So every time I spend some amount of money on my Amazon.com credit card, I get a $25 Amazon.com gift certificate. I’ve been saving them up for a while on Amazon; you can enter the certificate number immediately and redeem it later. This is a cool feature. I just spent over $200 on books and CD’s. With super saver shipping, I ended up spending exact $0 out of pocket. Well, right now that is. I spent a lot on the credit card before now. Here is what I got:
- There Must Be a Pony in Here Somewhere: The AOL Time Warner Debacle and the Quest for a Digital Future (Kara Swisher and Lisa Dickey) This book should be very interesting given that I work for Sports Illustrated, part of the vast Time Warner family.
- The Girl In The Other Room (Diana Krall) I’ve liked a lot of Diana Krall’s albums. She worked on several tracks of this album with her husband, Elvis Costello.
- Death Rides a Pale Cow: The Ultimate Collection (The Dead Milkmen) Punk rock girl you look so wild…
- Best of Bowie (David Bowie) We can be heroes…
- The Bends (Radiohead) High and Dry alone is enough reason to buy this album.
- The Physiology of Taste: Or Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy (Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin; translated by M. F. K. Fisher) This book on food and wine was written in 1825. I’m looking forward to digesting it. (Sorry for the pun.)
- Cosmopolitan: A Bartender’s Life (Toby Cecchini) I hear this book is like Kitchen Confidential
- Get Away From Me (Nellie McKay) I heard Nellie McKay at the Tea Lounge in Park Slope, so I thought I would pick it up.
- Lost In Translation (Widescreen Edition)
- The Complete Peanuts 1950-1952 (Charles M. Schulz) I’m looking forward to revisiting the bittersweet melancholy of the early strips.
- Top-Down Network Design (2nd Edition) (Priscilla Oppenheimer) Who doesn’t want to know about network design?
All of these links are links into Amazon.com. Amazon has a program called the “Associates Program.” It would allow me to create a link to Amazon that would allow me to get revenue every time a link was clicked. I thought about joining this program, but then decided against it. One of the clauses of the program’s Operating Agreement was:
Further, you acknowledge and agree that you will: (a) not, in connection with this Agreement, display or reference on your site, any trademark or logo of any third party seller on the Amazon.com Site; […]
It’s not the worst clause I have ever seen in a contact, but it is a bit obnoxious. Suppose I want to comment on the logo of a “third party seller.” Normally, I could include the logo here with criticism; that would be considered fair use. However, I could be in breach of my Amazon.com Associates Program agreement if I did so.
A couple of other clauses also made me uncomfortable. The revenue doesn’t make the program worthwhile for me.
I still like Amazon, and I’ll continue buying from them and linking to them.
Update at 7:00 PM: I received everything!