My interim research indicates that Amazon's search function is capricious and moody, since I'm having a bitch of a time getting to the shoes without going through my wishlist.

Did I say shoes? I'm not buying shoes. Ignore that.

eta: Ah, fuck. The URLs are unintelligible. Maybe I'll buy straight from the wishlist and ask Jesse if she sees activity.

You know how some people have trouble getting their promised rebates for in-store purchases of electronics and what-not?

1,300 Unopened Rebate Applications Found In Dumpster

I know that Shu Wong of San Jose hasn't received the $3.50 mail-in rebate for a Vastech computer networking USB hub purchased at a Fry's Electronics in May. Richard Louie of Austin, Olivia Sattaypiwat of Saratoga and Buu Duong of San Jose haven't received their rebates, either.

I know this because they told me so, and because I am staring at more than 1,300 rebate requests sent to Vastech on Bonaventura Drive in San Jose. The envelopes were tossed - unopened - into a garbage dumpster near Vastech. I have two boxes of envelopes that were thrown out without being processed. In all of my years of reporting, I have never encountered such outrageous behavior against consumers.

Question: is it possible/easy to record audio (say, of me reading a book) on my macintosh computer and then burn it to CD/email it as a digital file/add it to an iPod? I sort of remember that most macs have a built-in microphone. Obviously burning CDs is possible on the machine in question. What I don't know anything about is an application that would let me do this, or something?

Signed, not very techy, sorry if this is dumb.

It depends on the age & model of your machine -- you probably have GarageBand installed (it's part of the iLife suite), and you may have a built-in camera & microphone (it will look like a little hole at the top of your monitor) if you have a laptop or iMac of a certain age. Of course I can't remember when Apple started including those. Easiest way to check is probably to open up GarageBand and try to record something.

Even if you do have a built-in mic, the sound quality's going to be pretty low, so you'd be better off buying one if you want to use the recording for anything but reference.

Even if you do have a built-in mic, the sound quality's going to be pretty low, so you'd be better off buying one if you want to use the recording for anything but reference.

If you own a Mac Cube, 1st-generation Mini or iBook, you'll need a USB microphone as none of those have a conventional audio-in.

I'd agree that GB will be the easiest the (the UI is a little odd-looking at first, but recording is a "press the big red button" operation), and the CD and iPod-saving options are right there for you. I think you should have a built-in mic, if I'm remembering your machines.

A lot of people have been reporting problems with USB mics since the latest OS X upgrade, so be sure to test if you go the external route (this is, in fact, one of the joys of my morning). Mics using the line-in port don't seem to have the same problem.

O Buffista hivemind that is better than Google, I call upon your expertise for a work project.

I need websites that play video content with ads attached. (There needs to be advertising because we're not going to bother putting content on a site with no revenue stream.) I've been tapped for this research because I'm apparently an expert on online video, except that I, um, don't really watch that much of it. So if anyone's got a site other than YouTube where you can watch video content with advertising, send it my way!

[link]

Oh, sorry - I should have been more specific. I'm looking for sites where 3rd party content providers can create their own "channels." The idea is to put our content somewhere online where we can make money off it.

Like this, only I'm supposed to be coming up with a whole list of options.