Last week, I signed my third NDA.

I was invited to interview for an internet marketing job for a small startup company, and just a few minutes into the interview, I was presented with a boilerplate Non-Disclosure Agreement to sign. At first, I politely declined, sharing the same explanation I wrote in the blog post above.

But after a brief discussion, I decided that the opportunity was almost exactly the type of work I wanted to do, and that if this company didn’t hire me, I doubted I’d ever work for a competitor in their industry.  So I reluctantly signed the NDA.

We then had a very engaging discussion of the company’s plans, and how my skills fit their needs.  I was invited back for a second interview two days later, so they could decide between me and one other candidate for the position.

After the first interview, I did some research and quickly discovered that none of the information disclosed to me in that interview was actually secret or confidential. All the information was public — including the one specific piece of information which I understood the company wanted to protect as a secret (though I recognized this would be impossible beyond a very short time period).

But then, on Monday, the company re-posted the same employment ad. Clearly, they’ve decided not to hire me or the other candidate they’d invited for a second interview.

So why did I sign the Non-Disclosure Agreement? As I mentioned, I viewed this job as an ideal match for my skills and experience, and I saw that I could make a great contribution to the startup, while doing work that would be very interesting and challenging. And of course, I wasn’t sure what “secrets” would be disclosed, and I hoped there would be some original ideas or concepts worth protecting.  I didn’t want to accept that the day was wasted (I’d done a few hours of pre-interview research before putting on a suit and tie [for the first time in more than a year] and driving a long way through unpleasant traffic).

And I was “rewarded,” because after I signed the NDA, we had a very productive discussion, and I was invited to return for a second interview with more folks.

I don’t regret signing this NDA, even though I’ve learned that there were no secrets to be protected, validating my belief that the NDA was an unnecessary waste of time.

The fact that I wasn’t offered the job isn’t a reason to regret signing the NDA; they’re entitled to decide that I wasn’t the right fit.

The NDA was the first of several signals that the venture wasn’t as well-conceived as I’d hoped; if I’d refused to sign the NDA, I wouldn’t have spent a second day on the follow-up interview.

But I found the experience stimulating, and it even sparked a flow of ideas in my brain, providing inspiration to follow through on some of my existing projects (completely unrelated to the company or the position we discussed).

I was amazed this past week, after I installed the Nook e-reader software on my Android tablet, to find that the book reviews on the Barnes & Noble web site include massive amounts of spam and graffiti*, as well as anonymous customer ratings without any text. It appears that these reviews aren’t screened by humans (nor even by software), and the result is that the aggregate customer ratings shown for many books are useless.

What I found most upsetting about B&N’s review system was that many books carried 4-star or 4.5-star ratings, but when I viewed the reviews, the first several pages of reviews (those voted as useful by B&N’s customers) are overwhelmingly negative.  An anonymous, wordless review is assigned the same weight as a well-written, cogent review.

While Amazon’s rating also appears to be a raw average of the star ratings of all reviewers, its data isn’t corrupted by anonymous or wordless reviews, nor by graffiti or spam (Amazon’s reviews must be at least 20 words long, must use either a real name or a pseudonym, and must be linked to a specific customer account; they’re also screened by humans to weed out spam and graffiti).

Both Amazon’s and B&N’s review systems are vulnerable to “shill reviews” — not only positive reviews posted on behalf of the publisher or author, but also negative reviews posted by folks who simply dislike the author or the theme of the book.

Both Amazon and B&N allow their customers to rate the usefulness of individual reviews (yes or no), and both try to display “useful” reviews first.  On Amazon, reviews are displayed in sequence based on the percentage of useful-vs-not votes (so that a review which is rated useful by 5 out of 6 people is shown before a review which is rated useful by 6 of 11 people).  B&N’s reviews appear to be sequenced based on the raw number of people who found the review “useful” (so a review rated useful by 4 out of 9 people is shown before a review rated as useful by 3 out of 4 people).

I’d recommend to B&N that they allow customers to “opt in” to exclude anonymous or wordless reviews from the ratings they see.

Ideally, any rating should incorporate the “usefulness” data, allocating more “weight” to reviews deemed useful. (Alas, this would likely increase the abuse of that system, too.)

But neither review system is effective for books which haven’t earned more than a few reviews. On either system, search results display a raw rating without showing the number of reviews. Thus, a publisher or author can post a new book, and then someone can post one or two “shill” reviews assigning a 5-star rating, and the book will immediately be displayed with a 5-star rating. If there are 50 five-star “shill” reviews (very few rated as useful by visitors), and 10 well-written, cogent reviews which all assign just one or two stars (all rated as useful by most users), the book’s rating will still be displayed as 4 or 4.5 stars. That’s just ridiculous.

_______

*/ What’s the difference between “graffiti” and “spam” in B&N’s product reviews? I consider a review “spam” if it promotes a web site, a product, a service, or a political candidate or issue. It’s “graffiti” if it’s nonsense, bullying, or hate speech. Both are also usually unrelated to the B&N product page where they appear.

First, she asserted that I should not talk with her about this, but instead I should talk to her “consultant firm,” which posted the signs (like most persons accused of any crime, she sought to shift responsibility to others).

When I pointed out how bad this looked in a candidate for judge, she said that she’d personally spoken with someone at the City of Hayward who told her it was OK (ignorance of the law, or misinformation or a misunderstanding, is an excuse).

She also noted that she’s received no complaints from municipalities (it’s not illegal unless you’re caught).

I wrote about this two years ago, in the last major campaign cycle (http://www.markwelchblog.com/2010/10/09/illegally-posted-campaign-signs/), when I heard the same excuses from other candidates. And the rule is the same as it’s ever been: the firms hired to post signs for candidates will do anything they think is in their interest, as long as they can do it, regardless of the law. And the candidates pretend that they believe that their political consultants won’t break the law.

I won’t vote for Tara Flanagan, because clearly she doesn’t respect the law nor accept responsibility for her own actions; I don’t want such a person to serve in any elected office, but certainly not as a Superior Court Judge!

The picture below is captured from Tara Flanagan’s campaign Facebook page; I’ve blacked out sections that included other people’s pictures and comments. 

At a public candidate forum, Stark repeatedly asserted that Eric Swalwell, his chief primary opponent, had accepted bribes, sought to dismantle unions, and hadn’t voted in recent elections. Stark repeated these personal attacks multiple times, despite repeated objections by the moderator. Stark’s campaign later issued a half-hearted “apology.”

All of Stark’s allegations appear to be completely unfounded. The kindest interpretation is that Mr. Stark is incompetent; the more plausible interpretation is that Mr. Stark is unethical and dishonest. No interpretation could justify my voting for Mr. Stark again.

I don’t know if Stark or his staff planned this, but of course many “neutral” Google searches for election information (using Stark’s and Swalwell’s names) now bring up the reckless bribery accusation in many of the first-page results.

I also can’t identify any accomplishments or actions by Mr. Stark, other than “serving as a loyal Democrat,” in the past decade. Don’t misunderstand me: I appreciate and agree with most of Mr. Stark’s votes. But we deserve more from our Representative in Congress.

Unfortunately, I’m struggling to decide whether there’s a viable alternative. Both challengers, Eric Swalwell and Chris Pareja, seem more focused on attacking Mr. Stark than offering positive ideas.

To his credit, Mr. Pareja, now in his second run against Stark, clearly states his positions on most important issues. It took only a few minutes to verify that Mr. Pareja, although self-identified as Independent, is really a “Tea Party Republican,” whose views are antithetical to mine.

Mr. Swalwell is a Democrat, but I haven’t been able to identify his positions on most issues. Health care isn’t even mentioned on Pareja’s web site, though I was slightly comforted to see, in a candidate forum sponsored by the League of Women Voters, that Swalwell said he supported the Affordable Care Act (“ObamaCare”), including the “individual mandate.” However, he’s still an “unknown,” with very limited political experience.

As you’d expect, Stark is endorsed by nearly all current and recent statewide office holders in the San Francisco Bay Area, with the notable exception of former Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher (Swalwell briefly worked in her Washington office; she hasn’t endorsed either candidate).

Note: After the 2010 census, the boundaries of California’s congressional districts were changed; my home and Mr. Stark’s, along with about half of the area of the previous 13th Congressional District, are now part of the 15th Congressional District.

I’ve been involved in affiliate marketing since 1996, and I’ve designed and helped implement new affiliate programs for a number of etailers since 1997. In that time, I’ve seen lots of “advice” shared by “experts” about affiliate marketing (in books, magazine articles, white papers, and web sites). In each of these resources, I’ve found both good and bad advice (sometimes horrible advice) — but always with huge gaps, failing to address critical issues that my clients and I have experienced. As the affiliate marketing industry has matured, new problems have arisen, and any advice that doesn’t address some of these issues is actually dangerous. I was quite impressed with how well this book addressed so many complex issues.

Most resources about affiliate marketing are also biased, favoring the practices of the author, often omitting (and sometimes condemning or mocking) alternative strategies. In my opinion, much of the “advice” found in most of these resources is biased to favor the financial interests of the author or sponsoring company, not the reader.

Although Geno Prussakov is a professional “outsourced affiliate program manager,” I didn’t perceive any significant bias in favor of that particular approach, and despite his professional need to maintain friendly relationships with major affiliate networks, his book directly criticizes some of the bad advice that those folks give.

I only noticed one lapse: I couldn’t find any mention of “advertising nexus” sales-tax enforcement laws that some states have enacted to try to force out-of-state merchants to collect sales tax based on the existence of affiliate relationships. This issue exploded when New York enacted the first such law in mid-2008, and then in mid-2009 other states adopted similar laws. While the issue is likely to be temporary (in the past year, one court declared the law unconstitutional, and California repealed the law a few months after its enactment), I still consider it a critical issue for every merchant to consider when planning a new affiliate program.

Though I view this as a serious omission, I’m not aware of any other books or resources that come close to the comprehensiveness and usefulness of this book.

I strongly recommend this book for anyone considering (or planning) an affiliate program. I’m not aware of any other resource that even comes close: Geno Prussakov’s book is (by far) the most comprehensive and useful resource I’ve found for new affiliate program managers. The book should also be useful to current affiliate program managers and “affiliate technology providers” (affiliate networks, and related software and web developers).

Disclaimer: The book links to Amazon.com are affiliate links (paid advertising).

Before the Internet was opened to the public in 1993, I used CompuServe and BIX  (the BYTE Information Exchange) , as well as a variety of online bulletin board systems (including FidoNet). My first internet email address was markwelch@aol.com but like most folks I soon dropped AOL. I moved next to markwelch@trivalley.com, then markwelch@value.net, and then registered a domain name for my professional law practice, markwelch@ca-probate.com, before registering my namesake domain and adopting the fixed email address which I’ve used ever since: MarkWelch@MarkWelch.com. That’s the only email address that works for me today, and it will probably work for me for the rest of my life.

Of course, there are hundreds of other people named “Mark Welch,” so please don’t assume that I’m the “correct” Mark Welch that you’re trying to reach. I suppose I should expand this post to include lots of other past contact information….

My former web site addresses:

• http://members.aol.com/markwelch/
• http://www.value.net/~markwelch/
• http://www.adbility.com/ (sold in 1999)
• http://www.ca-probate.com/ (sold in 1999)
• http://www.LitPlans.com/ (sold in 2007)

Places where I’ve lived and worked:

Wisconsin (1960s)

• Birthplace and birthdate not listed here!
• Waterloo, WI (early 1960s)
• Port Washington, WI (1964-1971)  (South High Street)

Massachusetts (1971-1983)

• Shrewsbury, MA (1971-1972)
• Westborough, MA  (1972-1979), (South Street, Milk Street, East Main Street; Westborough Junior High School; Westborough High School, Class of 1979; PO Box to mid-1980; Miniature Toys Inc.; Welch Communications; Worcester Telegram & Gazette)
• Hopkinton, MA (1980) (Mayhew Street)
• Northboro, MA (First Security Services, New England Grocers)
• Framingham State College (Spring 1980)
• Amherst, MA (June 1980 to May 1983) (Kennedy and Leach dormitories, PO Box, plus sublets; University of Massachusetts Press; Collegian newspaper)

New Hampshire (1982-1985)

• Peterborough, NH (summer 1982) (Wayne Green Inc./Desktop Computing magazine)
• Peterborough, NH (May 1983 to December 1984) (Shadow Lane; McGraw-Hill/BYTE Magazine)

California (1985 to present)

• San Francisco, CA (1984 to 1986) (Bay Street, 45th Street; McGraw-Hill/BYTE Magazine)
• Berkeley, CA (1986 to 1989, Panoramic Way, University of California, Berkeley, Boalt Hall School of Law, Law Office Technology Review, Lawyer’s PC Review – syndicated newspaper column and newsletter)
• Oakland, CA (July to December, 1989) (18th Street, PO Box, Law Office Technology Review)
• Dublin, CA (December 1989 to June 1991) (Silvergate Drive, PO Box, Dublin Blvd, Law Office Technology Review)
• Pleasanton, CA (June 1991 through June 2004) (PO Box, Arroyo Dr, Stoneridge Mall Road, Law Office of Mark J. Welch, Rotary Club of Pleasanton North, Tri-Valley Estate Planning Council, Pleasanton Unified School District; LitPlans.com)
• Oakland Unified School District, Oakland High School (2003-2004)
• Hayward, CA (Valle Vista Ave.) (2004 to present, LessonIndex.com)
• Other Employers: RenderX (Palo Alto), IzmoCars (San Francisco), MovieGoods (Los Angeles/Las Vegas); Adbility.com, Web Publishers’ Advertising Guide, Web Site Banner Advertising

Titles: Syndicated Columnist; Reporter; Associate News Editor; Editor & Publisher; Writer; Attorney; Lawyer; Student; Teacher; Substitute Teacher; English Teacher; Chief Strategist; Internet Marketing Consultant; Director of Marketing; PPC Marketing Strategist; Shipping Clerk.

I just found a series of unexpected small transactions from Amazon on my credit card.

It turns out that when I used their Android “Amazon MP3″ app to explore their MP3 offerings, and downloaded some free items, they included non-free items in the search-results list, and charged me without authorization. No checkout, no confirmation.

I confirmed that “One-Click” remains disabled; there’s no visible change anywhere in Amazon’s system. But it’s not just MP3 items — on the same day, I was charged for several Kindle items, even though I believed I had only ordered free items.

On the phone (1-206-262-2992), the customer service agent claimed that even if One-Click is disabled in a customer’s account, “One-Click is always on for digital items.”

That’s not true, of course, since when I’ve accidentally clicked on non-free Kindle items I’ve always been asked for confirmation — until this week. Somehow, when I used the Amazon MP3 app on my Android tablet, Amazon changed a setting in the way the Kindle app works.

Amazon claims that I accepted their changed “One-Click” terms when I installed the Amazon MP3 app, but of course I didn’t, since the app was pre-installed on my Android tablet (for which I assume Amazon paid Acer a fee).

This is unethical and deceptive. Most important, it’s really bad for Amazon’s customer relationships.

Check your credit card (or debit card) statements! If you find unauthorized charges, and if you want Amazon to reverse the transactions, you’re in for an unpleasant experience. First, you need to figure out which orders are involved, and if you’ve ordered multiple “free” items, you’ll manually need to click on every single transaction to find any that weren’t actually free. This makes it very difficult to submit an online request for support. Second, if you call Amazon’s customer service department (1-206-262-2992), you’ll find that you need to speak to at least two agents (I had to speak with three: a front-line agent, then a Kindle agent, then an MP3 agent).

Delete your credit card from your Amazon account! I’ve deleted my credit-card info from my Amazon account, so hopefully this won’t happen again, even if I accidentally click on an item that isn’t actually free.

So I just spent 20 minutes printing out and affixing 16 tiny labels to 8 cables (one on each end of each cable) to identify which cables go with which devices. (The picture at right is not mine; it’s just an example.)

• Topping my list of complaints are listings for “free books that aren’t free” (often these are books which are shown as “free” for Prime customers, but that actually just means that the book is available for “borrowing” for free, subject to the limit of one borrowed book per month for Prime subscribers who own an Amazon Kindle device (not Kindle Apps or Cloud Reader). Of course, it’s understandable that some books’ pricing will change (often, eBooks are offered for free for only a single day).
• I’m annoyed by services which impose an “intermediate link” (so that when you click on a book title, you’re sent to a different web page, not directly to the relevant page at Amazon or another marketplace).
• I’m also disappointed by services which list “anything and everything,” without any filter for quality.
• It’s annoying to see eBooks listed (as if they were newly-released or newly-free) that have actually been available for free for many months.
• Finally, I’m annoyed by services which fail to provide a meaningful description nor category information for a book. (I haven’t found any service which allows users to search by category, although some blog sites use searchable “tags” for most books.)

Here are several places I look for free eBooks for Amazon’s Kindle (most have both a web site and a Facebook “feed,” shown in parentheses):

• http://www.bookbub.com/
• http://www.daily-free-ebooks.com/ (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Daily-Free-EBooks-for-Kindle/114387568641595)
• http://www.efreebooks.org/ (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Free-books-on-Kindle/115954568460660)
• http://www.ereaderlove.com/category/free-ebooks-for-kindle-2/ (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Free-Books-for-Kindle/136225579732999)
• http://www.ereadingonthecheap.com (https://www.facebook.com/pages/eReading-on-the-Cheap/232916190102379)
• http://www.fkbooksandtips.com/ (https://www.facebook.com/fkbooksandtips)
• http://www.freebookfeed.com/ (https://www.facebook.com/FreeBooksForKindle)
• http://www.freebookshub.com (https://www.facebook.com/freebooks4kindle)
• http://www.kindle-author.com (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Kindle-Author/168316526565998)
• http://www.new-daily-free-ebooks.com/ (https://www.facebook.com/pages/New-Free-Books-for-Kindle/217294878328464)
• http://www.pixelofink.com/ (https://www.facebook.com/PixelofInk)
• http://www.thefrugalereader.com (https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Frugal-eReader/101086513289732)
• https://www.facebook.com/4FreeKindleBooks
• https://www.facebook.com/pages/Free-books-for-Kindle/160586423973532
• https://www.facebook.com/pages/Free-Books-for-Kindle-UK/246923732000349
• https://www.facebook.com/pages/Free-Kindle-Books/118605434865123
• https://www.facebook.com/pages/Free-Kindle-Ebooks/138685652844756
• http://www.Kindle-Freebies.com/ (https://www.facebook.com/KindleFreebies,/del>)  – useless!

Please, give me your feedback!  I’d like to share this feedback with the folks who offer these services, in the hope that they’ll become more useful for a wider audience.

This particular pricing is for the book Class Warfare, which was published last August. After reading the reviews, I balked at paying full price for the book, but this week I decided to check the pricing to see if it has reached the “one cent” pricing (plus $3.99 s&h) that is common for many poorly-reviewed new releases after 6 months.  Here, the new book is offered for $1.72 by many sellers in the Amazon Marketplace, bringing the net cost to $5.71 including shipping to get the physical, printed book, but the Kindle price is still $15, nearly three times as much.

In fairness, this isn’t entirely Amazon’s fault: publishers control the Kindle pricing, while individual retailers can set their own prices for merchandise offered through the Amazon Marketplace.

Added May 3, 2011: Here’s another example, where the price of the physical book (brand new, eligible for free shipping)  is actually less than the Kindle price: