Maybe I’m being completely dense here but why doesn’t the hobbyist game framework for building Xbox 360 games XLA Game Studio Framework that I’ve been excited about and looking forward to work with Visual Studio 2005 Professional? Why is it only with the Visual Studio C# Express edition? I looked around the official XLA Framework Team blog and there doesn’t appear to be an explanation (?). There is a very thorough explanation of the psychology behind the framework and other interesting details about the framework. I’m subscribed to this team blog and like what I’ve seen so far here.

On the XLA Game Studio download page system requirements clearly shows that it requires Visual Studio Express, but doesn’t indicate if the future non-beta release will support VS Studio Pro:

This release requires Microsoft Visual C# 2005 Express Edition to be installed before proceeding. You can install Visual C# Express from the Visual C# Express Download Page. However, other members of the Visual Studio 2005 line of products, for example Visual Studio 2005 Professional, can co-exist with XNA Game Studio Express (Beta) on the same computer.

I understand this framework is intended primarily for hobbyists to make games and most hobbyists aren’t going to use Visual Studio Pro which costs like $1,000 but shouldn’t everything work with the pro edition out of the gate? Or is there some really good reason that the beta only works with the VS C# Express edition?

Yeah, I know, it’s just a beta and for evaluation purposes only and if you don’t like the terms, don’t bother, I get all that. It sounds like VS Pro and Express can co-exist just fine but I’m a little leery based on past experience with some botched Visual Studio installs and system conflicts wanting to play too much with something that’s working good.

I’ve been wanting to check out and share this program for our middle teen who is interested in game development. It’s not a big deal to put on another machine with VS Express since we have several but I remain curious if the final non-beta version will support VS Pro? I’m sure this has been addressed somewhere by someone, but I didn’t see it with a quick search.

If anybody knows the answer to this one, has a link which specifically addresses this, etc, please let me know in the comments below. I’ll update this when/if I find out the answer. Thank you.

hackday.org has the signup details for this Hack Day at Yahoo which include a weekend festival of tents, tunes and TechCrunch Michael Arrington presiding. via Techcrunch:

On Friday, September 29, 2006, Yahoo will open up its Sunnyvale headquarters to all developers for a 24 hour Hack Day, followed by a really cool party on Saturday night. If you are a developer, and have an idea for a cool one-day hack project, this will definitely be a fun event for you.

Will be looking forward to see what cool things come out of:

01001000 01100001 01100011 01101011 00100000 01000100 01100001 01111001

Gotta love the final taunting line: “Mashup or shutup!”

Need your help.

We’re looking for a good mass domains management tool/utility that runs as a client app on Windows or Mac. Might consider a web service too if it’s really good. These are the minimum features we’re looking for:

- sorting and grouping by domain name, registrar, renewal/expiration date
- allow pricing to be entered for managing annual domain costs
- supports multiple domain name registrars and thousands of domains

We’ve hit all the common suspects: Google, Tucows, Version Tracker and have a few ideas to start with but I thought by throwing it out to readers maybe we’d pick up some more that perhaps aren’t on the obvious radars. With all the software and services I’ve reviewed, domain management isn’t something I’ve come across that much.

Some software we’re considering
KF Whois ($39) - they offer a pro version for $99 too.
Domain Punch ($49)
Domain Name Commando ($99) - emails you changes on domains with before and after marked in red. Nice feature.
Domain Tracker ($24.95, Mac)

Your suggestion(s)?
For webmaster readers, are you using a good program to manage your domains? Please share the link in the comments below for any good domain program you are currently using or have used in the past to manage multiple domains. Don’t mind if it’s commercial, shareware or freeware, but do care that it’s something you have actually used and liked. Please tell us how long you’ve used the program and what specifically you liked about it. If you happen to be the developer, that’s fine too as long as you provide some details that indicate you actually read this post and our needs and aren’t just dumping a link here for exposure.

And feel free to make your link an affiliate link. If we like the program then we’ll buy through your link and make you a few bones.

Update 5:37pm PST: Removed the Domain Name Keeper as the download link was 404 too. Thanks for the head’s up, JP.

Slimtimer, a web based timer, is sort of what I was hoping Tick would have included when I reviewed earlier this week. Perhaps the two companies will join forces down the road and make a single project management time tracking tool.

First, the best news: you don’t need a super secret handshake private invite, it’s open to the public as of this writing. The registration and signup proces involves entering in your name, email address and password. An email will be sent with a validation code to click, all standard fare. Good, it worked with + in my email where many of these programs tested did not [youremail+slimtimer@abcdomain.com < -- just here for example and to irritate harvesters].

A bookmarklet is available to launch the SlimTimer and as the screenshot above shows, it really is slim. Using Screen Calipers, the screenshot below shows it is a mere 155 pixels wide:

Click here to view an actual size screenshot. The actual screen real estate required for the timer for various resolutions ranges from a high of 19.4% for 800×600 to 12.1% or better for higher resolutions.

(19.4%) 800×600 = 155 px
(15.1%) 1024×768 = 155 px
*(12.1%) 1280×720 (*desktop shown at the top of post)

Starting the timer using Add Task
After launching the SlimTimer it wasn’t very intuitive as to what to do next. Add Task opens a menu with these cryptic grayed out codes:

Task [tag 1, tag2] c(coworker@st.com) r(client@acme.com)

Toggle Help attempts to add a key to the items, but the slim instructions still aren’t very clear:

[tag1, tag2]
Set tags; comma delimited.
c(coworker@email.com)
Set coworkers; comma or space delimited.
r(reporter@email.com)
Set reporters; comma or space delimited.

My assumption was this allowed you to set tags at the same time you assigned a task as well as assigning a coworker and reporter email addresses. Suggestion to developer: add some real world examples as to how these fields might be filled out. Or at least a first time wizard to walk through the process.

Here is how I got running with a task:

STEP 1. Click “Add Task”
STEP 2. Typed in “Testing SlimTimer” and hit enter
STEP 3. A “Testing SlimTimer” checkbox and text appeared just below the Tag/Comment and I clicked on the “Testing SlimTimer” text. The red timer with 0.00 turned green and the counting began.
STEP 4. Added Tag: “test” with comment: “first test of SlimTimer.”
STEP 5. To stop timing I just closed the window.

Reporting options
On the SlimTimer website under the “Manage Tasks” tab I learned more about the mysterious coworker and reporter options which appear to be using email as a permission structure for who can access the information and what can be done with the records of the activity.

Coworkers: “Can make time entries on, mark task completed and run reports.”
Reporters: “Can run reports of time logged on this task.”

You can also view the following projects:

Active - “Created by or shared with me and not completed.”
Mine - “Created by or shared with me and not completed.”
Theirs - “Shared with me and not completed.”
Completed - “Completed by myself or a coworker.”

Support options
There is a Google group for SlimTimer and the first request was something that immediately crossed my mind: offline timing. The author also welcomes direct feedback via email. There doesn’t appear to be an official SlimTimer blog. [Update 7/27/06 12:12pm PST: the author replied below that the official blog is here]

Will I use SlimTimer?
I will try using it for a couple projects and see how it goes, but I would rather have something like ActiveTimer on the Mac where I can set what programs to watch how much time is spent in and automatically insert that data into the task data. Offline time tracking is important for working out of the office so this tool only helps for work done in the office and/or where an internet connection is present. I realize that seems like a lame complaint for web based software, but the reality is not everybody always has internet when they are working on projects. Grade: C+.

When I first learned of Tickspot my expectation for it was something to help monitor time spent in projects, not be yet another thing that had to be done with an existing project. Tickspot self bills itself as “Hit your budgets—move more inventory. Tick gives you the information you need, when you need it.”

Really? What about when you aren’t connected to the internet?

Tickspot is still in private beta, but signing up, at least in my review, was much faster than normal process. It’s almost like it’s not in beta invite mode at all. A plus.

After filling out the invite request form I received an email almost immediately requesting me to return the following information:

1. Your company name
2. Desired URL (example.tickspot.com)
3. Account owners name
4. Account owners email address

I replied and received another email almost immediately with a password encouraging me to visit my Desired URL.

The first thing to do once entering your Tickspot account is to add clients and projects. For those using Basecamp (we don’t) it will integrate clients/projects created over there with a little additional work.

As shown above, entering in the first project wasn’t an entirely smooth operation (remember, it’s private beta). I received the Apache error while trying to enter in a project with additional created tasks. It didn’t save my data so I had to retype the entire project. Fortunately, the number of input fields for creating new projects isn’t too unwieldy: client name, project name, total project time budgeted, project tasks and email notifications. You can add a client from the same project screen.

Once a project is entered it is declared ‘open’ and you can then see it on the summary screen shown above.

I had hoped Tickspot would include a tool like ActiveTimer (Mac), but for Windows. A widget, FF extension or downloadable program that would automatically record the time with a start/stop type function. The developer could set target applications to track the time so that it was clear how much time was spent on a project.

But Tickspot includes no such helper tools — at least that I’d seen — instead you are required to type in the project timespent manually. We already have a project-based stopwatch-type feature for time spend on projects on our Pocket PC that’s a couple years old, so the omission of this feature is not only puzzling, but downright disappointing.

There is a reporting tab which keeps track of the data you’ve entered in and summarized. I’m sure those screens are handy once you input your data, but then I was distracted by their business model (click on settings and then “upgrade/downgrade plan”):

$39 per month, are you kiddding me? The free model let’s you have one open project at a time, the $39/month plan let’s you have 35 open project and the most expensive plan ($79/month) doesn’t have any project limits. Why wouldn’t a business just pay a programmer to build something like this and then they have no recurring expenses?

I’m not sure exactly who Tickspot is targeting here but it’s definitely not the small developer shop. Perhaps it’s targeting non-developer business types that want to manage many, many projects from the web (only)? The text [see youraccount.tickspot.com/settings/basecamp] boasts about how cool the Basecamp integration is:

If you use Basecamp to manage projects, then you’re going to love this. Tick can automatically integrate with your Basecamp account. This will allow you to set up any clients and projects that you already have in Basecamp in seconds.

Unfortunately, Tickspot seems more like a quickly coded hack/mod to Basecamp than a full featured standalone program. Something you might expect to get from a free Wordpress plugin.

Simple. That’s the word they used to describe Tickspot and that’s another plus. Perhaps too simple, though.

If people asked me for a project solution for staying on budget time-wise, I’d recommend using one of the many excellent PDA project management and productivity apps out there. More features, desktop integration, portability without requiring an internet connection and most require no recurring monthly fees to use them.

The only redeeming Tickspot factors are the simplicity and the smooth almost completely automated beta invite process and perhaps the Basecamp integration if one uses that program. The design is slick, but pay for this? No way. If I were giving it a grade in its current incarnation it would be: D-.

These beta invite schemes are really becoming sleazy. They had already encouraged and promoted elitism, but now they are sinking to an even deeper low: marketing without advance disclosure to people who signed up for beta invites.

Some days I have to remind myself why I bother signing up for them. And while it isn’t really spam since you signed up approving the email (see ink above) it feels a lot like spam. Am I masochist or what? Why?

1) because not every beta invite programs treats your email address like a crack whore
2) because we can still hit delete and ignore
3) because I look forward to finding and sharing new/different/unique/updated products and services that save time and increase productivity or just make life more enjoyable

Getting in early on something is the golden time to be heard and have the greatest chance of making a difference. As products/services grow, they, generally speaking, become harder to penetrate to the people who matter. This is one area that I think blogs have helped improve, but if you want to get close to the metal and talk to the people behind a company and help shape a product/service, the best time is usually in the early days.

A trend that Google helped popularize with Gmail invites spawned a whole bunch of marketing copycats. When you signed up for the Gmail invite they didn’t market you during the process, they just send the freaking invite. Google claimed this wasn’t a marketing practice, it was because they didn’t have enough servers. Some people believed this, but I didn’t, especially when at around the same time they were offering the Wikipedia webspace.

Unfortunately, some others are using this beta invite period as a recruiting and marketing campaign. Those who are doing this with their web pooh point oh business, please stop. Think about what people are actually committing to when they give you an email address: an invite. That’s all they want. An invite. Not spam.

An invite request is not an invitation for bragging about what we can’t see
My least favorite private beta invite request scenario is getting email telling us when we will receive the invite, and then using the time to pitch us about how great the product is that we can’t see yet. Even worse is when the email goes on to tell us what others have thought about the site/service we can’t see. People I know and publications I read. The infamous they got to look, but you can’t, neener, neener pitch.

It’s like saying: hey, you aren’t good enough to check this out, you aren’t part of the club elite, but here is what the club elite is saying. And hey, here are a few top secret screenshots!

If you do that to me on a beta invite list, my interest in your product/service just went from interested to annoyed. Use your blog to tease, not the beta invite list.

The most recent to do this was Craig Fitzpatrick CEO of Devshop.com. I emailed [Fitzpatrick] him privately before writing this blog entry complaining about this very practice. I’m not going to quote from private email conversations without permission, but anybody else on their 2,700+ invite list has already seen the same message I complained about. I am not accusing devshop of spamming but I find it very ironic that the signup text reads: “Your address will only be used to send you the occasional notification. We’re no spammers.”

Just as I told Craig directly, I’m probably the only one of the 2,700+ who complained, but because people don’t speak up doesn’t mean they don’t have an opinion on the subject. In Craig’s defense I will say he responded promptly to my complaint and seemed legitimately concerned.

Now, it’s your turn to declare my general complaint about this beta invite marketing strategy as baseless, petty or warranted. Despite giving a recent example above I’m not interested in talking about any specific company or invite list but the practice itself. When you sign up for a beta invite list are you expecting to get anything besides the invite and/or possibly information about when the invitation will arrive?

Lastly, good manners suggest that an invitation is just that and it seems very boorish to complain about an invite to anything. I fully realize that and some will probably flame me for it, but please remember if nobody questions these practices then they continue and can worsen. Let’s get the conversation started and let businesses know whether or not this is an acceptable marketing path. Fire up your keyboard and comment or trackback in with your 2 1/2 rusted pennies.

My opinion is clear: if we sign up for something specific like an invite to check out your beta, just send us what you promised when it is ready. Send us only what you promised and don’t try to market us or add to some other list or squeeze in some other marketing messages unless you clearly disclose this will be happening before we subscribe. And I don’t understand marketing the same thing to someone who is already signed up to check it out. Is the company marketing without our permission to remind us why we signed up?

That’s inviting them to change their mind.

YouOS is a web-based operating system prototype created by four college graduates with angel funding. Could this be an early glimpse of what a long rumored GoogleOS might be like?

It’s more likely Google will create some sort of branded Linux variant, but in the meantime it’s worth at least a break time distraction checking out what a web-based OS is like.

Life with a web-based OS
- Not all ‘windows’ have context menus when you right click with the mouse which is strange. I notice the same thing with the Performancing for Firefox blogging extension.
- too much wasted vertical screen real estate used by the browser. I don’t think I could do any long term work inside a traditional browser window.
- a separate developer portal and wiki are available for creating your own installable ‘apps’ on YouOS. These apps are created with javascript, so no need to learn any new languages to get involved; if you can write JavaScript then you can create YouOS modules. There is some kind of scorecard ranking for developer apps so the more popular modules will rise to the top, thus making those apps even more popular.
- as of this writing there are roughly 175 different apps available, everything from Google Spreadsheets to Flickr tag streams to sticky notes and more. Installing them is as easy as choosing from the list and clicking the ‘install’ button. You can demo each app for installing. When an app is installed then it can be easily called from the “stuff” menu along the top left. Just think Windows Start menu, the two are very similar in functionality, although there doesn’t seem to be any way to categorize the apps in stuff (yes/no?). This could become an overpopulated, clumsy mess if categories or tagging aren’t allowed for apps to organize.

The browser isn’t a good place for an OS
My overall usability experience can be summed up in one word: cramped. Not menstrual, but virtual. It reminded me of my wife and I trying to sleep on a small cruise ship bed. I kept wanting to expand the windows beyond the allotted space and argh, welcome to scrollbar city. The YouOS concept at first is amusing to play around with and look at but quickly frustrates. The developer side is well thought out and implemented but overcoming the sardine-like limitations inside a browser window will be too great for most people.

It’s time for this love affair in the browser to end. The browser is good for some things, most notably and unsurprisingly viewing web pages. It’s not good being used as workspace or to replace or emulate an OS. Please don’t ever do something like this, Google. And God help us all if Microsoft thinks this is anything other than a parlor trick.

The service many, myself included, have been calling GBuy is now live as Google Checkout. It’s pretty much what Google had said it was all along while the hype machine kept referring to it as a ‘PayPal killer.’ It’s an e-wallet, writes Chris Garrett:

it is a desperate attempt to get more Adwords dollars through their door by targeting small merchants with a cut-down merchant service and the lure of free credit card transactions. For the consumer it is a circa 1998 “e-wallet”. So why are people saying this is a “paypal killer”?

Buyers
The draw for the buyer is using one place to manage all your purchases across a wide variety of vendors. There is also the security element in that you aren’t sharing your credit card details with a bunch of different vendors. Downside here is how many will accept Google Checkout? In the beginning there are actually a decent number of vendors that accept Google Checkout. Just be on the lookout for the Google Checkout icon:

The Google Checkout “buyer” Terms of Service is here. After agreeing to the terms of service (checking the box), entering your Google account information or logging in, adding your credit number, then you are able to go shopping. There are a wide selection of vendors using Google Checkout already available.

Sellers
For businesses you can allow Google Checkout as another form of payment. This might be the only similarity to PayPal: as a convenience and security consideration for buyers.

Transaction Fees
The Why Google Checkout? page provides details on how transaction fees will work with a curious tie-in to Google Adwords advertising:

For every $1 you spend on AdWords, you can process $10 in sales for free through Google Checkout. For example, if you spent $1,000 on AdWords last month, this month you can process $10,000 in sales at no cost. The more you spend to promote your business through AdWords, the more you save on transaction processing fees with Google Checkout.

If you exceed your free transaction processing for the month, or you don’t advertise with AdWords at all, you’ll only be charged 2% plus $.20 per transaction.

2% + .20 per transaction works out to:
*$1 item(s): $0.78 to you, $0.22 to Google (total fees: 22%)
*$5 item(s): $4.70 to you, $0.30 to Google (total fees: 6%)
$10 item(s): $9.60 to you, $0.40 to Google (total fees: 4%)
$100 item(s) = $97.80 to you, $2.20 to Google (total fees: 2.2%)
$1,000 item(s) = $979.80 to you, $20.20 to Google (total fees: 2.02%)

*not a very good solution for Micropayments, especially on the side of $1. It gets better percentage-wise as more money is spent. $5 is

Using the Checkout system for multiple items will save on multiple transaction fees.

How to be a Google Checkout seller
To be a seller you must provide your FEIN number or Social Security Number, bank account information, return and shipping policy. Integrating a Google Checkout Buy It Now button is as easy as copy/pasting HTML, see the Developer Center. If you want to integrate with the checkout system then you need to program it yourself using the API, modify the provided sample code, or use one of the checkout software solutions from Google’s e-partners: ChannelAdvisor, Infopia, Mercantec, Monster Commerce, Shopsite, Volusion

Google Checkout API includes sample code in Java, PHP and ASP (COM)

Signing up as both a buyer and seller took less than 10 minutes. It took me longer to write this post and take the screenshots. As for running out test transactions as both a buyer and seller I will be testing that in the coming days.

Others are saying
Don Dodge continues the overhype and FUD: “Credit card companies better look out…Google is coming. PayPal should be worried too.”
Techeffect: “On the positive side for consumers, Google isn’t demanding an exclusive relationship for sellers who use both AdSense and Google Checkout. PayPal and Google Checkout can be offfered side by side.”
Jeremy has no Google Checkout envy: “Google’s a leech. An innovative leech, but a leech nonetheless. They can’t lead. They can’t develop software that gets mass appeal. And they can’t even innovate beyond their first core of ideas that are more than a decade old.”
TechCrunch: “I’m not sure how much I trust Google at all and I’d need a more compelling feature set in order to give them this information (I use GMail because it’s a great system). I hope that stores will offer both PayPal and Google Checkout services, though it seems very unlikely.”
David Hunter: “Also notice that Google Checkout is not a beta, but has been fully launched and is ready to rock and roll although admittedly it’s version 1.0 with all that implies.”
Search Engine Watch: “very favorable rates compared with PayPal’s 30 cents and 2.9% fees (PayPal’s fees scale lower with higher-cost transactions)”
Jimmy Daniels at Revenews: “we all know part of Googles ranking is based on the number of clicks, surely if this catches on with users it will give those ads an advantage over those that do not display the checkout icon.”

My thoughts
As I say with most Google services, I prefer to actually use them for real world scenarios before passing too much judgement but my initial impression is positive. I don’t see this yet as doom and gloom for anybody, including PayPal, but it is possible if Google gets big enough they could create their own finance department. I’m not sure they want to be a bank though. Maybe.

For buyers, the only bad thing I can see is concerns over possible transaction privacy. Will Google use our buying history to show us more targeted ads? Amazon is the king at this strategy, so it wouldn’t surprise me but I can see some people being worried. If Amazon or Google or any company I do business with can present me with products/services I might like to buy and they aren’t in my face about it, then I’m at least somewhat interested.

On the seller end, I think their fee structure is reasonable and fair and I like the idea of getting a break on fees for advertising on Adwords. As to the API and checkout implementation, I will post separately about that experience. Do I think it’s good that they got into this market? Yes.

Update 11:41am PST Google video explaining the service below, thanks Google Blog which ends with a description of Google Checkout: “makes buying online safer, faster and a whole more fun.”

We’re having an informative conversation in the comments section with Ken, a product manager (unconfirmed) at eBay regarding the new eBay AdContext program. More details are surfacing, including what looks like they will be using Commission Junction for this program, as they have been using for their existing affiliate program.

Ken points out:

Also, in response to your question about who will be paying at the end of your post [here], it’s eBay who will be paying. eBay has had an affiliate program for quite a while now and has shared revenue with affiliates who driving users and activity to eBay’s sites around the world; AdContext has the same payout structur as the affiliate program.

We were aware that eBay had an affiliate program and Ken’s comment caught me a bit by surprise why we weren’t already signed up. I mean, we’ve been building, launching and running websites for over 10 years now. It seemed to me we should have been signed up with their program already. Why weren’t we?

And then I visited the URL Ken provided:
http://affiliates.ebay.com/ads/adcontext/

We long ago dismissed eBay’s program as being viable for us because it uses Commission Junction (CJ). CJ is among the worst converting affiliate broker programs [see CJ sucks] that we’ve tried out there. Note: that’s just with our traffic and sites and doesn’t mean they suck for everybody (some swear by them), but they sucked badly for us. We made a significant amount more money by switching away from them to a couple of their competitors. When you make a lot more money switching from a program, you remember those type of things.

If eBay AdContext is going to use CJ then that’s pretty much a dealbreaker for our company. eBay is big enough to do their own affiliate program, why would they be farming this out to CJ? I don’t get it. eBay will (over)pay billions for Skype and yet won’t design, build and implement their own affiliate program?

I don’t expect Ken to be able to explain this one but maybe he can find somebody who can.

This page indicates:

# Earn up to 70% commission on eBay Revenue
# Earn up to $20 commission for new active user referrals

Cutting out all the “up to” spin, we learn:

0-$4,999/month = 40% commission
$300,000/month = 70% commission
1 - 499 referrals = $12/month

The answer to my other question about more specifically “when” AdContext will be launched? “At this time we haven’t announced a launch date. Stay tuned to the eBay Affiliates Program Web site for more information.”

As for what Ken posted at Darren’s site, this comment stuck out:

Darren correctly points out that the 40-70% the publisher receives is not from the winning bid/BIN price but is from the revenue that eBay would take from the transaction. While his percentages seem small (the correct values are 2.6% to 4.55% using his 6.5% take-rate figure) a lot of eBay’s affiliates drive significant monthly revenues using this exact same payout structure. I’m not at liberty to disclose what they are though. But unlike other company’s we tell you up front what percentage of the revenue we are sharing with affiliates.

Firstly, let’s break this down using an average of 3.5%. Auction goes for $100. That’s $3.50 total commission with 40% going to the AdContext affiliate (Unless they generate more than $4,999 per month, which the vast majority of affiliates won’t) or a whopping $1.40 USD.

This is all assuming of course that they are the first eBay AdContext affiliate that refers the winning bidder.

If the item auctions for $1,000, then we’re talking $14.00, $10,000 it’s $140. As I pointed out with reservation earlier, eBay AdContext is going to be best for higher priced auctions. What I remain interested in seeing is what level of tweaking will be allowed to developers for showing these higher priced auctions? Beanie Baby auctions aren’t going to be worth the ad real estate where conversely high end electronics and motor vehicles could be attractive to affiliates.

It’s much different thing paying pennies or even fractions of pennies for clicks vs. paying pennies for completed auctions.

Ken also mentions there will be an API so developers can hook in and get contextual results returned. This should give us some level of tweaking — hopefully with filtering by price. In that case, I can see inserting eBay AdContext ads on higher end auctions primarily but again if that involves CJ … ?

If that level of control will not be allowed I think it’s going to be tough to make any significant money from this program.

My interest in this program has now fallen from 100% interested to 10%.

Update 7:02am PST: Just noticed that Darren reposted Ken’s detailed comment on his blog in a separate post adding his own italicized commentary: “Keep in mind the information is from someone working on it so there is an element of natural bias there - but I think Ken’s done a reasonably good job.”

I’ve been an Opera browser vacation for the last couple months, but after experiencing some Firefox problems, I downloaded Opera 9 beta 2 and am going to try using that regularly again. Not saying I’ll be making Opera my primary browser (FF extensions perhaps too useful to discard), but who knows?

I really like the speed and sessions in Opera. Also you can do some useful things in Opera out of the box that require Firefox extensions to emulate. For example, dragging the current URL to your personal bar and then you can have the favicon only showing by editing the properties. Built-in Opera sessions support you can define different startup configurations is also useful. Oh, and hover over the favicon in the tabs and it will show you a preview of the website — handy.

The Opera non-supported list
Downsides of Opera, however, is that it isn’t supported like FF across some websites/sites/services I’ve been checking out lately:

- Google Calendar
- Google Spreadsheets
- blogcharm (posting is fubarred)
- Tablet PC inking inside the browser
- Adify

Developing Opera widgets
Their widget framework [see Opera widget developer tutorial] looks straightforward: HTML, CSS, Javascript and XML.

What the flock?
In other browser news Flock has received more VC funding and is now officially beta 1, whatever that means these days. I was one of few who wrote positively about Flock in October of last year. Most reviewers of the early developer version felt Firefox with extensions was a better solution, so it will be interesting to see how it is received this time around. Mike from TechCrunch says the new beta 1 is currently his “browser of choice.” Make up your own mind by downloading and trying. I still prefer the concept of blogging functionality being baked into the browser vs. using extensions. Logic would suggest that the lower level implementation should be more memory-friendly. Oh, and yes Flock has extensions too.