I’ve been watching Nooked for a while now and they have been releasing some really interesting widgets.

Firstly you can create a widget containing different products of your choice

I’ve gone for Skiing Holidays in this one. Then you can publish that widget to your blog/facebook/myspace page and start earning from it. It’s the type of thing that is definitely going to appeal to a blog owner who doesn’t want to get into the nuts and bolts of signing up with an affiliate network.

Once you publish the widget there is then an option to “Grab This” which would allow anyone to pick up your widget code and add it to their site but still earn you the cash.

Finally you can also earn for a year by referring people to Nooked. None of the links in this post are referral links as I want to make the point that I’m writing about them because it’s interesting and not because I’m being paid or trying to earn a bit of cash.

Overall I’m pretty impressed with what Nooked are doing. It’s a bit of a limited product set that they are working from at the moment but I understand that is to improve soon.

So what do you think? Is it the sort of thing that might work well on Keith Bond’s Fashion Style You or would it appeal more to the mainstream that doesn’t actually need to have heard of “affiliate marketing” to make some extra money?

The model provided is a Tecra A8 and I think these are the specs for this model

Intel® Centrino® Duo Mobile Technology featuring Intel® Core™2 Duo Processor T7200- Genuine Windows XP® Professional- 100 GB Hard Disk Drive- 1,024 MB DDR2 RAM (533 MHz)- 15.4″ WXGA TFT display- DVD Super Multi (Double Layer) drive

So what’s the verdict? Well it seems to be a decent laptop but like Kieron I don’t think it’s the best model for Toshiba to be sending out. I would have particularly loved to try out one of their tablet models as it would be a chance to experience something different. Perhaps because I’m already a laptop user it’s just too similar to what I use every day to impress me. I haven’t bought Toshiba before and while I’m not saying this is a bad laptop it just didn’t blow me away and it seems like a missed opportunity. However it’s still a great idea to send the product out for review so here are a few comments.

I don’t want to be too harsh as it’s a decent solid looking laptop with a good keyboard and a good screen. My Sony Vaio laptop has a very reflective screen which I hate so it’s nice not to see that here. However I wouldn’t buy a widescreen laptop again as I find the vertical resolution of 800 pixels to be a bit restrictive and unfortunately that’s the same here with the Toshiba.

One nice feature is part of the Toshiba software which detects any movement or vibration and moves the hard disk head to a safe position to prevent any damage. I managed to trigger this by sneezing while using the laptop and it seems like a clever little feature. I suppose on the other hand I’ve never managed to damage a laptop hard drive with a sneeze even when this system wasn’t in place but it might protect well against a more serious knock.

It was also a great reminder of how good an operating system XP is compared to Vista. I have to admit that I’m at the end of my tether with Vista and I either need to try and work out how to get back to XP or jump ship and buy a mac! The time my Vista laptop takes to boot compared to the Toshiba running XP is like the tortoise and the hare.

Overall I think the talkToshiba concept is brilliant and there are many companies that could learn a lot from the way Toshiba are trying to engage with bloggers.

It’s fantastic to have a magazine devoted to affiliate marketing so it makes for a good read. I answered a few questions for an article in this issue about affiliate marketing having no borders so that was good although they didn’t manage to mention the blog URL and I got called Edwards which seemed weird!

Other main articles covered Web 2.0, Reputation Management, Politics & Virtual Worlds so there was a good mix of longer articles to get your teeth into. There are heaps of little snippets of news in the magazine but I think that kind of stuff would work better on a blog as generally it’s just enough information to get you interested but then you would need to go online to follow it up and the appeal of a real magazine is that you can read it on the bus on the way to work etc

The magazine is quite heavy on advertising but I only managed to spot one ad from a UK network and that was buy.at which I guess makes sense with the move into the US underway.

I also have to admit to being quite amused that one of the book reviews was for Dreamweaver 4 for Dummies which must be over 6 years old! Not sure how that one slipped in there. However one of the other books was about facebook so that seems much more relevant at the moment.

Overall the maazine is well worth a read although it does understandably have a strong focus on the US market so probably appeals more to affiliates with an interest there.