Monday, October 13, 2008

How to create simple Amazon affiliate links

In case you didn't know, Amazon will pay you to recommend their products. If you're going to link to a product anyway, why not take credit? Amazon provides all sorts of fancy tools and flashy widgets to help you advertise their products, but creating a basic URL through their web interface isn't straightforward.

In hope of simplifying the process, I followed some 3rd party instructions I found for hacking together your own referral URLs, but they didn't work. I asked Amazon instead, and here are the official instructions:

If you would like to link directly to an item's detail page using a simple text link, use the following format to construct your links:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/ASIN/?tag=your_Associates_ID

To make this link functional, replace "ASIN" with the 10-digit ISBN or ASIN of the product, and replace "your_Associates_ID" with your Associates ID or tracking ID. However, you would not be able to link to a search results page on Amazon.com.

If you would like to link to the Amazon.com homepage, you can use the following format:

http://www.amazon.com/?tag=your_Associates_ID

To make this link functional, replace "your_Associates_ID" with your Associates ID or tracking ID.

An item's ISBN/ASIN is listed on the item's detail page. For example, follow the link below, and then scroll down to the section labeled Product Details to find the ISBN (0439434866) for "Harry Potter Paperback Boxed Set."

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0439434866/

I don't make much money from referrals, but I do enjoy taking my payments in the form of Amazon gift certificates and buying myself a little something from my wish list every now and then.

2 comments

Monday, September 22, 2008

Taken with my 'gPhone'

I've been playing around with the 3 megapixel camera on my Android-based G1. Like any phone camera, you need a little diligence, a lot of light, and a steady hand.

Walking home

Mask

Stanford

Fountain

Nested

For the best results, tap and release the shutter button, and then hold the phone still until it takes the picture a second or so later. It's not necessary to hold down the button until the picture takes. Holding down the button will contract the muscles in your hand and make it more difficult to keep the phone steady.

Click here for more photos.

7 comments

Saturday, July 12, 2008

Greeting Grammar

I've noticed that most people start off emails with "Hi Bob,". I suspect they're treating "hi" as a less endearing replacement for "dear" in "Dear Bob,". Technically, "dear" is an adjective describing "Bob" while "hi" stands on its own and is not part of the direct address. I prefer the more correct salutation: "Hi, Bob."

Who is the most grammatically correct social network? Facebook, Plaxo Pulse, and Flickr get this wrong, by my standards, in their automated emails. Twitter gets it right.

17 comments

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Expert Guice

Stephan just posted video of a talk I gave at Javapolis back in December: Expert Guice: 50 some odd ways to Guice up your Java

Update: Stephan fixed the audio levels so you should be able to hear me now. :-)

10 comments

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Guice @ Google I/O

Jesse and I are presenting Guice 101 at Google I/O, 11:15 this morning:
Guice (pronounced 'juice') is a Jolt award-winnning, lightweight dependency injection framework for Java 5 and above. Put simply, Guice alleviates the need for factories and the use of new in your Java code. Think of Guice's @Inject as the new new. You will still need to write factories in some cases, but your code will not depend directly on them. Your code will be easier to change, unit test and reuse in other contexts.

5 comments

Sunday, May 04, 2008

Teyana Taylor - "Google Me"

6 comments

Thursday, May 01, 2008

Going to JavaOne? Sign up for Twitter.

If you already twitter, feel free to skip to the next section. If you've never heard of Twitter, read on and keep your finger on the pulse of JavaOne.

With Twitter, you can broadcast short status updates to your followers and receive updates from people who you follow. It's like having one big instant messaging conversation with all of your friends.

You can access Twitter via SMS. During JavaOne, you can easily keep tabs on your fellow attendees as well as let them know what you're up to, all from just about any cell phone (standard text messaging rates apply).

For example, if you follow me, and I text "free beer at Guice BoF!" to Twitter, Twitter will forward the message on to your phone.

Note: In addition to following someone, you must also enable "device updates" for that person in order to receive their updates via text and instant message.

If you don't have unlimited text messaging, you can always access Twitter via the web or one of the zillion 3rd party Twitter applications.

#javaone

The Twitter world utilizes an ad hoc tagging system called hashtags. It's simple. Tag your JavaOne-related messages by appending "#javaone" to them, and I'll be able to see your update even if I'm not following you yet.

Simply text "track javaone" to Twitter in order to receive any message containing the word javaone from anyone on Twitter, or search for "#javaone" on Summize, a real time Twitter search engine.

Follow Me

I plan to twitter throughout JavaOne. In addition to following me, also check out these Java twitterers:

If you'll be twittering from JavaOne and I didn't mention you above, link to your profile from the comments so others can find you.

Finally, please spread the word about this post and twittering at JavaOne in general. The more people who Twitter from JavaOne, the more fun we'll have!

13 comments