Fashion4Home

A single vote has the potential to change the course of history, like in the 2000 Bush/Gore election, where some dude named Chad ended up making all the difference. Use that power to affect something even more important -- cool furniture -- with Fashion4Home's spankin' new US site

Originally launched in Germany by a posse of design freaks, F4H lets people with this Internet thing vote on prospective high-end furniture design concepts, then actually produces winning models and sells them for 50-70% below the cost of comparable pieces, a discount made possible by things like eliminating typical supply-chain costs, and MURDER. It goes down like this: sign up and vote on stuff you dig from "world-renowned furniture designers" (each w/ renderings, dimensions, color options, estimated price, etc), from sofas to coffee tables to lounge chairs; once a piece gains enough votes, F4H's manufacturers start cranking it out, and if it's one you voted for they'll send an email alert that it's in production, just like the one you've been desperately waiting to get about Spy Kids 4: Awkward Spy Teenagers. Approved designs go up in the store, and right now they've got over 80 pieces for sale (some previously voted on by German users, some greenlighted by the F4H team) including sweet sofa beds, dining tables, and even fireplaces; there're also 27 fresh sketches up for voting, like an industrial-ish 3-seat couch, some classy framed photo art, and a morph-able coffee table, which may or may not actually be Alex Mack

To get even more destructively involved, you can comment directly on any sketch and it'll be sent to the designers themselves as feedback, a feature you wish was available for Al Gore back in '00, so you could've told him that sometimes, it's not just all about being popular.