Wow personalization just got a little bit sadder. And wetter. Ew. Kleenex is offering you and anyone with 8 bucks to blow (Ha, blow!) the chance to design and ship their own version of the Kleenex Oval.

The user interface is pretty cool. Look what we made! And then didn’t buy.

So we got to thinking; who needs email, fed ex or even the old stand by the spoken word when you can communicate via the personalized Kleenex box.

We put our resident cave artist to work to create these functional versions of the personalized Kleenex box er.. oval.

We call this one the George Kostanza. Drop one at your future ex’s doorstep then lurk around the corner and listen for the hysterical sobbing. Take pride in the fact that your thoughtful gift is so useful. Now set your cell phone on silent and head to the nearest bar in search of your next victim gift recipient.

Our next design offers up a rude awakening, perfect for the 8 year old Paris Hilton worshiper with delusions of grandeur. This ought to throw her off the MTV Sweet Sixteen I Want a Pink Hummer path and right onto the therapy couch. We’re mean, huh?

Absolutely hate firing people? So did we. Until now! In fact we may try it out on the cave artist who produced these images.

Make your own.

What makes you cry?

Layercake loves us some delicious iPod and we love our iPod accessories almost as much! So when we saw the miniscule mobiBLU MP3 player from Hyun Won America our first thought was how will we accessorize it? Fear not, mobiBLU is so small it actually becomes the accessory as illustrated on its website. We love it! And it comes in nine yummy colors; so cute you could just eat it! But don’t.

The MobieBLU flash player comes in two sizes, 512mb and 1Gig. It plays MP3s, WMA and DRM files and it even features an FM radio and recorder. That’s a lot of wow in packed into not a lot of space. At slightly less than 1″ square you have to be really careful not to lose it and we don’t recommend it for small children or people who enjoy eating Rubik’s Cube pieces or other plastic cube shaped non-food items. Not for the fumble fingered we wonder if it includes a trained ant to help navigate the controls?

Fabulous and tres 007!

Well, we’re still waiting for the microchip version which will allow you to simply imagine a song and that song will play in your head. The video version will feature special contact lenses that act as miniature movie screens. Hmm what will become of our portable music player accessory budget?

Curious? Read about the mobBLUE on its very own blog or check out the PC Magazine review.

What’s in your player?

Faux Christmas trees piled up in the aisles at Home Depot. Stockings hung in the Target stores with care. Hallmark stores dressed like Santa’s workshop. All of that festive red and green can only mean one thing, Snowflakes, it’s October! And in the spirit of the season, all of us at Layercake.net have taken the angst out of gift giving. It was difficult, but we did it; we shopped so you don’t have to. This year we went to the source, the king of commerce, the master of merchandising Needless Markup Neiman Marcus. Every October Neiman Marcus publishes their much anticipated Fantasy Gift catalog. This holiday hit list is filled with fabulous and fancy finds for the financially fortunate. Let’s take a trip down the Neiman Marcus fantasy freeway.

You’ll find you’re dancing on a number nine cloud..

Just what the crazed commuter dreams of. You’ll fly high above the traffic as you cloud cruise at speeds of 350 mph and beyond. The Moller M400s Sky Car runs on alcohol and gets up to 21 miles per gallon. Environmentally friendly, sexy and speedy, all this for a cool 3.5 million.

Flesh for fantasy..

Live and in the flesh Sir Elton John will perform for the lucky recipient of this intimate concert for 500. Impress your friends and feel good about it as the $1.5 million price will be donated to the Elton John AIDS Foundation.

Dear Mr. Fantasy play us a tune, something to make us all feel happy..

If you’re like us, you’ve become slightly obsesssed with dressing your iPod. This year’s fantasy catalogue has just the fix. iPod cases from D&G, Prada, Gucci and Burberry; choose your favorite for about 200 bucks. If you know someone who has been especially good, perhaps you should fill their stocking with the Valentino mini ipod case, covered in Swarovski® crystals retails for $840.00. iPod not included.

In my minds eye I see clearly a vision of how it could be. Me and my fantasy girl..

Private custom photo booth- $20,000.00
Roll of quarters- $10.00
Alone time in custom photo booth with fantasy girl- Priceless

Alas, we’re still hoping for a pair of last year’s $8,000.00 Jay Strongwater Swarovski® encrusted Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head. And we’ve been naughty and nice..

What’s your fantasy?

More dot mockery goes out to the online efforts of Nordstrom.com. While they are doing a lot of things right, this screenshot made layercake’s commerce team of one cry tears of acid. Ouch.

Wow, is this what the color black looks like? Oh, so we should just imagine the jacket in black.

What Nordstrom is doing really well happens to be something incredibly simple. Most great ideas are just that— simple. Nordstrom communicates purse sizes in real life measurements by telling customers what fits in the bag. Nice. Very nice. Simple. Just like the one the word sentences littering this piece.

The internet is closed for business. Ok, not the entire internet, just the Gap. We’re just trying to illustrate the absurdity of closing an online store for a redesign. Perhaps the Gap is not aware that there is no square footage limit at the cyber mall? Or maybe they just don’t have the bandwidth to keep one store open and run a store redesign on test servers until the new store is tested and ready to launch. Bottom line, this big bucks brand is closed and has been for several weeks. This following the temporary closure of their two other popular online outlets, Old Navy and Banana Republic. Both Old Navy and Banana Republic have since reopened with the self deemed “innovative” new features. Uh, not so fast. Innovative? Not so much. What do we really have here, a few copycat features like same page shopping cart views, out of stock item suppression? Hmm where have I seen that before?

Yeah not so innovative. So what makes the shopping addicts fiends at Layercake experts and such super smarty hoo haws when it comes to what a site redesign entails? Well it just so happens that the founder of Layercake.net worked as a Marketing Analyst and Product Manager for Netflix.com for nearly five years. During that time there were multiple site redesigns and complete business model changes; all done with less than a few hours downtime.

And look, the Gap redesigns aren’t even complete! Coming soon, more not so amazing features! Soon, Old Navy and BR customers will be able to use “up to two gift certificates” at once! How ’bout three? Oh, not possible? Bummer.

Shop by size? Unheard of! Just ask Macy’s.com with shop by size and brand functionality.

Or Target.com where you can even shop by color.

Oh and rumor has it that if you try hard enough you can actually get in to the Gap’s online store. If only Gap would try harder. Oh and maybe they could get on board with the rest of us and put the k’bosh on the usage of “Click Here”.

UPDATE 9-27-2005:

It’s officially a trend. More shopus interruptus. Bloomingdale’s is in the trenches redesigning their virtual store. Throwing revenue out the virtual window. Don’t forget your hardhats. Ouch.

UPDATE: 9/27/2005: We’re in!

UPDATE: 9/29/2005: Gap opens their “doors” to fanfare after receiving Layercake.net’s award for Most Boring Store on the Web! Yawn. Too bad they couldn’t get their shopping cart to automatically calculate free shipping on 100 bucks. Customers will still need to enter prehistoric in-store offer free shipping codes!! Good job!!