E commerce is turning into one of the largest Holy Grails of marketing. If you get the chance, read Michael Drummond's " Renegades of the Empire ". There is a facinating study of a project that Microsoft was conducting which was known as Chrome. It was an attempt to use Direct 3D technology to create a new form of "interactive browser on Steroids" as one of it's developers described it. It was eventually killed by internal politics and lukewarm 3rd party support, as it would have required 400mhz+ processors to function properly.