Things are full steam ahead over here at Revenue. We are sending the magazine to the printer today and at the same time gearing up for the Affiliate Summit show in Miami. It’s going to be hot, hot, hot – literally.

We’ve got some fun things planned for the show. So, be sure to drop by our booth. It’s lucky no. 62.

It’s Wednesday, which means another exciting episode of the Affiliate Thing podcast. Joining Shawn Collins and myself this week will be Rob Kniaz, a product manager at Google. We’ll be chatting with Rob about Google’s Pay-Per-Action (PPA) pricing model for AdWords. Rob is also going to speaking at Affiliate Summit in Miami in two weeks.

I’m back from the LinkShare event in New York (via Chicago and Madison, Wisc. for a family funeral) and scrambling to get everything in order before the fireworks start next Wednesday and I take off for the sold out Affiliate Summit on Friday.

There’s much to attend to prior to taking off for Miami, including letting everyone know what stories we are working on. The lineup is done and Revenue’s team of great reporters (Eric Reyes, Alexandra Wharton and John Gartner) are already hard at work doing research and talking to everyone they can find to learn more about all the various angles on their respective topics.

There’s a story on the front page of the Weekend Journal section of the Wall Street Journal about “The Baby-Name Business.” What does this have to do with performance marketing you ask? Not all that much - except one of the people mentioned in the big article is Revenue Senior Editor Eric Reyes, who along with his wife Whitney, wrote a book called “The Perfect Baby Name” on the topic about two years ago. Check out the full article it’s an interesting read.

Welcome to the longest day of the year. I’m about to head out from New York City back home to San Francisco after attending the LinkShare Symposium. The event was great – not just the classy black tie awards gala. I really enjoyed yesterday’s daylong educational tracks and the multitude of networking opportunities.

Okay, Revenue didn’t take home any statues from the swanky black tie LinkShare Golden Link Awards, but I still had a fantastic time. Congratulations to all the winners - especially Kellie Stevens of AffiliateFairPlay.com. She does great work and deserves to be recognized for her hard (and very important) work. Check out a Q&A Revenue did with Kellie a couple issues back. Here’s a list of who took home the awards:

I’m headed to New York for the LinkShare Symposium early next week. I’m excited about the trip for many reasons.

First, I’m on a panel call Trendwatch2007 that promises to be informative. I’m honored to be speaking with such an esteemed group of people including: Ken Eisner, vice president of marketing at Shop.org; Sara Holoubek, a free agent and columnist; and Karen Parrish, VP of BI Solutions at IBM. David Liu, the managing director at Jefferies & Company, will moderate the panel.

Sam Harrelson and I will host this week’s episode of the Affiliate Thing podcast. Shawn is sick with a stomach bug. Sam has pinch hit in the past for me when I was ill, now it’s his turn to fill in for Shawn. Sam is a great guy and you can check out his insights at AffiliateFortuneCookies. Thanks, Sam!

Today our guest will be Greg Hoffman (The Donut Guy) who landed a job at Think Partnership by sending donuts. If you’ve got any questions, you can call in to the Affiliate Thing at 866-345-6631 between 12:00 pm and 12:30 pm EST on Wednesdays.

It was only a matter of time before this legal action took place., I just didn’t think it would take this long. Kellie Stevens at AffiliateFairPlay.com just posted about two class action lawsuits filed against Commission Junction/BeFree/ValueClick on behalf of affiliates and merchants. The suits center around (you guessed it) ADWARE. As you may note, the suits were filed in April, but Kellie’s blog is the first mention I’ve seen of the legal action.

Has anyone else noticed that the word “creepy” and “Google” keep appearing together in news headlines, articles about the company and in countless posts throughout the blogosphere? Here’s just a very small sampling of stories that highlight Google’s “creepiness” relating to street level maps, its domination in search, behavioral targeting, its recent acquisitions (especially DoubleClick) and just about anything else the search giant has its hand in.