Asus tried to kill two birds with one stone when it created the Transformer AiO, but wound up building a giant brick.

WSJ: A PC and Tablet 'Brick' for the Price of One

"Once the first big brick-and-mortar companies do it, they're all going to lock up deals to compete, " says Charles Katz, the CEO of 1stUp, whose 70 free-web clients include Seventeen magazine, the Rocky Mountain News and the Fox network's dysfunctional family, The Simpsons.

FORBES: Free For All

"Once the first big brick-and-mortar companies do it, they're all going to lock up deals to compete, " says Charles Katz, chief executive of San Francisco-based 1stUp, whose 70 free-Web clients include Seventeen magazine, The Rocky Mountain News and the Fox network's dysfunctional family, The Simpsons.

FORBES: Free For All

And because the whole system can store so much information, back-up copies of everything in it can be made internally in more than one brick, meaning that such a failure destroys no data.

ECONOMIST: Data-storage systems

It sounds like something out of an Edgar Allen Poe story, with each brick a construction worker sealed up the entrance to the bank that would not respond to his needs.

FORBES: Frustrated Customer Bricks Up Bank, A Lesson In Social Listening