In light of the fact that most forum members are interested in portability, I would like to propose an ongoing thread where people can post if they find a good deal on flash drives, pen drives, click drives, or whatever you want to call the things we all use to carry our portable apps around with us as we migrate from computer to computer.
If posting on this thread, I strongly recommend that you re-read this section of the forum guidelines (pretty standard for most fora of this nature, but a good description of proper nettiquette by John Haller is probably worth reading anyway):
No Self-Promotional Posting - Posting about your own software or websites in an online forum is a form of spamming and is not permitted here. If you make a self-promotional post, it will be edited and your account may be disabled. The exception is if someone asks a question directly related to your product. In addition, if you are releasing a free, portable, open source (OSI-approved license) individual application that is not a fork or clone of an app hosted here, you may make a post when you do a release. The code for this product must be available from the page you link to in your post and your product must properly attribute contributors (so, if you're basing a launcher on a PortableApps.com launcher, for instance, you must credit this on your product page similar to the way the Acknowledgements on this site are posted). These posts must meet the following criteria:
* short - postings of a paragraph or so. no long postings
* simple, friendly language - press releases and marketing-speak have no place in the forums
* infrequent - weekly postings would not be permitted. but one or two postings a month would be fine (this limit is per company/website/entity... all programs and employees/developers that are a part of that entity are counted together)
* properly categorized - beta announcements would go in the beta forum. requests for assistance would go in the development forum.
* program-focused - the announcement should pertain to a specific software release. it should not be advertising your company/website/entity.
Note: You can, of course, pretend that you simply "found" your own software and make a posting about it, if you're that type of person. The fee for this is US$10,000.
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Sometimes when you're least expecting it, you stumble across an outrageous good deal on a memory card for digital cameras.
It occurs to me that there is a simple way for people like us to take advantage of these sorts of deals, even if we don't need any memory for our camera (or don't use that style of memory) at the moment.
CompUSA sells an item they refer to in their catalog as a "USB 2.0 Multi Card Reader w/Pen Drive Support". Similar products are commonplace, but as of May 25, 2009, this one is selling for five bucks. Five dollars plus shipping does not seem like a lot to spend if you happen to stumble across a great deal on an SD,MMC,RS MMC card.
http://www.compusa.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1...
There are plenty of card readers out there that can read multiple camera memory card formats, but these are often too bulky to be put on your keychain. I own one that would lay flat and fit nicely in my shirt pocket, but needs a SUB cable to attach to the computer.
Here's an example of the so-called "All-in-One Media Card Reader" I own.
Dimension: 3.5” 1.6” .6”
http://www.compusa.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3...
Here's a 68-in-1 version whose dimensions are 4.1" x 2.5" x .75"
http://www.compusa.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1...
>>- DGP ->
It's bad enough that we have to deal with meat puppets spamming in forums. The best way to spot them is their contrived threads to [INSERT PRODUCT HERE]. What good could come of giving those companies an actual place to advertise? All that would come of it is that they could then pretend to be real people simply passing along "good information" on "hot deals" on thier own products.
You wouldn't happen to be talking about netbooks, would you?
That is when you have a sockpuppet meatpuppet (A sockpuppet for the meatpuppet) ask a question about your product. It's actually pretty obvious once you know what to look for.
The big problem we face is that the people who would do this have created accounts that are getting older by the day, so spotting some brand new account with just a couple of posts spamming their wares will get increasingly difficult to the point where they will be able to blend in nicely, except for the actual spamming part.
...what's with all the drama? Sockpuppet? Meatpuppet?
The reason there's no such topic is there's pretty much one clear answer:
Newegg.com
The reason there's no specific product link or sale is because their prices change daily, and they undersell everybody, I don't know exactly how it works, but you can look up anything anywhere else (especially a store like CompUSA, lol) and then go look it up on Newegg and laugh at how much the other store/site marked it up.
Newegg used to advertise that they don't run ads because your computer magazine is their ad, you see something you like and look it up on their site, something like that, it was real clever.
Unless another site/store is going out of business, I don't know why you'd go anywhere else. Even Circuit City's "75% off" for going out of business was still marked up way above Newegg's common/average rates.
I don't believe I am overstating it, let alone starting drama.
Don't take my word for it.
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My mistake was in assuming you were accusing the topic creator of being a sockpuppet of a meatpuppet. After learning what these terms meant on Wikipedia, that confused me. Seeing your reply now, I see that you fill the role of sockpuppet while the topic creator is the meatpuppet. Wikipedia's definition, not my terms.
And that leaves me confused further.
Before they drop the banhammers, as they're not too keen on spam up here, mind telling me how much spamming pays? I've always wondered. But the ironic thing is that your links don't have referral code, that I can see. Oh, and something over my head about the boards being set up to disallow indexing or something that spammers require of a forum to profit from...?
I stated that ads were inappropriate, and that a sign of social marketing was a contrived product placement. The response was praise for newegg.com. (If that was intentional, hilarious! Very smooth.) My response, as a person against product placement in forums, was a reference to an upcoming book. Oh, the irony!
In case you are actually being serious, I was demonstrating that it is a real phenomenon and not simply paranoia. They would market tech gadgets here, not books on how to cleverly spam boards.
And it's not just affiliate links and pay-per post stuff. There are entire company departments set up to sway the opinions of influential people. Tech geeks hold enormous credibility. It is valuable.
Tech geeks hold enormous credibility only if we come with papers from a respectable educational facility stating we know what we know. I have no such papers, but I can make the corporate IT boys look real stupid at just about any place I work. Just this morning, one of the monitors on a computer we needed in the office was broken, and I was like, "oh, I can fix that, won't take but a minute" (there were spares in the back, and unused monitors around on other computers) and my boss was just like, "no, we have to wait for a technician". First thing to come to mind was "I'm the technician" and do it anyway, but that's not how things get done. It ain't what you know, it's what someone else says you know, which itself, may not be what you know, either it may be more or it may be less.
As for Newegg, I was actually being serious. And that's not advertising, that's just geek wisdom. Whatever your specialty is, you experiment around with the tools of the trade, for example a chef will go from butcher to butcher or store to store to find just the right ingredients (and the right prices) to make that perfect meal (at the right price). And then from there, unless something big happens, it's just considered almost insider wisdom that if you want good pork or good carrots, you go here or here. It's the same for geeks. Newegg's it right now; maybe in some time something else will come along. Maybe it has already and I'm behind the times. But not too far, because I still get great deals.
Though it is ironic, the sharing of wisdom and advertising/spamming are separated by a rather fine line, and the clear divisor is motive. Is someone telling you about a site, service, or product to help you find something you're looking for, asking for, or need? Or are they trying to push their own agenda? Are they getting paid somehow? Even then, some sites don't care what your motivation is if their rules are stricter. For example a certain popular board owned by C|Net has a notorious no-link policy where you can't link to anything they don't own except in some really weird conditions (though some people get away with it here and there, but abuse of it is dealt with harshly and swiftly). (If you want to take a guess as to what this board is, it's the part where the sun don't shine of the Internet... if that doesn't describe what you're thinking, it probably isn't.)
Anyway, so... the topic was a joke and I fell for it, pie in the face and all? If so, hand me a towel, because you got me.
I was at work, and it didn't occur to me until after I replied.
The motive is the smoking gun, but not always so clear. Over the years, I have learned of a few things to look for. Finding social marketing is almost like finding Trojan horse software. It used to be obvious, but marketers are becoming more sophisticated.
I've seen great things ruined by people wanting to move product.
> I've seen great things ruined by people wanting to move product.
Sigh... I guess you're right about this.
I worked for Computer City back in the mid 1990's. Every morning, we were handed a list of "spiffs", or incentives to sell specific products. I can remember one day in two years of working there that there was an item on the spiff list that I would actually reccomend.
It took me a long time to figure out why the customers lumped my advise in with the advise they got from your average, run of the mill Computer City employee.
Most of them didn't own computers, and were not particularly interested in computers. One job is as good as any other job.
I had to steal the computer magazines from the dumpster, and would have been charged with theft if I'd ever been caught trying to educate myself about various aspects of the computer and the marketplace in which they are sold.
Not hard to figure out why they went out of business.
>>- DGP ->
I'd like to thank those of you who commented on this thread. There are still some things I don't understand about the sophisticated ways some people try to spoil these online fora. As a longtime member of the AAAC Trad forum, I was always glad when people would post deal alerts for the obscure clothhing items we forumites could not find in local stores. Posts from merchants in our obscure little niche were also always welcome.
I guess things as mainstream and commoditized as computer memory sticks are sort of a different animal. You can buy them at your local grocery store, not to mention the tiny handful of electronics stores that still maintain a brick-and-mortar presence in small towns out here in the western US.
>>- DGP ->
Glad to know about Newegg. Thank you for this!
I may become a loyal customer of theirs in the very near future.
I guess I assumed there was a major distinction between USB memory sticks and general tech toys in my initial post. High margin tech toys may be a magnet for spamming and other tom foolery.
USB memory is not any chic, sophisticated thing that techies speak of in hushed tones nowadays. It's a commodity.
Why anybody would take a USB deal alert as evidence of spamming, I don't understand. What good would it do me to sell another five dollars' worth of USB memory?
>>- DGP ->