Today Microsoft launched Live Search Cashback!  This service is really a merging of their Jellyfish service (Microsoft bought Jellyfish some time ago) with Live Search.  Microsoft says it’s going to help change the game against Google.

I first used Jellyfish back in October, 2007.  I thought the service was pretty nice.  They have a whole “community shopping” service, which I am not interested in, but from visiting their site, you can clearly see via the live “shopping smackdowns” that there are lots of people that do.  I guess their competition is probably the Home Shopping Channel and such.  Clearly shopping as entertainment is a very valid business.

The reason I signed up at Jellyfish was because we were buying some chairs online, and I found that the seller had an affiliate program through Jellyfish to give us 15% off.  15% off the $450 was over $50, so it was worth it.

Overall, affiliate rebates are just like mail-in rebates.  You never know when or if you’ll get paid.  So be careful.

Here is roughly what happens:

1.  You make a purchase.  You can’t go directly to the merchant’s site; you need to make sure you follow the links from the affiliate you are expecting the rebate from.

2. At that point, you’ll pay full price, and you’ll get the product delivered to you.

3. The seller has an agreement with the affiliate (Microsoft) that it will pay the affiliate every 90-120 days.  They do this to avoid paying rebates on items which could be returned, and also because nobody likes to pay bills promptly.

4. Finally, Microsoft can credit your account; since they’ve automated the process, I expect this is probably pretty quick - within 1-3 business days from Microsoft receiving the money.

5. Of course, Jellyfish/Microsoft know that it’s been 3-4 months since your purchase and there is a decent chance you’ll forget altogether.  So they won’t tell you the money is there.  You need to check your account, and if you’re lucky, you’ll have a balance to cash out.

If you haven’t used affiliate cash back programs before, you probably should now that Microsoft is fully in the game.  Most affiliate programs to date have not passed all the money back to you, the consumer.  However, Microsoft’s program does - they are passing 100% of the affiliate check back to you.  How does Microsoft get paid?  Well, technically they don’t - if you claim your money.  However, if you forget to pick up your check, well, they got paid anyway, didn’t they?

Overall, I think Jellyfish/Cashback is pretty cool and I will use it.  Over the long haul, however, I don’t expect affiliate programs will ever offer the best prices.  Management of affiliate programs is expensive, and as more companies make their own online efforts efficient, the cheapest prices will be direct from the manufacturer  (absent subsidies from Microsoft, that is :-).

This is great news!

Since I have no insight into ads or Google’s financial numbers, I can post this.  I post this on my own, and have no idea what my employer thinks…

Last month, Markus Frind reported on his blog that his adsense click-through-rate “declined by 60% in the last 2 months”.  Content providers that make lots of money through pretty liberal placement of fairly useless advertising have been complaining.  It’s no surprise that they are disappointed; who wouldn’t be.

This week, Google’s 10K report says:

“…the main focus of our advertising programs is to provide relevant and useful advertising to our users, reflecting our commitment to constantly improve their overall web experience. As a result, we may continue to take steps to improve the relevance of the ads displayed on our web sites and our Google Network members’ web sites. These steps include removing ads that generate low click-through rates or that send users to irrelevant or otherwise low quality sites and terminating Google Network members whose web sites do not meet our quality requirements. In addition, we may continue to take steps to reduce the number of accidental clicks. These steps could negatively affect our near-term advertising revenues…”

Advertisers seem to be heralding the news (see comments), as you would expect.

When you learn to ride a bike, you start with training wheels.  Over time, you learn to ride without the training wheels, so you take them off. 

If you really want to be a good typist, you ultimately need to get rid of your training wheels - the backspace key.  Sounds absurd, right?  Try it.  You’ll be amazed at how quickly you can become a better typist.  At home I have a special keyboard driver which allows me to change it.  I mapped my backspace to ‘x’.  But I don’t have that ability here at work….  I’ll have to figure it out somehow.

There is a secondary effect as well.  I find that by not having a backspace option, I think more about what I write before I write it.  I can’t tell if I’ll be a better author or code writer without the backspace key, but you’ll know I’m more deliberate.

I know, you think I’m crazy.  Try it!

Late last year, I stopped using Facebook when I witnessed them giving my personal information to advertisers.

The clever advertiser, Josh Koppelman, has exploited that data again to gain insight into potential employee turnover due to the MicroHoo possibility.  The data is not statistically accurate, but it is definitely an interesting indicator.

I don’t make any money on this; and I rarely promote products.  But this is a great deal, and I just bought one. 

You can get an Antec Earthwatts 380W power supply for $5 (after rebate) with free shipping.  The 80plus power supplies will generally reduce your computer’s power consumption by 20-25%.

Newegg is selling it for $35 with free shipping.

Here is the $30 mail in rebate, which expires today.

As this blog has garnered more users over time, there have been a couple of comment threads which have degraded a bit.  Recently one was brought to my attention where a sole proprietor from one small company wrote some comments which were not well received by others.  He used his real name, which is somewhat uncommon - let’s call him “SmallGuy”.  Readers then replied back saying that SmallGuy was bad unreliable and a rip off.

Unfortunately for SmallGuy, this blog is more popular than his company’s web page.  Google picked up the whole conversation, and a search for “SmallGuy” now brings up belshe.com above SmallGuy’s website, including “SmallGuy sucks” right in the snippet! 

Obviously, SmallGuy is not too happy about this; customers searching for references on him don’t see very good stuff.  And all of this is because he posted a comment using his real name on my blog, and he probably didn’t think enough about the possible long term effects of this comment before he wrote it.

Unfortunately, SmallGuy’s name is pretty unique.  If it weren’t so unique, Google wouldn’t show belshe.com as a top result for his name.  Everyone should remember that data that goes up on the net goes up forever.  You can’t take it back once you press ‘post’ - ever.  Even if I deleted the comment, its still out there in untold numbers of RSS caches, archives.org, and other places.

Those of us with unique names need to be doubly careful.  On one hand, our uncommon surnames lead to better prominence on the net for those searching for us.  On the other, if you say anything bad, it’s permanent and undeniable. If your name is Smith, you don’t have to worry!

As for SmallGuy’s dilemma, I offered that if he can get the poster of the negative comment to send me an email to change the comment, I will do so.  That is, if he can solve his own customer issues, then he can mostly fix this.

A colleague of mine asked me recently,

When you read about a ‘Washington-based Think Tank’, does that mean a lobby?

I hadn’t really thought about this term before, although I knew what they were.  Of course the answer is absolutely yes.  What a nice phrase - “think tank” - must be a bunch of really smart people right?

Well if you need to know more, Google searches tell us everything; it’s just a bunch of special interest groups.

We’ve learned recently of “honor killings” that take place in some cultures.  It seems terrible - a defenseless woman is killed. CNN and other American news agencies report these as tragedies that we must somehow correct.  I am not outraged by the incident.  I am outraged by the gross arrogance of Americans to think that we know what is best for other cultures.  I know nothing of their culture.  I know nothing of why they might do this.  I can’t imagine a good reason for why anyone would do this - but they do it.  Maybe they are crazy.  Or maybe they are religious freaks.  Certainly, by western standards they are.  But - it is their lives - it is their culture - and that is what they do.

In classrooms here we teach “you must learn to accept other cultures”, but yet, we don’t do it!  We want to accept the tolerable parts of other cultures, but not accept the brutal parts.  Well, we can’t have it both ways.  Either we are tolerant and accepting, or we are not.  We cannot pick and choose when to accept.

How arrogant are we Americans to think that these people want to be saved by us anyway?  If they want to be saved, they must save themselves.  We are running around the world pimping Democracy in pretty much the same way that crusaders did.  We think our beliefs are better, and more fair.  Maybe they are, and maybe they are not, but who are we to decide?  Is pushing our politics really any different than pushing our religion?  I don’t think so.  We think its better, but its the people that decide, not us!  Culture and politics is something you must want for yourself; it cannot be given.

I’ll forever condemn my chances of a political career now by saying - let the Honor Killings continue.  There is nothing wrong with them unless the Iraqis decide there is something wrong with them.

Marc continues his anti-Google/Youtube arguments (see also, and also, and also).  He is so upset that his earlier predictions were wrong, that he can’t admit his error.  Overall, Mark claims that what Youtube is doing is illegal.  But, he’s talking through both sides of his mouth.

The fact is that Youtube is not breaking the law.  There is a law, called the DMCA, which specifically says that online service providers are not liable if their users upload copyrighted materials as long as the service provider promptly removes content when requested by the copyright holder.  This is exactly what Youtube does, and it is legal.  It’s the law.

You may not like the DMCA, but that is the law.  It’s legal, and there is no debate about it. 

Marc says that Youtube ought to be able to recognize which material is copyrighted as it is posted, and not allow the post to occur in the first place.  That might be doable, or that might not, (I don’t think it is realistic, and Marc has yet to propose an answer to that) but that is not relevant anyway.  The law has very clearly specified how service providers must deal with copyrighted content, and YouTube obeys the law.  

Marc knows this, stating that Youtube is “invoking Safe Harbor”.  There is no “invoking” here.  The law is clear about what service providers should do.  So how can he claim that this is illegal?  He obviously knows it is not.  He is just jealous or irrational or something.

Marc - if you don’t like the law, go write to your congressman.  Or better yet, get him a hooker and season tickets to the Mavs, and get him to change the law.  Keep in mind, however, that if you eliminate DMCA, you’ll not only take down YouTube, but you’ll take down MySpace, Facebook, Yahoo!, Hotmail, and hundreds of other sites.  The DMCA exists for a reason - and the DMCA allows most of us that don’t download or upload copyrighted  content still be able to benefit from a host of online services that otherwise couldn’t exist because they’d get sued to smithereens.