Blogging code of ethics

Yesterday I was reading an article by Walt Mosberg and read his code of ethics where he says that he doesn't accept money or products (to keep) from companies whose products he reviews. This is quite admirable and lets him say whatever he wants. I, on the other hand, will accept money or products from anyone that wants to send them my way!

This doesn't happen all that often, but recently I was paid for an ad on my blog (it didn't change anything I had to say) and was just offered a product to review. I'll be writing a review once I receive the product. Will the review be swayed because I receive the product for free? Absolutely not! I can already tell that there are things that I won't like about the product, but I'll try to be as fair and balanced as possible.

Before I sold ReceiptWallet, my blog was running on the same server that my ReceiptWallet web site was on, so there was no added expense to have it up. Now that ReceiptWallet is no longer mine, this blog costs me money every month. The cost is offset by advertising (I do accept advertising if anyone wants to advertise, but I make no guarantees that you'll always like my content) and affiliate links. Right now I have affiliate links for Amazon and MacUpdate Promo. If you like my blog, please use the Amazon link; just enter your search and start your shopping from here!

So the question for the day is, does advertising or free products influence a good journalist or blogger? (Did I just call myself a journalist or a good blogger? That must have been a mistake; I'm just a guy writing random thoughts.) I think the answer to the question depends on the individual. As I don't make my living through this blog, advertising and free products won't influence me because I write this blog even without advertising and free products. For those that make their living from writing, I could see how it could be an influence, but if you're good at your job, it shouldn't. While Walt says he doesn't take free stuff from companies, would people respect him less if he did?

Bad joke

Today I'm traveling for business and neglected to print a copy of my boarding pass (I didn't save my boarding pass to a PDF, but printed it directly to my printer) for my expense report (I'm on Southwest where they collect boarding passes), so I went to the counter and asked if I could get a receipt. The agent, with a straight face, told me it was going to cost me $5 for it. I fell for it, hook, line and sinker! With airlines charging fees for everything, is it all that unreasonable that Southwest would charge for a receipt? I didn't think so. The ticket agent got a good laugh out of it; I'm glad she got a good laugh out of me!

Quality built in

On Friday, I bought a new gas grill to replace our aging and potentially dangerous grill (it had rusted parts and replacing the pieces would be more costly and time consuming to fix). I went to Home Depot and bought the cheapest one I could find as I eventually want to install a permanent grill in our backyard. I bought the cheap Brinkmann and it seems to work fine. The electronic ignition seems to work fine. I noticed this part hanging from the grill and thought that maybe it was to somehow light the grill when the ignition stopped working. Well, I was right; it is a match holder. Wow, building in a backup when, not if, the electronic ignition fails. That's pretty funny. OK, I know that electronic ignitions fail (the one on our last grill failed years ago), but this just made me laugh.

This is my blog

Recently I've received some pretty mean spirited comments about what I've posted. Well, this is my blog and it serves as a means for me to express my opinions; if no one read it, it wouldn't matter to me. This is a journal for me. Maybe I should simply make it private, but there is some information in it that is useful to others and some people have really good comments.

One commenter said that I delete comments I don't like. Well, yes I have deleted posts, but these posts contained objectionable language or were just mean. If someone has something to say that I don't agree we, I don't delete the comment if it is well written. I really don't agree with this comment, but approved it. The same commenter that said I delete comments also called me a whack and said that maybe someone should call child protective services because I'm raising my son with my liberal views. That's a pretty mean thing to say; my wife and I will raise our son to think on his own; if that makes us or him liberal, so be it.

Another commenter called me an Apple fan boy. Well, yes, I do like Apple products, but the comment was attached to my post about a recent security alert. The security alert wasn't issued by Microsoft or Apple, so it was completely off topic. (Even though I like Apple products, read what I say about Mac OS X Server and you'll see that I don't just use everything Apple because it is Apple.)

In any case, I'm going to keep letting people comment on most posts, but will always moderate comments so that they remain clean and don't take pot shots at me because of my posts. Go ahead and comment on my posts and if you disagree with me, that's fine, just act like an adult when writing comments.