The one fact about the palace that I did memorize is that it literally has two faces. The Northern side is built in western style while the Southern side (pictured above) carries distinct Eastern elements like “There is no Conqueror, except Allah.” engraved above the entrance. This fact symbolizes multicultural nature of Russian Empire of 19th century.

A complete opposite of the failed Vorontsovsky tour was the tour we took in Foros which was free and given by a guy who wrote a book about the place and also has a website about it. The tour took 3 hours and was one of the best tours I have ever been to. Besides learning a lot of facts about the place, the guide also offered many fun stories from the past. One of them was about Gagarin, the world’s first spaceman. He was in Foros in 1961 and twice nearly got himself killed due to his own careless acts. This angered a lot Khruschov, the head of the state back at that time, since Gagarin was supposed to come in person to the 22nd Communist party conference and instead was being treated in intensive care with multiple head fractures.

Among other things, we were told what the biggest predator in Crimea is (fox), how to make a juniper tincture or how covering a lake bottom with a plastic film can kill trees around it (that’s what the current park owner did). The 3 hours went really fast and everyone got a signed book at the end, we bought two. :-)

Another remarkable place on the south Crimea sea shore is Yalta Zoo. We went there with kids and spent half a day going from cage to cage studying the animals. Yalta Zoo is beautifully located on a slope of a hill, split into several levels connected with many stone stairs. By its compact size it reminds me a large petting zoo in the US (you can buy food and feed the animals as you go) but the kinds of animals it has are more like those you would see in a normal zoo - tigers, ostriches and bears (several kinds).

Adjacent to the zoo is “Polyana Skazok”, a place full of sculptures depicting various fairy tale characters. You could visit the two places in one day, we however had small kids and opted to separate the trips since kids got pretty tired after several hours walking around the zoo.

I mentioned in my first blog post that Crimea has magnificent nature and warm climate which is said to have helped many people in the past recover from deadly diseases. Crimea is facing a huge problem however, people run it down at an increasing speed. Wherever you go you can find trash on the streets and in the water. Both of our kids got sick from some sort of stomach poisoning (I suspect dirty sea water). I personally witnessed several barbarian acts by tourists. In one instance several young men and women placed beer cans on the edge of a cliff overlooking the sea and shot them down with a BB gun. Unless the locals and the government bring everyone’s attention to the problem and urgently act the once beautiful land will soon turn into a big waste yard.

The climate is sub-tropical. During the 6 days we have stayed so far we had sunny weather with around 30’C temperature and just an occasional short rain in the morning or afternoon. The sea warms up to 26’C during the day. The heavenly climate and gorgeous landscape has been the reason why Crimea attracts crowds of tourists from Russian and Ukraine and was the place for summer homes of some high ranking Soviet officials before the regime collapsed.

We are renting two rooms in a private house located in Alupka which we booked in advance after we called several numbers we found via this website. My mother-in-law did all the calling since we were still in the US at that time. The property we rented is a short (but steep) walk from the sea coast and overall I am very pleased with it.

One of the rooms is larger than the other and has air conditioning. The other one is smaller (just big enough to fit a double bed and a couch) and has no AC. It is however facing north (we can even see the sea between the tree branches) and is overshadowed by a large fig tree, so it is cool in the room even without AC. The fig has been the source of fresh fruits every morning which are best when eaten with the desert wine made out of local variety of grape called Muckat.

Talking about wine, we went to Massandra’s wine-testing yesterday. They give you 10 glasses each filled with a different kind of wine. Only one is a typical dry wine with no sugar, others are sweet varieties with the sugar content up to 22% in their most famous kind - “White Muscat of Red Stone”. The wines for this variety are grown in a village located around a large red stone which is believed to give the drink its unique taste.

The tasting is accompanies by an interesting story about each of the wines. My favorite was #5 in the batch - “Red Portveyn Massandra Crimea”. It has 17.5% of alcohol and 10% of sugar content and somewhat reminds me the Porto wines I had back in Chicago. You can buy any of the wines you taste and more in the company store. The Portveyn is 30 gryvnas for a 0.75 liter bottle (around $4) and the Muscat variety is 120 grivnas (around $15) for the same size bottle. I have been told I can buy these wines when I get back to Kharkiv for even less.

In the next few days we are planning to visit Chatyr-Dag caves and take the kids to the sculpture museum “Polyana Skazok”. We already went to the Yalta Zoo and climbed up the Ai-Petri mountain, I will write about these two places in my next blog post.

This is June 2010 revision of the Popular Deal Sites list. You can find the last month revision of the list here.

The change in rating shows the difference compared to May results and includes all deal sites from my database that meet Alexa Rank < 100,000 requirement. A total of 32 sites have made it this month which is the same number as the last month

The average deal site lost just 0.85% in Alexa rank this month. The top gainer this month is again dealsofamerica.com (9.08%) and the top loser is again deals.com (-20.31%). Please enjoy the complete list below.

#	Web Site	Alexa Rank		Page Rank		Online Since
1	slickdeals.net (info)	729	(-2.1%)	6		10-Nov-1999
2	fatwallet.com (info)	1677	(0.36%)	6		29-Nov-1999
3	dealspl.us (info)	3800	(-3.77%)	5		15-May-2006
4	dealnews.com (info)	3825	(-2.74%)	6		20-Jan-1999
5	anandtech.com	4108	(6.25%)	6		24-Aug-1997
6	techbargains.com (info)	4892	(-2.26%)	5		03-May-1999
7	deals2buy.com (info)	8239	(0.05%)	5		15-Nov-2002
8	dealtaker.com (info)	9091	(-1.92%)	7		08-Feb-2004
9 (1)	bensbargains.net	10219	(0.84%)	5		21-Mar-2000
10 (1)	dealsea.com	10415	(-5.61%)	5		27-Jun-2001
11	resellerratings.com (info)	11467	(0.48%)	5		18-Jun-1998
12	cheapstingybargains.com	12342	(-0.64%)	6		20-Jan-2005
13	dealigg.com (info)	12671	(2.7%)	4		04-Sep-2006
14	dealcatcher.com	15266	(-3.62%)	5		28-Jul-1999
15	logicbuy.com	21474	(0.55%)	5		13-Nov-2003
16 (1)	couponalbum.com	23350	(3.74%)	4		18-Jan-2006
17 (1)	judysbook.com	23955	(0.94%)	5		11-Aug-2003
18	spoofee.com	26811	(-3.54%)	4		31-Dec-2000
19	bradsdeals.com	27694	(6.13%)	5		29-Jun-2005
20	bargaineering.com	29805	(0.18%)	5		01-Dec-2004
21 (1)	dealsofamerica.com	31170	(9.08%)	4		06-Sep-2003
22 (1)	webbyplanet.com	32694	(-0.93%)	5		09-Feb-2006
23	dealofday.com	35613	(-3.73%)	4		30-Aug-1999
24 (2)	edealinfo.com	38761	(0.79%)	5		12-Dec-2000
25 (1)	xpbargains.com	39729	(-11.58%)	5		29-Nov-2001
26 (1)	deals.com (info)	44386	(-20.31%)	5		28-Feb-1995
27	redtagdeals.com	50341	(-1.03%)	3		08-May-2002
28	bargainist.com (info)	53045	(2.13%)	3		21-Nov-2006
29	gottadeal.com	56263	(-2.13%)	5		27-Jan-2003
30	passwird.com	79339	(4.56%)	4		28-Aug-2001
31	buxr.com	89245	(-3.22%)	5		04-Dec-2007
32 (2)	dailyedeals.com	98922	(3.18%)	4		18-Feb-2000

The discount in parenthesis is what you will get if you use Amazon Subscribe & Save program. If you like these Amazon coupons, I also recommend you to check out these Amazon discount codes. The best part is that these codes don’t have an expiration date!

Amazon coupon codes for July 2010

This is definitely an emotional day for me. The feelings I’m experiencing are similar to what I felt in college on graduation day: excitement about getting a check from my folks combined with nausea from a hellacious bender the night before. I remember fondly that time when an RA turned on the lights and yelled “WHO OWNS THESE PANTS?” Except this time, the pants are a company, and the RA is you, and the sixty five hours of community service is a deal that will ensure the Woot.com experience can continue to grow for years and years and years, like a black mold behind the Gold Box. Join us, because together, we can rule the galaxy as father and son. Also, there will be six muffins waiting in the company break room, courtesy of the nice folks at Amazon.com. Welcome to the family!

The financial terms have not been disclosed however Techcrunch believes the price was around $110M in cash. This doesn’t sound like much considering that their rival Groupon is valued at over 1 billion. Internet Retailer estimates Woot’s 2009 sales at $71.6 million but the margins in the consumer products niche are razor slim which is probably the main reason for the low valuation. Groupon on the other hand positioned itself in the services market which can be much more profitable.

Amazon has been on a shopping spree lately, both Zappos and Audible fell victim. From what I see both companies continue to operate as independent subsidiaries and I don’t think Amazon will want to mess with Woot’s successful approach to running the company “with a wall of ideas and a dartboard” as Matt Rutledge put it, alright, and with a basket full of jokes! :-)

That competitor’s spying as it turns out wasn’t a coincidence. My friend emailed me last week with this link. The third popular deal site (by Alexa) has just launched Money Makers which is a cash incentive program for deal submitters, something Buxr has offered to its members for 2 years now. Unlike Buxr however, the team at DealsPlus decided not to re-invent the bicycle and went with the well established approach that blog networks like Gawker and Weblogs use to pay their writers.

The revenue is based on page views, the more page views the deal receives the more revenue the submitter gets. Currently the rate is set at $3 per 1000 page views for deals and $10 per 1000 link clicks for coupon submissions. Yes, the coupon page views are not really page views, they are clicks. This is done so because DealsPlus rolls all same store coupons into one page and there is no way to calculate the page views separately for each coupon submission.

We will pay you $10 for every 1,000 views your coupon receives. In this case, a view is not simply a visit to a store page where your coupon is displayed. Users will need to click on your specific coupon from the dealspl.us Coupon page, Today’s Top Coupons, a daily dealspl.us email, or any place where you’ve shared a link to your coupon.

Can you get rich submitting deals for $3 per 1000 page view? Probably not. Can you make some side cash? Yes, but the amount depends on how well your deals fare on DealsPlus and how popular they get. In addition any visitors you yourself bring to your deal pages will help as well. From the Money Makers tips page:

Share your deals and coupons on blogs, websites, Twitter and Facebook. The more you share your links, the more likely your deals and coupons are to turn up in search engine results (SEO), and the more money you’ll make!

Let’s suppose your deal does get picked up by search. For how long will it keep making money? According to the FAQ, each page view will bring you some revenue for a period of up to one year, or until it is updated (re-submitted) twice by another member or admin. Coupons, unlike deals, also stop bringing revenue when they expire.

But still, is $3 per 1000 page views a lot? How much can you make with this program? Someone started a thread in the DealsPlus community board asking this same question. I wonder if anyone answers… I know a personal finance blog that pays writers $5 per 1000 page views. Writing an article takes much longer than submitting a deal however but articles can potentially gather many more page views than deals, so it is really hard to compare and you will have to give it a try to find out for yourself.

And the last thing, the Money Makers program is open to DealsPlus members who have a reputation of 100 or more, so you will need to do some homework before you can start making money with your deals. ;-)

This is May 2010 revision of the Popular Coupon sites list. You can find the previous revision of the list here.

The change in rating shows the difference compared to April results. This list currently has 30 sites - one less than in April. On average the coupon sites have lost (3.45%) in May.

The best performer this month is couponcodes4u.com (6.48%) and the worst result comes from flamingoworld.com (-22.91%) which also goes down by one position. Enjoy the complete list below!

#	Web Site	Alexa Rank		Page Rank		Online Since
1	retailmenot.com (info)	928	(4.13%)	7		27-Oct-2006
2	coupons.com	1681	(4.16%)	6	(-1)	07-Sep-1994
3	eversave.com	2256	(4.16%)	0		08-Apr-1999
4	coolsavings.com	5790	(-4.8%)	6		03-Jun-1996
5	couponcabin.com	5974	(1.35%)	5		27-Feb-2003
6	couponmountain.com	7497	(2.51%)	5		05-May-2001
7	tjoos.com	8630	(-8.95%)	5		16-Jun-2007
8	savings.com	8861	(-3.67%)	6		20-Apr-1995
9	couponcodes4u.com	11653	(6.48%)	5		01-Aug-2007
10 (1)	8coupons.com	14991	(1.14%)	6		11-Jun-2006
11 (1)	mycoupons.com	16601	(-14.44%)	6		16-Feb-1999
12	coupons.smartsource.com	17281	(-0.51%)	6		27-Apr-1995
13	couponmom.com	22440	(-4.67%)	6		25-Jun-2002
14	offers.com	30304	(-4.93%)	5	(-1)	24-Feb-1996
15 (1)	ultimatecoupons.com	31549	(-1.44%)	4		02-Jul-2001
16 (1)	hotcouponworld.com	32813	(-10.86%)	5	(1)	15-Jun-2006
17	webbyplanet.com	33590	(-4.38%)	5		09-Feb-2006
18	valpak.com	34628	(-1.02%)	6		22-Jun-1994
19 (1)	fabuloussavings.com	39874	(1.72%)	5		27-Jan-1999
20 (1)	couponchief.com	42351	(-6.37%)	5		15-Jan-2005
21	deallocker.com	44478	(-7.7%)	4		24-Mar-2007
22	wow-coupons.com	49901	(-13.87%)	5		26-Nov-2003
23	couponcode.com	51639	(-8.54%)	4		24-Feb-2002
24	couponwinner.com	51651	(-6.35%)	0		30-Jan-2006
25	couponseven.com	57635	(-1.81%)	4		23-May-2006
26 (1)	thegrocerygame.com	64738	(0.17%)	5		28-Aug-2001
27 (1)	flamingoworld.com	70278	(-22.91%)	5		19-May-1999
28	couponshare.com	71724	(2.48%)	4		21-Jan-2002
29 (2)	gogoshopper.com	96557	(3.01%)	5		16-Dec-1999
30 (1)	cellfire.com	97964	(-7.5%)	5		23-Jun-2004

This is May 2010 revision of the Popular Price Comparison web sites list. You can find the last month revision of the list here.

The change in rating shows the difference compared to April results. The list has a total of 32 web sites which is the same number as the last month. There are 18 more sites in my database that don’t meet Alexa Rank < 100,000 requirement. The average price comparison site has lost (3.61%) this month

The best performer this month is thefind.com (11.26%) followed by mysimon.com with a gain of (7.7%). The worst performer this month is streetprices.com with a loss of (-44.24%) followed by bottomdollar.com (-12.54%) which also lost 1 point in Google Page Rank. Please enjoy the complete list below.

#	Web Site	Alexa Rank		Page Rank		Online Since
1	google.com/products	1		8		11-Sep-2001
2	shopping.yahoo.com	4		8		18-Jan-1995
3	bing.com/shopping	5		6		22-May-2008
4	shopping.aol.com	47		7		22-Jun-1995
5	shopper.cnet.com (info)	69	(-1.47%)	7		05-Jul-1996
6	nextag.com	556	(-2.58%)	7		15-Oct-1998
7	shopping.com	725	(-6.77%)	7		03-Jul-1997
8	bizrate.com	1069	(-4.19%)	7		24-Apr-1996
9	shoplocal.com	1367	(2.29%)	7		24-Sep-1998
10	thefind.com (info)	1490	(11.26%)	6		19-Oct-2006
11	pricegrabber.com (info)	1729	(-2.07%)	7		10-Mar-1999
12	pronto.com	1940	(-7.84%)	8		01-Jan-2006
13	shopzilla.com	1984	(1.78%)	6		04-Jul-2002
14 (1)	epinions.com	2089	(2.11%)	7		12-Feb-1999
15 (1)	smarter.com	2274	(-6.61%)	6		28-Apr-1998
16	dealtime.com	3044	(-5.69%)	7		07-Oct-1998
17	become.com	3556	(-7.37%)	6		20-Jan-2004
18	retrevo.com	4089	(3.29%)	6		10-May-2006
19	shopwiki.com	4774	(-3.96%)	5		15-Dec-2004
20	pricerunner.com	6293	(1.16%)	6		19-May-1999
21	ebates.com	9045	(2.5%)	6		29-Dec-1998
22	like.com	10050	(3.69%)	6		22-Feb-1995
23	dealio.com	15316	(-10.46%)	5		08-Sep-2004
24	mysimon.com	19312	(7.7%)	9		15-Apr-1998
25	pricewatch.com	25805	(-4.25%)	6		26-Sep-1995
26	calibex.com	26041	(-4.38%)	5		02-Oct-2000
27	dealighted.com (info)	26267	(-0.42%)	5		09-Oct-2006
28	hawkee.com	38531	(-10.84%)	5		02-Jan-1997
29	sortprice.com	40169	(-6.37%)	5		15-Jan-2004
30	pricescan.com	53389	(-9.41%)	6		03-Sep-1997
31	bottomdollar.com	64081	(-12.54%)	6	(-1)	04-Jul-1997
32	streetprices.com	90457	(-44.24%)	5		16-Oct-1997

This is May 2010 revision of the Popular Deal Sites list. You can find the last month revision of the list here.

The change in rating shows the difference compared to April results and includes all deal sites from my database that meet Alexa Rank < 100,000 requirement. A total of 32 sites have made it this month which is 3 less than the last month

The average deal site lost just 0.97% in Alexa rank this month. The top gainer this month is dealsofamerica.com (11.16%). The top loser is deals.com (-19.39%). Another remarkable event happened this month - dealspl.us surpassed dealnews.com as the #3 deal site by Alexa rank! Please enjoy the complete list below.

#	Web Site	Alexa Rank		Page Rank		Online Since
1	slickdeals.net (info)	714	(-0.71%)	6		10-Nov-1999
2	fatwallet.com (info)	1683	(-1.32%)	6		29-Nov-1999
3 (1)	dealspl.us (info)	3662	(0.14%)	5		15-May-2006
4 (1)	dealnews.com (info)	3723	(-2.22%)	6		20-Jan-1999
5	anandtech.com	4382	(3.9%)	6		24-Aug-1997
6	techbargains.com (info)	4784	(-0.72%)	5		03-May-1999
7	deals2buy.com (info)	8243	(3.61%)	5		15-Nov-2002
8	dealtaker.com (info)	8920	(-1.65%)	7		08-Feb-2004
9	dealsea.com	9862	(-2.27%)	5		27-Jun-2001
10	bensbargains.net	10306	(3.66%)	5		21-Mar-2000
11	resellerratings.com (info)	11522	(2.4%)	5		18-Jun-1998
12	cheapstingybargains.com	12263	(2.27%)	6		20-Jan-2005
13	dealigg.com (info)	13023	(0.85%)	4		04-Sep-2006
14	dealcatcher.com	14732	(-3.83%)	5		28-Jul-1999
15	logicbuy.com	21593	(0.69%)	5		13-Nov-2003
16	judysbook.com	24182	(0.42%)	5		11-Aug-2003
17	couponalbum.com	24256	(4.37%)	4		18-Jan-2006
18	spoofee.com	25895	(3.33%)	4		31-Dec-2000
19 (1)	bradsdeals.com	29503	(4.25%)	5		29-Jun-2005
20 (1)	bargaineering.com	29859	(-3.82%)	5		01-Dec-2004
21 (2)	webbyplanet.com	32394	(0.05%)	5		09-Feb-2006
22 (4)	dealsofamerica.com	34284	(11.16%)	4		06-Sep-2003
23 (1)	dealofday.com	34333	(-5.49%)	4		30-Aug-1999
24 (2)	xpbargains.com	35606	(-10.37%)	5		29-Nov-2001
25 (4)	deals.com (info)	36892	(-19.39%)	5		28-Feb-1995
26 (1)	edealinfo.com	39070	(-3.61%)	5		12-Dec-2000
27 (2)	redtagdeals.com	49826	(7.21%)	3		08-May-2002
28	bargainist.com (info)	54200	(-2.64%)	3		21-Nov-2006
29 (2)	gottadeal.com	55092	(-10.4%)	5		27-Jan-2003
30 (1)	passwird.com	83133	(2.24%)	4		28-Aug-2001
31 (1)	buxr.com	86462	(-6.92%)	5		04-Dec-2007
32	shopping-bargains.com	96326	(-6.26%)	4		20-Feb-1999

The explanation given is that the revenue Microsoft was pouring back at the shoppers didn’t result into new search traffic acquisition, and keeping the program as a business of itself (which it once was) apparently hasn’t been in Microsoft’s plans.

Is it another evidence that “money cannot buy happiness” as Techcrunch puts it, or am I just being sarcastic here? Which ever way it is, my strongest sentiment is a feeling of sadness about all the great technology wasted by the company in an attempt to salvage a fairly unrelated business.