Bookstore
Image: By brewbooks on Flickr

The corner bookstore is supposed to go extinct once Amazon takes over the world. If Borders-- and even mighty Barnes & Noble's -- couldn't fight off the behemoth, how would the lowly local shop even stand a chance?

Well, most don't, but it may be possible for some, and here's why.
Mark Mason at the Spectator just wrote about a bookstore that recently opened up near him, and is thriving. He makes an intriguing argument that bookstores may still have a future -- in secondhand books.
Mason writes:
If the trend towards e-books continues, and such physical copies as people do buy are delivered by post, the newbies may well get vapourised. That will leave us, however, with literally tens of millions of physical books from the BC era (BeforeComputers). They’ll be sitting there on people’s shelves and in their attics, and sooner or later at least some of them will need new homes.
Meanwhile, as fingers sweep over iPads and thumbs press Kindle buttons, people will yearn (as they always have, and always will) for Something Different. The novelty value will be in physically browsing a shelf, not for the few dozen titles that are out that month and you already know about from Front Row and the newspaper review pages, but for titles you’ve never heard of, or meant to read but never got round to reading, or whose cover just plain intrigues you.