shahine.com/omar/

Amazon Associates is a neat program where bloggers and others who link to items in Amazon can get a referral fee when that item is purchased and shipped.

The referral fee on items varies from 4% to something higher like Kindle where it's 10% ($40 per Kindle). That's a pretty good way to make money.

I receive my Amazon referral credits in the form of Amazon.com Gift Certificates which I promptly spend myself on things on my wish list.

Some years I make lots of money, and some years very little. Much of it depends on how much gadgetry I buy and review on my blog, and how many people purchase that stuff. Also Amazon doesn't always carry/sell things I buy and review so of course I don't get any referral credit for that.

Anyway, I always wondered what happened if I bought something accidentally from Amazon from my referral link. The thing is when you go to amazon.com from a referral link they set a cookie and thing you purchase during the session is also credited to your referral.

I've always been under the assumption that it's a violation of their TOU to purchase things for yourself AND get a referral credit. Right?

Well, I assumed this was based on some honor system. The good news is that they actually deduct the referral from your credits if you buy the item for yourself. So if you do accidentally order something with your referral cookie set, they automatically detect this and in the end it all works out.

So there you go. No need to worry about accidentally buying something using your associate id.

Here is a feature that Google Reader needs: Mute.

Why, Cause subscribing to a lot of tech bloggers, a-list folks, and news outlets is extremely annoying when they write about the same thing. You get tired of seeing dozens or hundreds of posts about Kindle, Facebook, ThinkSecret and on and on.

These days I feel like my blogging info is like the local news (which I stopped watching some time back in high school).

So, please google, let me mute or mark read all feed items on a certain topic as read and save me the hassle of suffering through the repetition and pain.

Hopefully in time for MacWorld?

I was kinda floored this week, when talking to the SmugMug folks at ETech, I found out that Thomas Hawk (a pretty prolific blogger and amazing photographer) uses a Pen Name. His real name is NOT Thomas Hawk. Maybe I'm the last person to find this out, but I had no clue.

He actually says so right on his blog (I never noticed). He explains why he uses a Pen Name in this article.

Scott: Why the pseudonym? Can you discuss your decision to go with a pen name in the context of the emphasis on transparency in the Web 2.0 world?

Tom: I use a pseudonym because I have a day job in the investment business (in a non technology related field). Because the investment industry is highly regulated and because if I used my real name I would have to have my boss review everything that I write, I have chosen to blog under a pseudonym. Many people know my real name and it's something that I openly share with friends. I state that I'm blogging under a pseudonym publicly on my blog and it is the only pseudonym I use. I don't particularly hide my identity (anyone can do a "who is" search) and if I were ever to leave the investment business I would be more open about my identity. I feel that I'm pretty transparent about my situation and have found most people accepting of that. My salary at Zooomr is $0 as we try and build it out so I still need to pay the bills somehow.

Now here is the kicker. As far as I know he really is the CEO of Zoomr, an online photo site like Flickr. I think it's very strange that some one using a Pen Name can use that when acting as the CEO of a company. I guess if the company is private who cares right? Oddly enough he isn't mentioned anywhere on the About Zoomr page.

I don't know, I just think it's weird. I would imagine that he would have to have some kind of moonlighting agreement with the investment company. Does it really make it OK to do all these things just by using a Pen Name? That seems to easy. I know that if I engaged in any side activities at Microsoft I'm required to complete a Moonlighting Agreement and get that approved by my manager. This includes any official positions at any company... using a Pen Name doesn't make this requirement go away.

Do other's find this just strange?

My readership went from ~2,000 readers to ~3,000.

Here is what things looked like on Feb 15th.

And on Feb 16th.

Looks like FeedBurner is now reporting on Google Reader's subscribers. Cool.

The Reverse Google effect. When I searched for "xmp jpeg C#" I got hundreds of useless results and it took me 2 hours to fine a newsgroup posting with some details that pointed me in the right direction.

Now:

Sadly my "homepage" is listed on live.com search results as the last item on the first page of results, but it's not a direct link to the post. Hmm.

I suspect the Google results are better because Google has my sitemap. I have no idea how to submit my sitemap to search.live.com.