Category: Uncategorized

I’ve been trying to do searches on apps for my new iPod lately and I kept coming across these sites that would just take content from the iTunes app store and list all of these apps. Then lately I have been writing about my favorite apps and I thought those other guys must be getting a commission on their clicks and if they can, then I should too.

So a quick search indicates that there is a program through LinkShare, whose website is linksynergy (even the link to LinkShare is an affiliate link because I get something if people sign up to become LinkShare affiliates through that link and get at least one click). The sign-up page was very spartan, just some plain text fields. I didn’t think much about it until I got to the bottom and it asked me to input the letters in the image above and there wasn’t an image above. It turns out my ad blocker had blocked all of the images on their website and all of the javascript because they are an advertiser. That was pretty funny. So I turned it off and everything worked fine.

LinkShare has a lot of companies they work with and then you sign up with those companies individually. Apple does not approve theirs automatically so I have to wait 3 days and see. If they approve me, I will convert my links to apps to LinkShare links and if people click on them and buy an app, I will get 5% of the purchase price (Amazon gives 4% on electronics, 6% on books, but sometimes 10% on downloads).

I really don’t think I’ll make any money because if you do a search for an app you don’t find honest opinions or reviews of apps out there, just tons of these sites that tell you nothing more than the app store does (or give you a list of apps that you can tell the person hasn’t even tried out). And they’ve all jockeyed to get high page rankings. Even if I get a few clicks, the apps are all so cheap ($1-10) that there isn’t much to be made. However, there is also nothing to lose.

Another affiliate program I joined was for DealExtreme, the place I buy cheap flashlights. Some people at the forum I visit are actually using the links I’ve put in my reviews of flashlights and I’m slowly building up some commissions. But because they are cheap flashlights, most orders are less than $20. For every $10 they spend I get 1 point. And if I get 100 points, they will give me $10. So basically I am waiting to get $1,000 in sales so that I can get $10. After six months, I’m about halfway there, but they also have a 60-day waiting period before the points become effective just in case the person returns their merchandise (which happens a lot because so much of this stuff is defective or not as advertised).

The glory days of my affiliatedom are well past, though. Amazon generates less than $10 a month and AdSense is only a couple of dollars (though last month I qualified for my first $100 payment in over two years).

      “A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.”
                        – Joshua, War Games

For years I had a Solitaire game called SolFree on my Palm. When I got the iPod, SolFree was available in the app store (a lot of Palm developers moved on to become iPod developers). It is completely free (doesn’t even include ads). So I figured for all the years of playing solitaire and the years to come on the iPod, I could go ahead and pay $2 to the people that make Solfree which would also get me 40 new Solitaire games. I usually don’t like new solitaire games, just classic Solitaire (Klondike, deal 3) and Freecell is pretty good too. But one person who reviewed Solebon (the full pay version of Solfree; Card Shark Collection is another card game collection for $2 but it includes Euchre and a couple of other games where you play against the computer) said they played Colorado, so I tried that out and it was pretty decent once I figured out what was going on. But in order to figure out Colorado, I had to go to Wikipedia, hoping they would have more information about how to play than Solebon’s help had, and also maybe provide some strategy, because at first it seemed like it was totally random and you would almost always lose.

Continue reading “War”

I have been using some Sennheiser CX300 headphones for 3 years now. I really like them and have thought about getting another pair, now that they are cheaper, about half of what I paid. When I got home Thursday there was a box that had been delivered on my doorstep that day. I didn’t have any flashlights or other stuff on the way, so I wasn’t sure what it was. The only thing I’m expecting is a rebate of some kind, which is what I thought it might be since the return address was “Fulfillment Center”. But once I opened up the box, there was another box with headphones in it a packing list that said “iLounge Envi winner”. Then I remembered that I had entered a monthly drawing on iLounge for free headphones. I had never won anything from them before, but this time they were giving away 50 pairs of headphones, so my odds had gone up substantially I guess. Even though they had my email address, they hadn’t told me I had won (though I found an article later on with the winners).

Continue reading “New Headphones”

I spent a couple of days in an online class this week for work. I think the guy teaching it was in Ohio. I have done video conferencing before, which feels pretty normal. I can see and hear the remote conference room and they can see and hear mine, so it isn’t too bad. But this class didn’t involve any video, just sound. Since it was a class on how to use software we all had to have computers, so our screens were set up to show his screen which would be either Powerpoint or the program, plus a control panel where we could type in questions. I was designated the contact person, so I had a microphone and could talk to the teacher, but nobody else had one and my microphone was usually off.

As weird as it was to be a student, I’m sure it is much harder for a teacher who has no idea if we are getting any of what he is saying. And he couldn’t even see our screens, so if someone was having trouble, then other people in the class had to try and figure it out. That aspect of it is actually pretty good because it means the ones showing others how to do stuff are learning it even better than they would otherwise. Having students help each other out is really better than having a teacher do it sometimes.

The only glitch was towards the end after a break when he was doing something on his screen (which he would do when he was testing something out or getting something ready). But he kept doing it for a while before I typed him a message saying “Are you talking?” I had done this once before, but it turned out he was just playing around with something and said he told us he wasn’t talking. This time I didn’t get a response right away. Then a few minutes later his microphone came on and he said he had just realized his microphone had been off the whole time. He had probably been talking for 5-10 minutes while the rest of us were just talking about whatever amongst ourselves, waiting for the next session to start. Using the control panel a couple of us sent little “laughing” icons and he said “Yeah, I guess you think it’s pretty funny.” I think he was kind of mad I hadn’t stopped him earlier by microphone, but I hated using the microphone and would get feedback or echo since my voice would play over the speaker.

I guess this is the way things work now and it is how David goes to high school, but it was kind of a weird experience for me. I never even saw what the teacher looked like.

It has been six years since I first met the three Estonian college students that stayed with me and sold books door-to-door all Summer. I never heard much from Arni, but I heard from Martti a couple of times, and Madis wrote a year or two later to say that he and his wife had just had a baby.

This week I got an e-mail from Madis saying he was in Tampa for a conference and had a layover in Atlanta with an open ticket for the trip back to Europe. He now works for Estonian Air, the national airline of Estonia as an aircraft engineer (they contract their maintenance out, but he oversees some of that). That is great because I knew he was studying aircraft technology in school, so this is his chosen field. But they are pretty small: Wikipedia says they have seven jets. As an airline they are a big customer so he had a great time in Tampa with conference sponsors throwing all kinds of parties every night.

Continue reading “Return of the Estonian”