I received a curious e-mail today. Except for the obvious spots where I’ve expunged identifying information, it looked like this:

Dear Gil Rodman,

We loved your blog, thank you for the great content! I would like to give you an iPod Shuffle gift in exchange for a link to our [sitename] site on your site navigation panel.

[sitename] ([siteURL]) is a free [site descriptor] research tool for students and educators covering over 20,000 [site descriptor]. Please add our link using the anchor text “[sitename]” and I will send you your iPod certificate. For more information on iPod Shuffle, please visit http://www.apple.com/ipodshuffle/ – you just need to select your preferred color :)

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Best regards,

[name]
PR Coordinator
[sitename]
[siteURL]

What was particularly amusing about this request is that the site in question is completely unrelated to any topic I’ve posted about over the past year and change. The site in question doesn’t sell imported auto parts, but it would make about as much sense for me to link to this site if, in fact, that was its focus. I’m assuming that the same request was sent to thousands of bloggers pretty much at random — and I suspect that the iPod Shuffle offer isn’t what it’s cracked up to be either. Anyone else out there get hit up with something like this?