Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Body Parts Online

I came across this headline, and it brought a smile: FDA cracks down on body parts companies

Why would I smile? Because many, many years ago, when the internet was still youngish, I set up an auction site (eBay didn't exist yet) selling body parts. Highest bidder wins a replacement heart! It was called BodyParts Online

It was a fully functional auction site. I had jobs set up to periodically "re-supply" new body parts, plus robots that would randomly post bids on various parts so that there was activity. The names that the robots used in bidding came from a collection of name/email addresses I had gathered from a couple of those emails people forwarded hoping to get 500 names so they got a free disney trip or something.

Of course, for the few actual people that bid, I had still more robots to outbid them. It would have been hell if someone won a bid for a new left hand and expected delivery.

It was short-lived, lasting less than a year, but Yahoo listed it at the top of their auction category, even giving it a pair of sunglasses to denote a cool site. A french newspaper came across it and, near as I could get translated, absolutely loved it.

Ah, those were the days when it was fun and cool to be on the bleeding edge. And a hell raiser, to boot! (If my cohort in setting this up reads this, can you remember about what year this was?)

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