May 31, 2000: I really like the discussion that boo.com has provoked. Plenty has been written about the site's usability problems, but the reality is a lot more complex. My take (once I got over my initial horror on seeing the site) has always been that it's a crying shame that boo was so poorly implemented because the impulse to push a bit at what a commerce site can be is absolutely right on. Not that all sites should include animated agents (or full-screen flash interfaces or whatever), but goddammit everything doesn't have to look like amazon/yahoo/useit.com. And holding up boo as the example (bad website! bad!) is just disingenuous.