Doubling down in Las Vegas happened more than just at the blackjack tables this weekend. We attended the Affiliate Summit at the Rio and learned how to double down in a different fashion.

So what’s all this fuss about doubling down? Well, affiliates participate in programs that allow individuals or businesses to drive potential customers to a third-party’s Web site, usually via a link or a banner ad on the affiliate’s site. When a sale is conducted on the third-party site, the affiliate who drove the traffic there receives a commission on the sale. In some cases, the affiliate generates revenue for services the affiliate already uses, such as a Web hosting service.

The conference keynote speaker, Jason Calacanis, made an interesting point about Internet pollution. He said that the increase in spam and deception in the online world is creating polluted information, which frustrates users’ online experiences. This caused quite the stir; however, the speaker stated that he wasn’t referencing the affiliates at the conference but was addressing the ones that weren’t there.

After that start to a conference, the rest was a whirlwind adventure.

Photo Courtesy of the Las Vegas News Bureau

There were several talks about how to incorporate video footage on affiliate Web pages, along with the best way to do it. For instance, it was recommended that HD be used so that DVDs can be made later on as needed. There were other talks about incorporating widgets in the current affiliate marketplace and how few people have seen success with it.

It made for a very interesting few days and we’re looking forward to the next Affiliate Summit in August.

Visit The Planet’s Affiliate page for more details about our program.

Well that’s how the dice rolled this week, until next time!

-Rachel

Sometimes inspiration can come from the strangest of places. Thoreau found his muse on Walden Pond in Concord, MA. Rosa Parks helped spark the civil rights movement on a crowded bus in Montgomery, AL. The catalyst for this post was far more ordinary: the vending machine area in our Houston headquarters.

We wanted to host a series of interviews on the blog to let you meet some of the people behind the scenes here at The Planet, but we needed a hook … A subject that was both intriguing enough to capture interest and fun enough to make the series worth watching. Our first interviewee, Todd Mitchell, came up with the idea of “This Month in Vending” after I adventurously chose a florescent-colored Blue Cream Soda from our vending machines and subsequently shared the product’s ridiculousness with all of my coworkers. Upon further investigation, we found several questionable products that were begging for taste-tests. So, we plunked down some coin for a package of Riblets, and the rest is history:

-Kevin

The YouTube link: This Week in Vending: Todd Mitchell

Dec 12, 2007: The Planet Day. The day we debuted our new office space to employees, colleagues, customers and friends. The day we finally saw the new place we’d call home, and the beginning of a new and exciting chapter for The Planet.

We captured the events on film — the speeches, the awards, the ribbon cutting… lunch. (mmmm, lunch.) From that we’ve made a little montage of the day — the 2 minute and 30 second version if you will. We highlighted pieces of Doug’s speech, shots of the office, but most of all, the people who work here. At the end of the day, that’s what matters. The people make this company what it is. We work hard because we believe in what we are doing for our customers and for this industry as a whole. We enjoy what we do and where we do it. That’s The Planet difference. It shows through our work, the products we offer, the services we provide and the pride we take in our company.

CEO Doug Erwin often illustrates his ideal work environment with one simple phrase: Yabba Dabba Doo! He wants his employees to jump out of bed every morning ready to go with their feet hitting the ground running just like Fred Flintstone.

Here’s a glimpse of what makes this place so special. Yabba Dabba Doo, indeed.

-Ali

P.S. Here’s the YouTube link for your embedding pleasure: The Planet Day on YouTube

If you gave up in your pursuit of the Billing Riddle, here’s the solution. If you haven’t tried the puzzle yourself, don’t go and spoil it by cheating … Go give it a shot.

Because we’re making a few inventory changes right now, the bonus question isn’t exactly possible at the moment, but I can give you a walkthrough of finding the answer to the first question (which just leaves shopping cart work for the bonus question).

First, set up a table:

I’ll refer to the clues numerically (1-15), though the process will not be sequential.

Clue 10: The first space on the rack is occupied by the Dual Opteron server.
Clue 9: The server using the Ensim Pro X control panel is in the center space.
Clue 2: The Dual Opteron sits next to the server running Cent OS 4.

Pretty straightforward:

Clue 5: The Cent OS 5 operating system is being run on the right of the server running the Windows 2003 Enterprise operating system. AND
Clue 7: The server running the Windows 2003 Enterprise operating system uses Helm 4 as a control panel.
Clue 1: The Red Hat 5 operating system is being run on the Pentium 4 3+GHz server.
Clue 8: The server running the Windows 2003 Standard operating system has two 750GB SATA hard drives.
Clue 6: The server with an 80GB NAS backup add-on sits next to the server with two 750GB SATA hard drives.

The server running Win 2k3E has to be one of the servers without an O/S and without a CP (1, 4, or 5), but it has to be to the left of a server without an O/S (which means Win2k3E is in server 4, Cent OS 5 is in server 5).

The Red Hat 5 server has to be server 3 because it’s the only server without an O/S and without a Proc, and the Windows 2k3 Std. server has to be in server 1 (because it’s the only remaining unassigned O/S).

Clue 14: The server using cPanel as a control panel has two 500GB SATA hard drives. AND
Clue 4: The Single Woodcrest server has no control panel. AND
Clue 15: The server with two 300GB 10K RPM SCSI hard drives sits next to the server using Plesk 8.2 as a control panel.

The server using cPanel has to have an open space for HD as well (server 2 or 5). The Single Woodcrest has to have an open space for CP (also server 2 or 5). The last control panel space would be in server 1, so that must be the Plesk 8.2 CP. Because Plesk 8.2 is being run next to the server with two 300GB 10K SCSI drives, the cPanel/2×500GB SATA combination cannot be in server 2, so it is in server 5.

Clue 11: The Dual Xeon 2.8 server has two 146GB 10K RPM SCSI hard drives.
Clue 3: The Conroe 3060 server has a Checkpoint X16 Firewall as its add-on.
Clue 12: The server with a LanTronix Spider KVM as its add-on has two 250GB SATA hard drives.
Clue 13: The server with two 300GB 10K SCSI hard drives sits next to the server with the F-Secure Anti-Virus add-on.

The Dual Xeon 2.8 server has to go in server 4 because it is the only server without an assigned proc and HD, so the last proc, the Conroe 3060 must be in server 5.

The KVM must be in server 3 to have the correct HD configuration, so the final add-on must be in server 1.

So the 20GB DiskSync must be in server 4.

Plugging that info into the shopping cart gives the answer to the question: $434

That was fun, wasn’t it?

-Kevin