Technologist For Hire

eBay has just announced that they will be leaving Commission Junction on May 1, 2008!

They will be managing their own affiliate network beginning April 1, 2008. They have named it the eBay Partner Network (EPN). The new network will allow them to better manage their affiliate data, and better serve reports to affiliates. eBay has classically had issues with CJ and their reporting system. Maybe EPN will finally resolve these types of issues!

They claim the payout will not be changing. They have also announced some new features that will be available, right off the bat, through EPN:

• Easy global registration to multiple countries simultaneously
• New, targeted banners and rich media creatives
• New landing page optimization and geo-targeting capabilities
• More detailed reporting capabilities for eBay’s programs

Also, for all of you who properly convert your existing CJ affiliate accounts to EPN, you will receive a 5% bonus on all April affiliate traffic!

To properly convert your account, follow these steps:

• Register with eBay Partner Network on April 1, 2008
• Confirm your registration, and obtain your new identifiers
• Update your links with your new identifiers
• Reminder: Please plan to complete migration by May 1, 2008

I just received an email about TrafficJam, a sister site to BlogRush.

BlogRush is a syndication ‘widget’ for blogs that bases syndicated content on context and credits. The more page views and clicks your widget receives, the more credits you get. The more credits you get, the more your posts are displayed on other blogs (contextually).

TrafficJam takes all of the page view and click data, throws it into a magic math blender, and spits out a digg-like ranking of the top posts.

This is pretty cool. Instead of using a voting system, it is using actual traffic, and actual interest, to gauge how popular a post is. This will in turn, generate more traffic for those top posts.

Shortly after my post about Dell’s very wasteful packaging, I received an email from Sean, who I assume is on Dell’s PR team, regarding what I had said:

@Christian. Thank you for bringing this to our attention…I sent your post to the global team responsible for optimizing packaging materials throughout our business and supply chain and they’re looking into it. Having worked on packaging-reduction initiatives in the past, I can tell you these efforts are a key part of our commitment to become the “greenest” technology company on the planet. Last year alone, we saved more than 24,000 tons of packaging material by reducing and eliminating corrugated, plastic foam and wood materials. One of our newer programs (Multipack) for server customers helps reduce collateral materials by up to 75 percent, which in turn also reduces paper use and material waste.

In addition to reduced packaging, we’re also focused on enhancing the energy efficiency of our products, meeting a company-wide commitment to go carbon neutral and finding new ways to partner with customers to promote recycling and climate protection.

We’re always looking for ways to build on these commitments, so your comments are appreciated.

Best,

Sean

Sean wanted to let me know that Dell is in fact a green company. I believe him, and I know that Dell, along with thousands of other US and Global organizations have taken the initiative to reduce their carbon footprint. However, a lot of those companies miss small things that may have a big impact (such as small CDs coming in huge boxes, filled with packaging material), and customers start to notice. Telling me you are green, and not doing anything about it, is brown.

A few days later, I received a very encouraging email, which I was very pleased with:

Christian, just wanted to circle back and let you know that we’re working this now. As much as we would like this to be a very simple fix it isn’t. But you do have our commitment that we will have this fixed in the next six months. Two things we are looking at:

1. Option to exclude all manuals and CDs from packaging at time of order. And, an option to have one set delivered for multiple systems.

2. A move to packaging alternatives

We’ll be sure to keep you posted.

Best,
Sean

He took action, and got something accomplished. Hopefully I never receive a big box, filled with nothing, from Dell, next time.

Thank you Dell, and Sean, for taking action!

Ah, my dreams will come true one day…. and http://dataportability.org/ is another step closer!

A few initiatives/groups/projects/technologies that I am in favor of, and everyone should check out, embrace, and eventually adopt:

• OpenSocial (see my post here)
• DataPortability
• W3C
• Android & the Open Handset Alliance
• OpenMoko
• Open APIs
• XML/RSS/Atom

[UPDATE: December 03, 2008 @ 5:11pm EST]
Dell has responded to this post. I like the outcome!

I have been meaning to write about this for a while, and today was the last straw.

The company I work for orders all of their computers from dell. About 4 months ago we started receiving random Adobe Acrobat Standard CDs & licenses for free with every single computer that we purchase. We did not request these CDs. At first, they came inside of the box with the computer. Soon, they started arriving in a padded envelope. After that, they began arriving in their own box, complete with paper padding, and a padded envelope. We have received well over 100 of these.

Today, a new shipment of computers came in (just 6), and we got 6 boxes, filled with packaging materials, a padded envelope, and a single Adobe Acrobat Standard. What shocked me, and added fuel to the fire, was that the boxes have now gotten bigger. A single Adobe Acrobat CD, in a DVD sized case, nows comes in a box that measures 10×19x10, complete with padding & padded envelope!

Please see photos below (the newest, largest box can be seen at the bottom of the pile):

Boxes & Packaging

Contents of the above boxes

Dell is being more BROWN and less GREEN with this method of packaging. They should be more environmentally conscious when it comes to shipping things. I wonder how much extra it cost to ship out those boxes, with packaging, and padded envelope.

I recently began working on a project called eBurl. eBurl is a resource for shortening those long, ugly, confusing eBay URLs into something short, portable, and friendly! eBurl creates random, short URLs (such as tinyURL), or custom, short URLs. The site also keeps track of keywords, clicks, and other statistics.

The ultimate goal of eBurl is to provide sellers a resource for creating friendly URLs (eBurls) to their stores/auctions and supplying the sellers with detailed statistics about these eBurls, such as: Number of clicks, where the clicks came from, popularity of eBurl compared to others, and graphs detailing other information pertaining to the eBurl.

eBurl can also be used by non-sellers to simply share items that they have found on eBay, but with a much more compact, easy to use, URL.

A standard eBay URL looks something like this:
http://cgi.ebay.com/TwitTV-com-awesome-typo-domain_
W0QQitemZ110200121711QQihZ001QQcategoryZ11153QQss
PageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

This is the eBurl for that same auction:
http://eburl.net/twittv

There will also be an RSS feed of the popular eBurls for all the enjoy
SO check out www.eBurl.net, test it out, and have fun!

In reply to my OpenSocial post, online reputation company Rapleaf co-founder Vivek Sodera sent me some interesting statistics that they have gathered. The statistics show the overlap of users between social networks. Why does this relate to OpenSocial? OpenSocial is a bridge between Social Networks and non-social networks. If User X has an account at 5 different social networks, and trends show that this is a common practice, and, as Rapleaf has done, you can identify which social networks have the greatest overlap, you could (for instance):

1. Target your OpenSocial implementation towards certain users
2. Verify that it is a good idea to participate in OpenSocial (wink, wink Facebook!)
3. Tailor your OpenSocial implementation to link data from certain social networks (those that show the greatest overlap)
4. Streamline a user’s access to their overlapping data!

Social Network Overlap - OpenSocial Participants (…and Facebook)

• The greatest overlap between OpenSocial container sites exists between Myspace and Hi5, in which 43% of Hi5 users also use Myspace.
• Facebook users are 63% female and 36% male whereas the sites integrated with the OpenSocial platform are 61% female and 38% male
• 52% of Facebook users are 18-25, whereas 40% of the users are 18-25 for the five container sites on the OpenSocial platform
• Facebook users tend to use 2.9 major social networking sites on average whereas users of OpenSocial container sites tend to use 2.7 major social networking sites

Detail

Facebook Users

• 2.6 million users identified in Rapleaf
• 63% female, 36% male
• 17% <18 yrs, 52% 18-25 yrs, 21% 26-35 yrs, 5% 36-45 yrs, 5% >45 yrs
• 2.9 major social networking sites used on average
• 62% are on Myspace, 5% are on LinkedIn, 9% are on Friendster, 10% are on Plaxo, 22% are on Hi5

Myspace Users

• 11.3 million users identified in Rapleaf
• 63% female, 36% male
• 20% <18 yrs, 40% 18-25 yrs, 27% 26-35 yrs, 7% 36-45 yrs, 6% >45 yrs
• 2.4 major social networking sites used on average
• 15% are on Facebook, 2% are on LinkedIn, 9% are on Friendster, 6% are on Plaxo, 17% are on Hi5

LinkedIn Users

• 0.8 million users identified in Rapleaf
• 38% female, 61% male
• 2% <18 yrs, 9% 18-25 yrs, 49% 26-35 yrs, 24% 36-45 yrs, 16% >45 yrs
• 3.2 major social networking sites used on average
• 16% are on Facebook, 25% are on Myspace, 12% are on Friendster, 16% are on Plaxo, 8% are on Hi5

Friendster Users

• 2.3 million users identified in Rapleaf
• 58% female, 41% male
• 12% <18 yrs, 39% 18-25 yrs, 36% 26-35 yrs, 7% 36-45 yrs, 5% >45 yrs
• 3.0 major social networking sites used on average
• 10% are on Facebook, 44% are on Myspace, 5% are on LinkedIn, 5% are on Plaxo, 26% are on Hi5

Plaxo Users

• 1.3 million users identified in Rapleaf
• 62% female, 37% male
• 16% <18 yrs, 39% 18-25 yrs, 24% 26-35 yrs, 10% 36-45 yrs, 11% >45 yrs
• 3.6 major social networking sites used on average
• 20% are on Facebook, 53% are on Myspace, 11% are on LinkedIn, 9% are on Friendster, 15% are on Hi5

Hi5 Users

• 4.5 million users identified in Rapleaf
• 60% female, 39% male
• 21% <18 yrs, 44% 18-25 yrs, 23% 26-35 yrs, 6% 36-45 yrs, 6% >45 yrs
• 2.8 major social networking sites used on average
• 13% are on Facebook, 43% are on Myspace, 2% are on LinkedIn, 13% are on Friendster, 2% are on Plaxo

Interesting; in this post on TechCrunch, Michael Arrington says “…resort to becoming a MySpace user along with the rest of the unwashed masses”, in response to somone who had their Facebook mysteriously deactivated.

Also, with all of these new platforms emerging, I am wondering what their overlap will be between each other?

Google is unstoppable. This Thursday, November 1, 2007, Google will launch OpenSocial (url goes live on Thursday); a set of API’s that allow developers to interact with ANY social network that chooses to participate. What does this mean? It means that in order to access Orkut, LinkedIn, hi5, Plaxo, and other currently participating social networks, a developer only has to learn one API: The OpenSocial API. This reduces the cost and time associated with developing applications against a social network, and also opens the doors for new/existing social networks to give access to their data via the OpenSocial API.

The internet needs more standards and APIs. The things that differentiate the 200 different clones of an original idea, also clutter and confuse the internet. If the clones worked together, to form a network, everyone could choose their niche clone, and still enjoy content from the rest of the clone-network. For example: Youtube clones. If all Youtube clones worked together on a standard API, they could aggregate all of the videos, comments, and users together to form one large Video Sharing Network. Another example: del.icio.us clones. If all del.icio.us clones worked together on a standard API, they could aggregate all of the bookmarks, tags, comments, ratings, and users together to form on large Social Bookmarking Network. Google is giving the tools for one large Social Networking Network to exist.

Next, once there is an OpenAPI for each form of web2.0 product, we need a central OpenAPI that links all of those APIs together. Then we will have one global network, filled with tags, and users, and sharing, and stalking, and a lot of highly targeted advertising. Everyone will be happy, and the internet will implode.

[Via TechCrunch]

I don’t watch, or keep track of, sports. However, I do keep track of food! Taco Bell usually has some big publicity stunt set up each year during the World Series. This year the theme was “Steal a base, steal a taco!”… well, apparently someone stole a base last night, and today is FREE TACO DAY!

FREE Taco between 2pm and 5pm (local time) on Tuesday, October 30, 2007 ONLY

So go now, to Taco Bell, and grab your FREE taco, and knowing that you saved $0.70, pat yourself on the back.

Fine print:
To obtain the Free Taco, consumers must visit any participating Taco Bell® restaurant in one of the fifty (50) the United States or District of Columbia between 2:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m. (local time) on the Redemption Date only and request a Free Crunchy Seasoned Beef Taco. Free Taco’s will not be offered on any other date or time, regardless of circumstance. Limit one (1) Free Crunchy Seasoned Beef Taco per person. Participating Taco Bell restaurant manager reserves the right to deny Free Taco to any person he/she reasonably believes has already received a Free Taco or has engaged in any other fraudulent activity. All eligible consumers: Everyone in line at a participating Taco Bell restaurant before 5:00 p.m. local time will receive a Free Taco, even if it is provided after 5:00 p.m. Free Taco offer is subject to store availability and Taco Bell reserves the right to substitute an item of equal or greater value if due to unavailability. All restaurant managers decisions are final regarding to Free Taco offer.

You are not reading that wrong… Gmail now has IMAP!

Note: They are rolling the feature out to select test accounts now. If you do not have IMAP options in your settings, you are not cool enough. Google will most likley do a full scale roll out shortly.

For ages, Gmail has been strictly POP3-only for external access. It got the job done, but it lacked functionality. There are a few key differences between POP3 and IMAP4 (at the user level) that make the addition of IMAP very exciting news. With traditional POP3 access to email, you generally are required to download the message (thus removing it from the email server). This sucks if you use a web interface (such as Gmail) & a remote client or mobile device equally… you would be missing emails from the web interface as they were downloaded to the remote client or mobile device. Google tried to combat this problem by adding a “keep on server” option. This was cool, but now things you do to the emails do not sync between the web interface and the remote client or mobile device (such as an email being marked as ‘read’). IMAP solves these problems! With IMAP you aren’t removing the email from the server on download, and all actions performed on an email, are synced between the clients and server. And the best thing of all? IMAP PERSISTENT CONNECTIONS! Think Microsoft Exchange-like functionality… without Exchange (or Microsoft). You can have a constant connection to an IMAP server and be notified instantly of new mail and have changes synced on the fly. This is why IMAP rules.

Good job Google. Good job! I have been waiting for a LONG time to see IMAP available on my account. I use Gmail for domains, so I have @nexdot.net and a bunch of my other sites hosted at Gmail. I was previously using my Motorola Q to access them all via POP3… it sucked. Now I have switched them all over to IMAP and I couldn’t be happier.

http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?ctx=%67mail&hl=en&answer=75726