Brief Update

I wanted to say a quick note of thanks to all of you who have given us feedback on the Blog Writer. We've already fixed a reported bug in the Zoundry Product Chooser and are now working on the many usability improvement suggestions sent in. We're going to try to get as many of them into our next build as possible. Stay tuned - I'll keep you posted on when we'll be able to release the new build. In addition, many of you have told us that you're new to blogging, so we're working on a Getting Started guide that will walk you through the process of setting up a blog. It will focus less on the actual mechanics (Blogger and TypePad do a great job of instructing users how to start a blog), and more on the thought process behind creating a new blog. Let us know if you have any other ideas that can help new bloggers get started more quickly.

Donate to Tsunami Relief Efforts

Just like most of you, we have been watching the tragic images of the Asian tsunami disaster on the news. Although we're a small company, we wanted to do our part to help out. We have created a special program for you to direct your Zoundry commissions to the International Response Fund of the American Red Cross, which is designating all contributions to tsunami relief. We will donate our service fee so 100% of your commissions will go to the fund. Learn more at our web site. We also encourage you to donate directly to the Red Cross International Response Fund, UNICEF, or any of the other charities supporting tsunami relief efforts.

Happy new year

We're recharged after the holidays and looking forward to an exciting 2005. We've been working on adding new merchants into our system to expand our range of products available through the Zoundry Product Chooser. We're following the 80/20 rule here - we want to offer the 20% of products that 80% of users will want to recommend and create affiliate links. Amazon has given us a great start and now we're looking at merchants with complementary product catalogs. Let us know if you have suggestions for new merchants by sending an email to our contact mailbox.