I keep a personal blog, in addition to this one. It's just a friends-and-family blog, with a dozen or so regular readers. Maybe fewer. Sometimes I don't post on it for weeks at a time. This morning, I checked my personal e-mail account and found this variation on the old link-exchange technique for search-engine optimization, in relation to something I posted on my personal blog:

Mitch,

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My name is Bill Marbach and I work for a company called The Gourmet Kitchen. We run a website called www.thermosonline.com and our main line of business is selling Thermos products.

I found your blog through Google's keyword alert program and saw that you mentioned the word "thermos" in your post titled "A pleasant, quiet Saturday."

I wanted to ask if you would consider linking the word thermos to Thermosonline.com. If so, we'd be happy to send you a Thermos item of your choice in exchange.

Thanks for your time and consideration.

-Bill

The Gourmet Kitchen 1141 Holland Dr #22 Boca Raton, FL 33487 (Phone number and e-mail address deleted)

It's a new kind of link exchange offer. Quite often, I get e-mails on my business mail account from people offering to put up links to InformationWeek if we'll link to their site. Most of the time, their sites have absolutely nothing to do with what we do here. Bill from the Gourmet Kitchen has discovered or invented a new twist.

The idea is that, by linking to Thermosonline.com, we'll boost that site's search engine ranking, so when people type the word Thermos into their search engine, Thermosonline.com will be one of the first sites they see.

For the record, here's what I wrote Saturday that triggered Bill's Google alert:

I went to the pharmacy to fill a prescription. I forgot to ask the doctor to phone it in, and so had to wait 20 minutes for it to be filled. You can find a surprising amount of interesting stuff to buy if you wander around a drugstore for 20 minutes with nothing but time on your hands.

(Note to Adam: Do you still need a Thermos?)

Adam is my brother.

Weird, huh?

And, Bill, if you're reading this, I can't accept your generous offer of a Thermos product. Instead, please send a Thermos Nissan 48 Oz Stainless Steel Wide Mouth Bottle to the Broward Partnership for the Homeless., which is down there where you are on Broward County, Fla. Nighttime temperatures get down to the 40s where you are, and a homeless person will appreciate having something hot to drink.

Update 11/27: I got an e-mail from Bill, he agreed to send the Thermos product to the Broward Partnership for the Homeless. Thanks, Bill.