“$100 gift for FREE, for Google AdWords!”

“$50 credits for FREE, for Facebook advertising!”

What is this? Nothing but a new and improved form of the old “free trial for N days“. Because what both Google and Facebook give you is NOT a gift, but rather a smart and diabolic way to take your money away!

I’ve got the first surprising “gift” from Google, on St. Valentine’s, by mail. Why not, I told myself. And I finally created an AdWords account and a first campaign. I gave them my credit card, just to avoid a $20 fee for prepaid accounts. I had to pay however a $10 activation fee (!?). But what is $10 compared to a $100 gift, for FREE?!

I also remembered I had some similar credits, also for AdWords, accumulated from my GoDaddy services. Tried to use those $75 as well, but surprise, it wasn’t possible: they work only for a first AdWords account, and I just created one with my first “gift”.

Lucky me, I had another $50 credits for Facebook! Created another account, used my “gift” as well, another “activation fee” paid separately (because this cannot be deducted from the “gift”). You give them your credit card number, your address, your name…

Few days latter, with these $150 for nothing, I paid few bucks to Google and Facebook and the result is I brought less than a total of 200 people on one of my sites, that already gets over 1,000 visitors a day. I do not sell anything, and this form of online advertising proved to be useless to me. In actual value, I rather paid more to Google and Facebook in “activation fees”, than the benefits I got from their so-called “$150 for FREE”.

…I’m not mad, I’m not sad, I do not criticize anything and anybody. I’m rather impressed with this new form of advertising, that’s all. But next time someone will tell me “I’ll give you money for FREE”, I’ll look more closely at how much I would actually put at the end of the day in their pockets…

My last topic was one week into the Olympics, this is one week after. Like many others, I think I’ve been rather negative and confused during the first week, but what a monumental change and outcome brought the second!

We had most gold medals for any country in all history of Winter Olympic Games! US had also most total medals. And it looked like the hockey final between US and Canada was kind of a “the winner takes it all”. AND WE WON! In very dramatic fashion, after the American equalized few seconds before the end. And what better scenario than Sidney Crosby scoring the Golden Goal in overtime?!

…I’m really proud to be Canadian, I’m proud of our young golden athletes, I’m proud of the craziness this country goes into for a hockey game. Because WE ARE ALIVE, we live for something and we do not let it down.

I moved to Vancouver (North Vancouver - the area between downtown, ocean and mountains) about seven years ago and I’m still in love with this area. Like many people living here, I had mixed reactions when I heard “my” city will host the Olympic Games. I spent several years in Montreal and I’m well aware of the financial disaster caused by the same event to the province long time ago. I also expect taxes will raise after the event, house prices will get even higher and someone (us!) will have to pay for the bad management of our elected people.

The Good

We’re right in the middle of these games and I have mixed reactions about what’s going on. On the bright side, I enjoyed watching Wayne Gretzky, Steve Nash and Donald Sutherland honored in the opening ceremony. This country (MY country) knows how to honor value, even if they moved to the States long time ago. I come from Romania and I’m frequently disgusted when my old country is so bitter about the millions of people living somewhere else.

I also loved the Canadian athletes who brought us medals, especially gold (at least two of them were born in North Vancouver). I love hockey and I’m sooo afraid Canada will make some huge mistakes “on Canadian soil”. I love the young people who live here or in Whistler and welcome visitors with their joy and hospitality.

However, on the other side, there are more and more things I get seriously frustrated with. Yes, I know, we had some bad weather (in fact warm weather, with rain) the first few days. And this was clearly bad luck, because last year we had packs of snow for several weeks in Vancouver. Or last November it was freezing (unexpected for that time of the year). Continue reading »

“References upon request” - this is a phrase you find in most resumes posted for North America. But how truly can someone get an opinion about yourself and your past expertise based on what someone else says about it?

Job Hunters

It may happen (and I would say it happens) that job hunters be more interested in getting the names, positions, phone numbers and email addresses of people hiring other people from different companies, than taking care of one of the thousands poor guys looking for jobs. We know about 80% of available jobs are not published anywhere and part of them may be made available to these job hunters exactly through our references. Continue reading »

For soccer fans from Canada, here is the printable schedule for Euro 2008 matches on TSN/RDS and SportsNet, in Eastern Time: Continue reading »