No new revelation, but GREED is making the internet less and less useful!
 

Just a rant... my daughter's teacher knows my wife and I are willing to help her out any way we can. This often means small purchases of things she'd like to have for the class.

Today she says she'd like to have an analog weather station for some science experiment. I go to Ebay and see quite a few, but would rather just order a cheap one than wait for an auction to end. So, I go to Google and enter a few key words that should help me track down what I'm looking for. What do I get??? Links back to Ebay. The "affiliate" sites try to look like shopping sites, but when you click on them they take you straight to Ebay. After a dozen or so of these I give up! If I want to shop Ebay I'll go there!!!

I still want to build a weather station using PIC controllers fed to a serial port... someday I am going to get it done :D I'm such a weather nerd...

If she's into weather and wants to do some cool stuff, look into getting an EMWIN receiver. The Emergency Management Weather Information Network sends weather data via satellite and radio for free... all you need is a dish or radio receiver hooked into a computer and you get all of the national weather service data for the whole country. It's pretty badass... if you're into that kindof thing. You can get a whole dish setup for $1300. She might be able to get some kind of grant or donation from the NWS.

WTF, KWeather downloads from all of the airport weather stations just fine.

I used to buy books through Bibliofind when it was independent. Now it is an Amazon affiliate and I prefer to buy through Powells. It has become a real hassle to find anything that isn't associated with that loser company.

froogle.com sometimes works quite well.

All you get from the airport stations is the Metar data, which is good... if all you want is the current conditions 15+ minutes ago. Some of us want live data with forecasts and models for the entire country, this instant!

Probably more than she needs for the Pre-K and Kindergarten class! She specified analog - they're probably just comparing inside to outside.

I've felt your pain. Google is a commerical enterprise, and despite their 'do no evil' mantra, they've been doing some questionable stuff. I imagine once the original founders move on, they'll be more Microsoft-esque in their approach to the market.

Even worse, when you're trying to find something specific on ebay, and you have to wade through pages of irrelvant auctions because they keyword-spam.

Lee,

Worse than that, many times the "outside" links to Ebay are no good, because the bloody auction ended weeks ago! When I see anything linked to Ebay I move on. Like you, if I want to shop Ebay I would have done it already and do not need any futher prodding in their direction!

Thom, have started using "looking for this article" quotations on Ebay and this helps a lot in weeding through all the crap. Still as you say, there is a lot of BS there!

JoeA

I came home to a voicemail from Ebay asking me to set up a store, yadda yadda. I sell a couple things every few months, to clean out my closets.


Ug! Now the Internet is calling me!!!