Maybe you’ve seen the ads on TV or heard them on the radio or seen them in magazines. Discover Card would like you to know that you can earn 5% cash back in certain categories (currently, Restaurants) when you pay using your Discover card. Everything else, you earn 1% cash back. Coming up in July, it’s even better – the 5% cash back applies to purchases made in the Gas Stations, Hotels, Movies and Theme Parks categories. Sounds awesome!
But we were not born yesterday. We read the fine print, don’t we?
* Earn 5% Cashback Bonus for gas (at stand alone gas stations), hotel stays, movies and admission to theme parks from 7/1/10 (or the date on which you signed up, whichever is later) through 9/30/10, subject to a cap of $300 in purchases.
It’s that last bit that interests me. What is 5% of the “cap of $300 in purchases”? Fifteen bucks. Sure, that’s better than the three dollars that you normally earn under the 1% plan, and I’m not one to complain about getting cash back on things I’m going to buy anyway. What bothers me is that in all of the advertising for their 5% deals, Discover never mentions up front that there’s a pathetically low cap. I can just imagine the number of people that see that ad and think, “hey, I spend $1,000 a month on hotels alone because I travel a lot, and since I drive, I spend another thousand on gas! I could probably rack up a hundred bucks or more in cash back, just on those two categories!”
No, you can’t.
Can you imagine how ridiculous it would sound if the voiceover in Discover’s TV ad told the truth, out loud? “Earn up to $15 cash back on the things you buy anyway, subject to terms and conditions.” Who would rush out to sign up for a new Discover card?
That, I suppose, is exactly why companies feel they need to trick us by playing with the numbers and using fine print shenanigans.
I’ve just posted the third episode of Daniel Destroys to YouTube [see my YouTube channel]. Hawkman, Wonder Woman and Black Vulcan get sucked into a black hole and the team has to go rescue them. If it had been Robin instead of Wonder Woman, they probably wouldn’t have bothered. The trio ends up on a planet run by Toyman, gets hit by a giant pinball, gets chased by a giant toy cat, and gets rescued by Green SuperLanternMan. It’s… weird. Check it out.
Transcript is available at Daniel Destroys, and please leave me a comment on the site or on the YouTube channel – I’d love to get some feedback!
I’ve noted before that I really don’t care who follows me on Twitter. Spammer, scammer, porn bot, marketer, whatever – I don’t care. That doesn’t mean I don’t notice things in my follower list, though. I gain new followers infrequently enough that I opt to recieve emails from Twitter telling me when someone new follows me. I notice.
I’ve been using Twitter for just over three years. In that time, I’ve amassed about 950 followers. Now, I’m not foolish enough to believe that I’ve got 950 people paying attention to me, but the number is what it is. Over the past day or two, that number has gone up by over a hundred, putting me at 1,075 (at the time of this writing). Three years, 950. Less than three days, another 125 – and growing.
Now, I’d like to say that it’s due to something that I wrote here or something that I posted somewhere else, but the truth is that every single person who has followed me in the past couple of days has been the result of my joining the 30 Day Challenge. All of the “people” who started following me have around 5,000 followers, they’re following about an equal amount, and they have anywhere from 0 to 100 tweets. That’s right, zero tweets. Some of these people racked up 5,000 followers without tweeting a damn thing.
Do I care if they’re following me? Nope. Nothing’s changed in that regard. Will I follow any of them back? Hell, no. These people provide no value. They’re all – every single one of them – pitching various internet get-rich-quick schemes. You have to be either brain dead or one of them to follow any of them back. Come to think of it, I’m not sure those two things are mutually exclusive.
Update, June 10th
Interestingly, nearly all the followers I picked up have disappeared. I don’t know if it’s because Twitter deleted their accounts (possible, even likely) or if it’s because they all simultaneously figured out that I wasn’t going to follow them back. Either way, they’re gone now.
I think I’ve come up with a good answer to the question isn’t switching to a Mac hard?
It’s not hard; it’s not hard at all. It looks a little different. You need to get used to having the close/minimize/maximize buttons on the top left. You need to get used to having the menu bar at the top of the screen, not at the top of the window. But really, the two operating systems are, for the average user, very similar. Here’s my short answer; feel free to use it whenever someone asks you about switching to a Mac.
Switching to a Mac isn’t like learning Japanese when you’ve spoken English all your life. It’s more like, you’ve spoken English all your life, then you move to New York.
In a world where I feel so small, I can’t stop thinking big.
Neil Peart, Caravan
Episode #2 of Daniel Destroys is available for your viewing pleasure. It’s the second episode of the 1978 Challenge of the Super Friends series, “Invasion of the Fearians”. Captain Cold (or Captain Icehole) has made contact with a three-headed alien race from Venus (not Luthor, not Brainiac… Captain Cold. Right.) They trick the Justice League into changing the Earth’s climate to make it more habitable to the Fearians, because as everyone knows, Venus is hot, moist and overrun with vegetation.
What? It’s not?
Well, no matter. The Super Friends manage to screw things up in ways that boggle the mind, culminating in Green Lantern… well. You’ll see. Just be thankful it’s only a cartoon, because we’d be in a lot of trouble otherwise. The transcript is available at Daniel Destroys, and comments are welcome and encouraged!
(I’m actually late posting about this – episode three will be available tomorrow or Wednesday.)
Quotes
by Daniel on May 28, 2010
The backlash wasn’t from the public but from some of the boisterous technorati. Who frankly should have known better.
Sean Kelly, via a comment: I’ve Changed My Mind About The iPad.
…at least, for TweetDeck users.
I’ve just installed the latest update to the venerable Twitter client, version 0.34.2. Apparently, the 0.34 line was released back in March, but being as far ahead of the curve as I am, it’s like I’m behind it. Actually, I am behind it. Well, whatever. The software just told me today that there was an update, so it’s new to me. <shrug>
Significant to this release is the addition of Global Filters, a feature that I’ve been praying for since I started using the software eons ago (in internet terms, anyway). What makes Global Filters so powerful is the ability to filter out tweets according to their source. Previous filter efforts in TweetDeck limited users to filtering by tweet content.
One of the loudest complaints I hear from people is that FourSquare updates on Twitter bug them. Well kids, here’s your out. Start using TweetDeck.
TweetDeck - Settings -> Global Filter
I’m not one to complain too much about FourSquare, what really bugs me is blog headlines that are forced into my stream via TwitterFeed. With the new TweetDeck Global Filter, I can hide them. Of course, this means I won’t see 95% of what Jim Kukral posts to Twitter, but that’s okay. I’d much rather read what Jim cares to write himself than what TwitterFeed puts out in his name. Those tweets are far, far more valuable.
On the flip side? If you really like FourSquare, TweetDeck now has integration with both that service and Google Buzz.
I’ve just submitted my details to confirm my slot as a speaker at Affiliate Summit East 2010, happening August 15-17 of this year. The panel is called Podcasting 101, and it’s led by Trisha Lyn Fawver, a blogger (TrishaLyn.com) and podcaster (Affiliate Marketing Fanatics).
Also on the panel? Joe Magennis, my partner on Geek Dads Weekly! Our third on the show, Drew Bennett, is up for another panel at the conference, and speakers are only allowed one panel each.
The published panel description is as follows:
Podcasting 101
Session 1d
Location: Room 4
Time: 12:00pm-1:00pm
In this era of self-publishing, anyone – including you – can produce a podcast (and make money doing it!) Come learn the basics of producing, monetizing, hosting and promoting your very own podcast.
Experience level: Beginner
Target audience: Affiliates/Publishers
Niche/vertical: Podcasting
We’re up first on the 15th! Well, along with three other sessions in that time slot. I’m not actually sure if that’s a good thing… but I suppose if I start to get nervous, I can remind myself that I’m getting it out of the way early so I can enjoy the rest of the conference.
I sat on an impromptu panel at Summit West in Las Vegas back in January, as part of the GeekCast.fm Live! session. It was a lot of fun, and I’m sure this panel will be, too. Fun and informative, that’s our goal.
Are you planning on going to Summit? I’d love to say hello.
Update: shortly after I posted this, it was announced that Drew’s panel has been approved and scheduled. He’s on Tuesday at 2pm with Murray Newlands and Eric Schechter, and the session is called How Bloggers Can Successfully Connect with Audiences.
