Mr.Lite BLF AA-Y4E

When I first started learning about flashlights last year, I went to CandlePower Forums (CPF). It is a very active discussion area and there is a wealth of information there and members who know crazy amounts about flashlights. But they kind of look down their noses at people like me who buy cheap Chinese lights from DealExtreme, sometimes even showing outright hostility and intolerance towards even discussing cheap lights (for instance if you provide a link to a light you see at DealExtreme, the moderators will delete it). And if there is one thing I can’t tolerate, it is intolerance. So early this year one guy got fed up and started his own discussion forum dedicated to cheap lights, called Budget Light Forum (BLF). It has been nice to have a place like that and I have posted reviews of some of the different lights I have bought. There are people from all over the world on that forum.

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Preflash

I’ve been trying out a lot of flashlights over the last year or so. The most expensive light I have is made by Fenix. It is pretty nice, but a little dated. Since I bought that light, I’ve learned a lot more. I like the Cree XP-G R4 LED with a neutral tint. I bought a couple of these LED’s and put them in flashlights and they are two of my favorites now. They aren’t cool blue like most LED lights, instead having a slightly yellowish tint.

Another nice feature is momentary On which you can get if you have a forward clicky. This allows you to halfway depress the switch and the light comes on. I only have one light like that, all the rest are reverse clickies where you have to fully depress the switch and then let go before the light comes on.

I’d also like different brightness levels: one bright for distance and one dimmer for close up. Usually you can change the modes by halfway depressing the switch, but it would be nice if there was a way to set whether the light would come on in High or Low and stay that way until you reset it. The Low is very tricky: outdoors you want 10 lumens, but indoors you might want 1 or less, especially if you are reading something. Therefore it would be good if the Low mode could be set by the user.

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4G iPod Touch Review

I’ve had my new iPod for about a month. The iPod is an amazing piece of hardware. The 64GB version that I bought is overpriced compared to the 32GB version that is $100 less, but I waited a long time to get something that had 64GB, so I saved money by not getting a previous model.

The screen resolution is really amazing. It doesn’t make much difference for pictures or video, but it really makes text look sharp. On most handhelds, the standard font is Helvetica or something without serifs, but this resolution is so sharp that a serif font looks fantastic. You don’t see books printed in sans serif fonts, so it is nice to have that quality on a screen, even if it is a pretty small one. Even italics looks great.

The wi-fi is much faster than on my Palm TX since the Palm only supported the slower 802.11b standard instead of 802.11g. I can synchronize about a dozen documents on my computer in a couple of seconds rather than almost a minute.

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iTunes Affiliate

I’ve been trying to do searches on apps for my new iPod lately and I kept coming across these sites that would just take content from the iTunes app store and list all of these apps. Then lately I have been writing about my favorite apps and I thought those other guys must be getting a commission on their clicks and if they can, then I should too.

So a quick search indicates that there is a program through LinkShare, whose website is linksynergy (even the link to LinkShare is an affiliate link because I get something if people sign up to become LinkShare affiliates through that link and get at least one click). The sign-up page was very spartan, just some plain text fields. I didn’t think much about it until I got to the bottom and it asked me to input the letters in the image above and there wasn’t an image above. It turns out my ad blocker had blocked all of the images on their website and all of the javascript because they are an advertiser. That was pretty funny. So I turned it off and everything worked fine.

LinkShare has a lot of companies they work with and then you sign up with those companies individually. Apple does not approve theirs automatically so I have to wait 3 days and see. If they approve me, I will convert my links to apps to LinkShare links and if people click on them and buy an app, I will get 5% of the purchase price (Amazon gives 4% on electronics, 6% on books, but sometimes 10% on downloads).

I really don’t think I’ll make any money because if you do a search for an app you don’t find honest opinions or reviews of apps out there, just tons of these sites that tell you nothing more than the app store does (or give you a list of apps that you can tell the person hasn’t even tried out). And they’ve all jockeyed to get high page rankings. Even if I get a few clicks, the apps are all so cheap ($1-10) that there isn’t much to be made. However, there is also nothing to lose.

Another affiliate program I joined was for DealExtreme, the place I buy cheap flashlights. Some people at the forum I visit are actually using the links I’ve put in my reviews of flashlights and I’m slowly building up some commissions. But because they are cheap flashlights, most orders are less than $20. For every $10 they spend I get 1 point. And if I get 100 points, they will give me $10. So basically I am waiting to get $1,000 in sales so that I can get $10. After six months, I’m about halfway there, but they also have a 60-day waiting period before the points become effective just in case the person returns their merchandise (which happens a lot because so much of this stuff is defective or not as advertised).

The glory days of my affiliatedom are well past, though. Amazon generates less than $10 a month and AdSense is only a couple of dollars (though last month I qualified for my first $100 payment in over two years).