Fresh when it gets here from
Julie Barrett
Sunday, August 27, 2006
The rain is kind of dancing all around us. We're left with clouds, heat, and humidity. I spend about half an hour outdoors late this morning, and I'm drenched. Paul mowed the front lawn while I went around and cut back the junk trees that manage to propagate even in this weather. The back lawn is pretty much a write-off, as you can see from the picture I posted on Friday.
Yesterday I spent some time updating the firmware in my camera and piddling around a bit with a new page on the web site. The latest project was consuming XML data. The result is this, an Xbox 360 page for Chris. If you're interested in where the data comes from, click on the link at the bottom of the page.
The other day I site I manage had a request to partner with a well-known company. It seemed like a good deal at first; they pay a commission on every product purchased through the link. But the more I got to looking at it, the worse the deal sounds. Let's say the product is laundry detergent. It isn't, but that suits the purposes of this discussion as well as anything else. The idea is that I place a link to the brand of laundry detergent on the web site and they pay for everyone who clicks on my banner and buys detergent at their web site. That sounded okay until I read the rules: I'd be prohibited from using certain "laundry detergent" keywords. Of course, I don't blog about laundry detergent, and I don't manage a web site about that product. But the idea that I couldn't mention a competitor in a short story or a blog entry burns me up. I don't want to take advertising anyway, but I refuse to accept advertising if it means limiting my speech. I did a little Googling and it turns out that the people who have the "laundry detergent" banners on their site are mostly folks building adsense sites and link farms. No thanks!
Time to run out for lunch. Pehrpas we'll get a little rain before the day is out.
Tags: Technology, Life