The home page image is based on photographs of two historic American aircraft—the 1903 Wright Flyer (provided courtesy of the Library of Congress), the first plane to achieve sustained powered flight; and 2004 SpaceShipOne, the first privately funded airplane to rocket into suborbital spaceflight.

With Orville Wright at the controls, the Wright Flyer flew just 120 feet on its first flight on Dec. 17, 1903, but it ushered in the new century of commercial air travel. When SpaceShipOne, designed by legendary aerospace engineer Burt Rutan and financed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, soared 71 miles above the Mojave Desert with Brian Binnie at the controls, it claimed the $10 million Ansari X Prize given to the first private company to launch a reusable manned vehicle into space twice within two weeks. One year later, Rutan joined with Virgin Atlantic founder Sir Richard Branson to found The Spaceship Company, which will license the SpaceShipOne technology to build a fleet of commercial suborbital spaceships as part of the company's mission "to make spaceflight affordable for the masses."

The cover image depicts a revolution based on the reinvention of manned flight and serves to represent the similar revolution in retailing-the complete reinvention of century-old merchandising methods by web-based systems and practices. That is the theme of the third annual Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition to be held at the San Jose Convention Center on June 4-7, 2007. The world's largest e-retailing event, IRCE 2007 is expected to draw more than 4,300 e-retailing professions. The will come to hear 100 expert speakers address all e-retailing topics and trends and explain how web-based retailing is not merely another merchandising channel but a new form of retailing that will fundamentally alter all retail channels in the 21st Century.

The cover image is the concept of Internet Retailer publisher Jack Love and was designed and illustrated by Jason Smith using modified photographs. Back to Overview Page.