Amazon.com Coupon for Flip Ultra - $10 OFF!! - $59.99!

I've been wanting a Flip Ultra for a while now. It's been on my wishlist. And today I got this awesome email from Amazon.com today offering a $10 Coupon for the Flip Video Ultra Series Camcorder. Yay!

This is what they said:

As someone who has shown an interest in camcorders, you might be interested in this amazing deal on the 30-minute Flip Ultra in white. Simply add the Ultra to your Shopping Cart, enter promotional code 67P7PZO3 at checkout, and we'll apply an additional $10 savings--so you'll get it for only $59.99!

This limited-time offer applies only to purchases of products sold by Amazon.com. Does not apply to products sold by third-party merchants and other sellers through the Amazon.com website.

Save now on Flip Ultra.

Go on, click here to view the description and and buy it!

(photo by philcampbell)

Labels: deals

Yahoo Publisher Network Content Guidelines

Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN), the alternative to AdSense is similar in the way it works, but it has interesting content policy (from their FAQ):

We will not show results on pages that contain problematic content, including but not limited to:
Adult-oriented content
Violence, excessive use of vulgar or obscene language
Excessive, duplicate or competing advertisements
Content related to human suffering or death
Copyright or trademark-sensitive products such as MP3 downloads, DVD backups or bootleg items
Weaponry, ammunition, fireworks or explosives
Gambling
Illegal drugs and drug paraphernalia
Propaganda, potentially offensive or controversial content
Defamatory, libelous, threatening or other material that advocates against any individual or group
The sale of body parts or bodily fluids
The sale of hazardous substances
Political, religious or charitable organizations, issues or causes
The sale of tobacco and tobacco-related products
Hacking, surveillance, interception or de-scrambling equipment
The sale (or facilitated sale) of prescription drugs
The sale of counterfeit or stolen items
The sale of government IDs or police items
The sale of alcoholic beverages
The sale of products from any of the following countries: The Balkans, Burma (Myanmar), Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Liberia, Libya, North Korea, The Sudan, Syria or Zimbabwe

That's right no propaganda and no politics! And they are even enforcing their own sanctions on certain countries.

It's bizarre.

Here's their other policy, which is pretty standard:

The Ad Unit must be clearly marked as "Ads by Yahoo!" and cannot be obscured in any way
The Ad Unit must be shown in the requested page, not as a pop-up or pop-under window or in an e-mail
The Ad Page must be content-based, fully functional and not contain any broken links. Non-content pages include domain registration pages, welcome pages, error pages, and Web content generated in or through software applications
The Ad Page must be in English or Spanish and be consistent with the language of the Listings
The Ad Page must respond adequately to user requests
The Ad Page must not actively encourage users to click on Ad Units
The Ad Page must not disable the browser's back button
The Ad Page must not spawn more than one partial pop-up/pop-under window and this window must not interfere with user navigation
The Ad Page must not automatically replace the browser homepage
The Ad Page must not prompt a user to download files or programs to access your site
The Ad Page must not automatically install files or programs on the user's machine

Labels: adsense

%E2%80%9D - what encoding is this?

%E2%80%9D -- what you might see in some URLs is E2 80 9D, the unicode for right quotation mark. It is the UTF-8 encoding (hex.) for the unicode character of the right double quotation marks (double quotes).

UTF-8: E2 80 9D

http://www.tachyonsoft.com/uc0020.htm

http://unicode-search.net/unicode-namesearch.pl?term=mark

eBay RSS API Documentation

eBay does not publish documentation on the eBay RSS API so you sort of have to figure it out for yourself. I've put below what I've got on it, and if you know what the other stuff is please leave a comment, so we can figure it all out.

http://rss.api.ebay.com/ws/rssapi?FeedName=SearchResults
&siteId=0
&language=en-US
&output=RSS20
&afmp=
&sacqy=
&fpos= // city - zip code
&sacat=-1
&fcl=3
&sadis= // radius from city
&sacqyop=ge
&satitle= // query
&sacur=1 // apparently currency; 1 for US, 0 for any
&frpp=50 // number of results
&fspt=1
&afepn= // affiliate id
&sabfmts=0
&saprclo= // minimum price
&ftrt=1
&ftrv=1
&fsop=1
&fsoo=1
&saprchi= // maximum price
&customid=
&saobfmts=exsif
&fss=0
&catref=C5
&saaff= // affiliate network (example: EPN)
&from=R6
&saatc=1
&nojspr=y
&saslop=1

Additionally:

&fsct= // city code - proprietary
&sabdlo= // number or bids (low)
&sabdhi= // number of bids (high)

Labels: ebay

Opt out of eBay's "new search experience"

The new search experience is super annoying because it makes the ebay search results RSS link disappear. The only way you're going to get that ebay RSS link back is to opt out of the "new search experience." They used to make it easy to opt out because the search result pages all used to say at the bottom that you can opt out and give you a link, but they decided to get rid of that.

The only page I've found now that lets you opt out is:

http://shop.ebay.com/

It'll say, "You are currently testing eBay's new search experience. If you prefer, you can opt out of the test."

Labels: ebay

MediaTemple (gs) vs. Dreamhost vs. Hostgator

I currently have accounts on all three of these services, and was just testing my sites now. Right now, my sites on MediaTemple take 10 seconds to load. What a joke. My sites on Dreamhost and Hostgator, on the other hand responded immediately, within a second.

I can't believe I fell for the hype of MediaTemple grid service. My contract is almost expired now, so I used them for nearly a year, and in that period, performance was always poor. MediaTemple (gs) is SO SLOW!!

I do like their admin interface though.

I'll probably next try WebFaction as far as shared hosting goes. And also thinking about a VPS slice with Slicehost or Linode (probably Linode).

Labels: webhosting

Linode vs. Slicehost

MediaTemple had a huge outage that took my sites down for more than two hours. They said 3,000 accounts were affected. That's 2% of their customer base of 150,000. They said they would issue service credits worth $100,000, which means each customer might get a month or two of hosting.

I guess stuff happens, and that's the least they can do, but I decided I've had enough of MediaTemple(gs) anyway. It's just slow. It sucks even during the times when there's no problem. I can't say Dreamhost doesn't have similar problems, but I did a year of Dreamhost and I found no difference in quality between Dreamhost and MediaTemple grid service. The only difference is that MediaTemple gs costs twice as much.

Well if you're going to shell out $20 a month, you might as well get a VPS of some sort. So I've been thinking about Slicehost for a long time, but then I remembered hearing some good things about Linode.

The first time I looked it up, I thought what they offered was similar but this time, I'm looking at it and it looks like Linode offers more at the same price, well five cents cheaper, actually :)

Here's the comparison of Linode vs. Slicehost for the $20 package:

- 360 MB RAM (Slicehost is only 256)
- 12 GB storage (Slicehost offers only 10)
- 200 GB bandwidth (Slicehost offers only 100)

So it looks like Linode wins on all counts. So I'm going to be trying out Linode. I only wish there were some Linode coupons. I searched for some but no luck. I don't think Slicehost offers coupons either though.

Labels: webhosting