive or" situation of handling a certain task within the shopping cart framework, or externally via a PHP script. It's not uncommon to see users question how they can run PHP from within, say, a product description or a category header. The standard answer has always been, "you can't". At the most technical level, this is still true; Miva's virtual machine can't run PHP code.

"Repeat business is what matters, and that happens when you surprise people (for the better). Not when you rip them off."

While I don't disagree with the premise of the problem, Seth Godin's post yesterday completely missed the boat. After years of working with numerous clients and running our own physical goods store online, I honestly believe that there are very few merchants on the web who "have realized that you can make 100% of your profit from shipping and handling and do quite well."