{"id":2990,"date":"2004-12-03T12:29:56","date_gmt":"2004-12-04T04:29:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2004\/12\/03\/ecto-2\/"},"modified":"2019-12-11T14:28:10","modified_gmt":"2019-12-11T22:28:10","slug":"ecto-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2004\/12\/03\/ecto-2\/","title":{"rendered":"ecto 2"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:7698,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/ecto.kung-foo.tv&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:9701,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/ecto.kung-foo.tv\\\/archives\\\/001218.php&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:9702,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/ecto.kung-foo.tv\\\/archives\\\/001207.php&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:9703,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.kottke.org\\\/03\\\/02\\\/amazon-associates-beware&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20260310213837\\\/https:\\\/\\\/www.kottke.org\\\/03\\\/02\\\/amazon-associates-beware&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-21 03:08:30&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-05 21:04:47&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-05 21:04:47&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:9704,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.amazon.com\\\/exec\\\/obidos\\\/asin\\\/0380977427\\\/djwudicom-20&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20260310213726\\\/https:\\\/\\\/www.amazon.com\\\/exec\\\/obidos\\\/asin\\\/0380977427\\\/djwudicom-20&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/www.amazon.com\\\/exec\\\/obidos\\\/asin\\\/0380977427\\\/djwudicom-20&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-21 03:08:37&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-05 05:38:54&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-05 05:38:54&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:8822,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/click.linksynergy.com\\\/fs-bin\\\/click?id=xLsJkztrnNY&amp;offerid=78941.10000002&amp;subid=0&amp;type=4&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p>So <a href=\"http:\/\/ecto.kung-foo.tv\/\" title=\"ecto blog\">ecto 2<\/a> is <a href=\"http:\/\/ecto.kung-foo.tv\/archives\/001218.php\" title=\"ecto 2.1 for MacOSX\">updated<\/a>, and one of the nifty new features is <a href=\"http:\/\/ecto.kung-foo.tv\/archives\/001207.php\" title=\"Amazon\">Amazon integration<\/a>. It&#8217;s pretty slick, with a handy little search window within ecto to find items, one-button posting once you&#8217;ve chosen what you want, and a few options for how you want the finished link to appear.<\/p>\n<p>I do have one concern about the link format, though.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been very careful to make sure that all my Amazon URLs are formatted a specific way, after <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kottke.org\/03\/02\/amazon-associates-beware\" title=\"kottke.org: Amazon Associates beware\">reading this from kottke<\/a> early last year:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n  I&#8217;ve noticed lately that when I browse items at Amazon, the URLs now take one of two forms:<\/p>\n<p>  http:\/\/amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0684868768\/ http:\/\/amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/tg\/detail\/-\/0684868768\/<\/p>\n<p>  The former URL style has been around for some time, but the latter is relatively new. If you&#8217;re an Amazon Associate, the proper way of linking to an individual item (per their linking guide) is to append your Associate code (mine is &#8220;0sil8&#8221;) to the first URL style, like so:<\/p>\n<p>  http:\/\/amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0684868768\/0sil8<\/p>\n<p>  But if you run across an item at Amazon with the second type of URL, this won&#8217;t work:<\/p>\n<p>  http:\/\/amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/tg\/detail\/-\/0684868768\/0sil8<\/p>\n<p>  If you&#8217;ve linked to items using that style of URL (something I&#8217;ve seen on several sites), check your reports at Amazon&#8230;you&#8217;ll find that you&#8217;re not getting any Associates clickthroughs or credit for those purchases.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Obviously, since I <em>would<\/em> like to get credit for any clickthroughs I might receive (rare though they may be), I&#8217;ve been very careful to make sure to use the &#8216;ASIN&#8217; format of link, and not the &#8216;tg\/detail\/-&#8216; format.<\/p>\n<p>While experimenting with ecto&#8217;s new Amazon integration, I put together a quick link to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/asin\/0380977427\/djwudicom-20\" title=\"'Quicksilver (The Baroque Cycle, Vol. 1)'\">Neal Stephenson&#8217;s &#8216;Quicksilver&#8217;<\/a>, and checked the URL &#8212; and, unfortunately, it came up with the &#8216;tg\/detail\/-&#8216; format (though I&#8217;ve fixed it in that link). After poking around in ecto&#8217;s settings for the Amazon integration, it doesn&#8217;t appear that there is any end-user control over the links (that is, the URL format, not the format of the link itself) other than manually fixing them after they&#8217;re inserted. While this really isn&#8217;t a major dealbreaker &#8212; it&#8217;s essentially what I&#8217;ve been doing for a while anyway, and the ecto integration does make it much easier to find items &#8212; it does leave me with a few questions&#8230;<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Most importantly, does this still matter? Or does Amazon now give credit correctly for both styles of links? On the assumption that it <em>does<\/em> still matter&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>When constructing the link, does ecto receive the entire URL string from Amazon, or just the ASIN?<\/li>\n<li>If ecto only receives (or needs) the ASIN, can the URL string be changed to the &#8216;ASIN&#8217; style of link in the next update to ecto?<\/li>\n<li>If ecto receives the entire string&#8230;\n<ol>\n<li>&#8230;is the returned string always &#8216;tg\/details\/-&#8216; format, or does it switch between that and &#8216;ASIN&#8217; format?<\/li>\n<li>If it&#8217;s always &#8216;tg\/details\/-&#8216; format, can that be automatically adjusted within ecto to &#8216;ASIN&#8217; format?<\/li>\n<li>If it switches, can ecto watch for that string and adjust it when necessary?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<li>And lastly, according to the tail end of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kottke.org\/03\/02\/amazon-associates-beware\" title=\"kottke.org: Amazon Associates beware\">Jason&#8217;s post<\/a>, adding &#8216;ref=nosim\/&#8217; before the Associate ID forces Amazon to skip the &#8220;You may also be interested in&#8230;&#8221; page and send you straight to the actual product page. Can an option be added to ecto to add the &#8216;ref=nosim\/&#8217; string in the right place for people who might worry\/care about such a thing?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>If not&#8230;well, I&#8217;ll live. I can hope, though! :)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/click.linksynergy.com\/fs-bin\/click?id=xLsJkztrnNY&amp;offerid=78941.10000002&amp;subid=0&amp;type=4\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" width=\"61\" height=\"15\" alt=\"iTunes\" src=\"http:\/\/images.apple.com\/itunesaffiliates\/logos\/iTunes_sm_bdg61x15.png\"><\/a> &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/click.linksynergy.com\/fs-bin\/stat?id=xLsJkztrnNY&amp;offerid=78941&amp;type=3&amp;subid=0&amp;tmpid=1826&amp;RD_PARM1=itms%253A%252F%252Fphobos.apple.com%252FWebObjects%252FMZSearch.woa%252Fwa%252Fcom.apple.jingle.search.DirectAction%252FadvancedSearchResults%253FartistTerm%253DLe&#230;ther Strip%2526albumTerm=Penetrate the Satanic Citizen%2526songTerm=Le&#230;ther Strip Part II%26partnerId%3D30\">Le&#230;ther Strip Part II<\/a>&#8221; by <a href=\"http:\/\/click.linksynergy.com\/fs-bin\/stat?id=xLsJkztrnNY&amp;offerid=78941&amp;type=3&amp;subid=0&amp;tmpid=1826&amp;RD_PARM1=itms%253A%252F%252Fphobos.apple.com%252FWebObjects%252FMZSearch.woa%252Fwa%252Fcom.apple.jingle.search.DirectAction%252FadvancedSearchResults%253FartistTerm%253DLe&#230;ther Strip%26partnerId%3D30\">Le&#230;ther Strip<\/a> from the album <em><a href=\"http:\/\/click.linksynergy.com\/fs-bin\/stat?id=xLsJkztrnNY&amp;offerid=78941&amp;type=3&amp;subid=0&amp;tmpid=1826&amp;RD_PARM1=itms%253A%252F%252Fphobos.apple.com%252FWebObjects%252FMZSearch.woa%252Fwa%252Fcom.apple.jingle.search.DirectAction%252FadvancedSearchResults%253FartistTerm%253DLe&#230;ther Strip%2526albumTerm=Penetrate the Satanic Citizen%26partnerId%3D30\">Penetrate the Satanic Citizen<\/a><\/em> (1992, 6:00).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So ecto 2 is updated, and one of the nifty new features is Amazon integration. It&#8217;s pretty slick&hellip;I do have one concern about the link format, though.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2040],"tags":[65,599],"class_list":["post-2990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-technology","tag-weblogs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2990\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}