No sale!

If I were Liz Taylor in Butterfield 8 I'd write that in lipstick on the hall mirror.

The blogosphere was abuzz yesterday with a New York Times article that cast a shadow of doubt across all of bloggerdom by insinuating that we're all paid shills. Pah! To wit:

Colleen Padilla, a 33-year-old mother of two who lives in suburban Philadelphia, has reviewed nearly 1,500 products, including baby clothes, microwave dinners and the Nintendo Wii, on her popular Web site Classymommy.com. Her site attracts 60,000 unique visitors every month, and Ms. Padilla attracts something else: free items from companies eager to promote their products to her readers.

...

Ms. Padilla typically acknowledges in each review which products were sent to her by companies and which items she bought herself. Other items on her site include her own videos for brands like Healthy Choice, which she labels as sponsored posts. But unlike postings in most journalism outlets or independent review sites, most companies can be assured that there will not be a negative review: if she does not like a product, she simply does not post anything about it.

OK, just to get this out in the open, no one has ever paid me a dime to write a post. Now, I do sell ads but the only way someone can get onto my right column is to sell something I'd ordinarily buy and recommend. I turn down more inquiries than I accept. Further, I won't get involved in sponsored links that work their way into my editorial content.

Do I get press releases and write an occasional post based on a press release? You bet. If it's a legitimate product that fits my niche and is something I'd recommend to a client or use myself, I'd write about it in a heartbeat. Do I get anything for that? No.

I get the occasional sample (like the one I'm getting next week from Fabric on Demand) or book to review, but I don't do any of that for money. The same holds true of the give aways I've run. The lucky winner gets the prize, not me. At most, I'm after the exposure and a back link. That and the odd free-lance gig.

My goal here is write interesting and informative posts and to give people interested in renovating their homes legitimate advice. I do that every day and I always call them like I see them.

So Classy Mommy (ugh) might get a Wii and a year's supply of microwave dinners (that must be where she got the "classy" part) and more power to her. But it ain't me babe. No, no, no it ain't me babe.

Fabric on Demand put to the test

Two weeks ago, I wrote about Fabric on Demand in post called Fabric on Demand --high tech meets homespun. Fabric on Demand is an online service where anybody can upload a design and have it printed as a fabric. I'm fascinated by this particular iteration of web 2.0, and it bodes for a future I'm very willing to embrace. What a tremendous means of self-expression this represents. I mean; why settle for upholstery, clothing, window treatments or bedding you don't love when you can design your own?

Soon after that blog post posted, I sent a link to it to Fabric on Demand. I do that often by the way. When I find a cool product, service or website it's my standard procedure to write to the manufacturer, provider or web master to let them know that I found them and that I like what they're up to.

Anyhow, I heard back from Rysa at Fabric on Demand later that day and she offered to print me a sample so I could see how their process works up close. I jumped at the chance and in turn wrote another post asking for a brave volunteer to send me an original illustration that would translate well as a fabric pattern. I was looking for something brightly colored and easy to work into a repeated pattern.

I appreciate all the interest that request generated and Kelly James from Design Ties sent me an illustration she did of some pool balls and they were perfect. Here's what Kelly sent me:

I uploaded the pool balls to Fabric on Demand's website and had a proof back very quickly. Here's a close up of the proof:

Here's what that pattern will look like as a yard of fabric.

Pretty cool! Fabric on Demand is printing me a sample of this pattern and I ought to have it by next week. When it arrives, you'll see it here first. Stay tuned!

Oggi Sciopero!

The free and unfettered flow of information on the Internet is under attack in Italy. Today is a day of silent protest and bloggisti worldwide are displaying this logo in solidarity. Read about it here.

Advantage: Advantium

The third appliance category that impressed me at GE Monogram last week is their Advantium oven. Since GE Monogram's in Louisville, KY; the home of Churchill Downs and the Kentucky Derby, I'll use a horse racing analogy to rank my top three picks from GE Monogram. The Pro 48 is the win, the Monogram induction cooktop is the place and the Advantium's the show. If there were a catchy word for a fourth place, it would go to some of the innovations they've been adding to their dishwashers. Dishwashers however, are a topic for another day. Today belongs to the Advantium.

GE invented and developed the Advantium in 1998 and introduced it in 1999. It's been tweaked a bit in the years since, but this new model year added a fourth dimension that took an already good cooking appliance and made it great.

For anyone who doesn't know what an Advantium oven is, here's what one looks like.

It looks like a microwave oven from the outside and if you didn't know better, you'd swear it was a microwave when you opened one. It's not a microwave though, although it can be if you ask it to be one.

What it is really is a speed cooker that uses halogen light, microwave energy, a convection coil and fan as well as a radiant heat source to cook food. Advantiums are smart in the sense that they come pre-programmed to handle 175 every day foods. You can also add your own settings to the pre-sets or you can also use it in manual mode. When it's not actively defrosting or boiling something, it lays off the microwaves and instead uses its other energy sources to do everything from proofing bread dough to roasting a chicken.

What's even cooler is that it performs these tasks at incredible speed while using less energy than a conventional oven. So if you were to set out to roast a four pound chicken, it would take just about two hours in a conventional oven. In an Advantium however, that bird would be roasted golden brown in 25 minutes. As marvelous as the Advantium's speed is, what's truly remarkable is that it smells, looks and most importantly tastes exactly as if it were roasted conventionally.

Trust me, I did not go to GE Monogram with the expectation that I would come away from three days of boot camp extolling the virtues of GE. I'm telling you though, that experience shook up my preconceptions and threw my brand loyalties into disarray. GE Monogram makes some quality appliances that actually work. What can I say? They made a believer out of me and that is no small task.

Stop motion Sunday

My newest friend on Facebook is a Portland, Oregon-based artist, sculptor and designer Patrick Gracewood. Patrick writes a blog called Shadows on Stone and I've been going over his archives over the last few days.

Patrick has some real finds on his blog and these two stop motion animation videos are downright enchanting. The first is a wedding invitation and the second is a music video. Each is as beautiful as it is delightful. If you need a shot of art today, spend some time with Patrick Gracewood and his Shadows on Stone.