Review Maze

Windows Blu-ray Players Comparison

2010-06-06T06:15:00.000-07:00

Introduction

So you've got a Blu-ray Disc drive and are now looking for software to play your blu-ray disc collection. The first thing you'll notice if you do some research: there are no free players for blu-ray playback. That's because there are license fees to be paid to the patent holders (Sony, Philips and Panasonic) for each BD playing unit made, both software or hardware. For obvious reasons, the possibility of a legit free BD player software is made redundant by this requirement for the time being. The focus of our article is to review Blu-ray players that are currently available for computers running Windows.

There are 4 commercial packages offering BD playback on Windows. These are Cyberlink's PowerDVD 10 Ultra 3D, ArcSoft's TotalMedia Theatre 3 Platinum, Corel's WinDVD 2010 Pro and Roxio's CinePlayer BD. Note that all four companies offer their video playing software in various packages with different options missing in the lower-end versions, but for BD playback you will invariably need the corresponding high-end package in order to be able to play Blu-ray discs. The shorter brand names will be used below for clarity but keep in mind that in all cases the high-end versions of the software are being addressed. For example, PowerDVD will be used instead of PowerDVD 10 Ultra3D, TotalMedia Theatre instead of TotalMedia Theatre 3 Platinum, etc. Also, CinePlayer BD isn't reviewed below because it doesn't have a trial version.

Shared Features and Limitations

Before delving into particulars about each software let's have a look at the features common for all of them. All competitors:

Run on Windows 7, Vista or XP.
Are BD-Live compliant (player profile 2.0).
Offer excellent video quality. Picture quality is virtually undistinguishable on a full HD display between the different players.
Play AVCHD files. That's the most common HD video format used by consumer camcorders.
Utilize the available Graphics Card to offload calculations from the CPU which should improve performance on lower end systems. In fact, all players will enforce the utilization of the graphics card. As a side effect this hardware acceleration will render some video processing options unavailable during BD playback.
Upscale DVDs and non-HD video files.
Handle Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD audio.
Support Remote Control.
Allow for a limited amount of region setting changes (usually 5).
Enforce content protection and disable frame capture when playing Blu-ray discs. Same with clip capture where applicable. Other features may also be disabled for Blu-ray disc content.

Cyberlink's PowerDVD 10 Ultra 3D

PowerDVD is the oldest in the pack being around since 1996. The latest installment is PowerDVD 10 offered in three versions: Standard, Deluxe and Ultra 3D. Ultra 3D is the version capable of BD playback. The flagship feature, suggested by the name (previous high-end installments were called just Ultra), is Blu-ray 3D support. PowerDVD is the first, and currently the only, software player certified by the Blu-ray Disc Association under the Blu-ray 3D standard established in the end of 2009. To fully take advantage of this you will need 3D capable graphics card, display and glasses: for example a NVIDIA 3D Vision Ready kit. And, of course, you will need 3D movies. Some of these are supposed to come out on home video media later this year. A related feature is the ability to transform good old 2D DVDs into 3D with some control over the strength of the effect. An upcoming update is supposed to add the same functionality for more 2D file formats.

PowerDVD is integrated with Cyberlink's online service MoovieLive. MoovieLive is free and acts as both a movie database and community portal. If you are connected to the Internet you can get more info on the movie currently in your Blu-ray drive, write reviews, rate movies, organize and sync your movie collection with your MoovieLive profile, post live comments on MoovieLive, Twitter and/or Facebook while watching and share information with other users. The short live comments feature is especially appealing as it is perfectly in tune with the Twitter paradigm and effectively allows for live online commentary. As PowerDVD keeps track how many times a movie has been watched, sharing this information online allows a global counter to be kept and displayed per title thus serving as a popularity meter amongst PowerDVD users. The related MovieMarks feature allows for bookmarking, playing and sharing scenes in movies (currently not available for BD movies; working for DVDs, though). Another community-oriented feature allows you to upload videos to YouTube, converting them to a YouTube compatible format if necessary and providing a form to fill meta information in.

Home theater enthusiasts will appreciate the seamless integration with Windows Media Center. WMC comes with no native BD support so this is a welcome feature. PowerDVD is integrated with WMC through its Cinema Mode which is essentially a minimalistic version of the interface. In Cinema Mode the color scheme changes to match WMC and the interface is simplified and designed to be remote control friendly. Switching between Classic Mode and Cinema Mode is accomplished through an icon on the title bar. Continuing the Windows 7 integration is the full support of the Windows 7 Music Library. PowerDVD also supports HDMI 1.3 pass-through for audio output through receivers.

Last but not least: as expected, movie playback is smooth; loading times are pretty good and both video and audio quality are excellent.

ArcSoft's TotalMedia Theatre 3 Platinum

TotalMedia Theatre 3 also comes in three versions: Standard, Gold and Platinum. The Platinum edition is BD playback enabled. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles of PowerDVD feature-wise but it does the job.

TotalMedia Theatre comes with a Windows Media Center plug-in exposing Blu-ray playback functionality and Remote Control compatibility. As is the case with PowerDVD, HDMI 1.3 pass-through for audio is supported enabling 192 KHz 24-bit audio to be transferred to receivers for exceptional sound experience. Additional features include: 3 different Power Management profiles for perfect balance between power saving and performance; direct playback from camcorders; a time-stretch function to ensure you won't miss the end of the movie you are watching while traveling or under time pressure. There is also a Parental Control. Some rudimentary Disc Library management functions are available, plus the option to bookmark scenes in videos, including Blu-ray movies.

ArcSoft also seems to have technology for transforming 2D videos and photos into 3D, probably similar to the tech included in PowerDVD Ultra 3D. It is called Sim3D and is in the form of a plug-in for TotalMedia Theatre but is only available for OEM licensing. Too bad, apparently they don't want to give it to you unless you own selected 3D hardware.

Blu-ray Disc playback is smooth, picture quality is great, loading times are perfectly acceptable but a bit on the slower side compared to PowerDVD and WinDVD.

Corel's WinDVD 2010 Pro

WinDVD is the oldest competitor of PowerDVD dating back to 1998. It is currently being offered in 2 variations: WinDVD 2010 and WinDVD 2010 Pro, the latter being the Blu-ray playing version.

WinDVD is quite barebones compared to both PowerDVD and TotalMedia Theatre. While it offers different video processing options and enhancements, they are all disabled when hardware acceleration is turned on, which is always the case for HD video playback. It does have some power management options to squeeze more battery life for longer playback on mobile computers. There is a time-stretch function similar to the one in TotalMedia Theatre. Direct playback from camcorders will work. A parental control option is also available. Windows 7 Touch is supported in the interface but there is no Windows Media Center integration. Bookmarking is disabled for Blu-ray disc content.

Video quality is excellent, loading times are good, a fraction slower than PowerDVD.

Comparison table and conclusion

Performance was tested on a system with an Intel i5-430m CPU, 4GB DDR3 memory and ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650 graphics card, running Windows 7.

	PowerDVD	TotalMedia Theatre	WinDVD
CPU load¹	8.5%	12.1%	13.2%
Loading times²	7:73s	13:05s	9:02s
Blu-ray 3D	Yes	No	No
2D to 3D	Yes	Yes³	No
Upscale to HD	Yes	Yes	Yes
WMC integration	Yes	Yes	No
HDMI pass-through	Yes	Yes	No
Online features	Yes	No	No
Time stretch	No	Yes	Yes
Matroska .mkv support	Yes	Partial	No
Built-in updates check	Yes	Yes	Yes
Free trial	Yes	Yes	Yes
Price⁴	$99.95	$89.99	$99.99

1. Average CPU load during MPEG-4 AVC stream playback.
2. Blu-ray disc loading times averaged over 5 measurements.
3. For OEM licensing only.
4. Listed price; discounts or promotions may apply.

On a funny note, PrintScreen doesn't work for screen capturing while WinDVD is running. Same with TotalMedia Theatre. It does work with PowerDVD though. And that's why you get to see a screenshot from PowerDVD here and not from the other two, ha.

In conclusion: PowerDVD 10 Ultra 3D is, no doubt, the best Blu-ray disc playing software available at the moment. Its feature selection is the largest, Blu-ray 3D support makes it future-proof, and it outperforms the competition. It is the only one offering online features to feed any movie fan's addiction. And it is also the closest to a general media player. ArcSoft and especially Corel surely need to do some catching up in terms of both performance and features.

EuroDNS Discount Codes, Voucher Codes, Promo Codes 2010

2010-02-10T01:32:00.000-08:00

Hi folks,

The most recent discount codes from the domain name registrar EuroDNS / AsiaDNS are available below. Since often there are several promo codes for a certain domain extension you should check the whole list in order not to miss some of the voucher codes you need.

Here are the latest EuroDNS promo codes valid as of 30/06/2010:

Code TLD Type Discount Expires on
DNLV09 LV ANNUALPRICE 35.00 % 01/10/2010
FR2009 FR ANNUALPRICE 70.00 % 01/01/2011
NL2009 NL ANNUALPRICE 70.00 % 01/01/2011
PL2009 PL ANNUALPRICE 70.00 % 01/01/2011
DE2009 DE ANNUALPRICE 70.00 % 01/01/2011
IT2009 IT ANNUALPRICE 70.00 % 01/01/2011
ES2009 ES ANNUALPRICE 70.00 % 01/01/2011
RO2009 RO ANNUALPRICE 70.00 % 01/01/2011
DK2009 DK ANNUALPRICE 70.00 % 01/01/2011
GOSE43 SE ANNUALPRICE 43.00 % 10/12/2011
GOEU70 EU ANNUALPRICE 70.00 % 10/12/2011
BEAMS4 BE ANNUALPRICE 75.00 % 01/07/2010
NLAMS4 NL ANNUALPRICE 77.00 % 01/07/2010
DTES5 ES ANNUALPRICE 72.00 % 01/05/2011
DTDE4 DE ANNUALPRICE 75.00 % 01/05/2011
DTCK6 CO.UK ANNUALPRICE 60.00 % 01/05/2011
DTIT5 IT ANNUALPRICE 82.00 % 01/05/2011
DTPL9 PL ANNUALPRICE 87.00 % 01/05/2011
DNHU13 HU ANNUALPRICE 50.00 % 01/07/2010
9ASIA1 ASIA ANNUALPRICE 50.00 % 02/08/2010
25COM25 COM ANNUALPRICE 61.00 % 05/07/2010
20ASIA10 ASIA ANNUALPRICE 55.00 % 01/08/2010
20ORG10 ORG ANNUALPRICE 70.00 % 01/08/2010
20TEL10 TEL ANNUALPRICE 55.00 % 01/08/2010
20COM10 COM ANNUALPRICE 65.00 % 01/08/2010
8EU5 EU ANNUALPRICE 55.56 % 21/09/2010
WC2010 CO.ZA ANNUALPRICE 55.58 % 31/07/2010
REASIA9 ASIA ANNUALPRICE 50.00 % 01/09/2010
10CZ20 CZ ANNUALPRICE 45.00 % 01/08/2010
10SK20 SK ANNUALPRICE 25.00 % 01/08/2010
8NL8 NL ANNUALPRICE 55.55 % 01/08/2010
RU11 RU ANNUALPRICE 40.00 % 14/07/2010

If you don't have a registration at EuroDNS you can sign up HERE. To use a promotional offer enter the discount code in the section "Voucher Codes" or use it during the process of a particular domain name registration.

Montenegro .ME domain names landrush has started

2008-06-07T13:22:00.000-07:00

This is just a short notification message that .ME Domain Landrush has started on the 6th June. You may submit your applications for Montenegro domains until the 26th of June. In order to apply 2 of the good options are to use either EuroDNS or GoDaddy.

The price of the .me domain names at GoDaddy is $49.99 per year and the minimum registration period is 2 years.

The price of the Montenegro domain names at EuroDNS is 48 Euro per year and the minimum registration period is also 2 years. There is a promo code that you may use to receive a 10% discount on the price at EuroDNS. The .me voucher code is 7ME10 and it is valid till the end of the landrush period.

Have in mind that domain names that get more than 1 application are going into an auction and domains with just one application automatically will be assigned to the sole applicant after the 26th of June, 2008. There is also a .ME Auction FAQ available at the registry for more information about Montenegro domain names auctions.

The .ME registry provides in addition 2 lists of names that are not possible to be registered:
Premium names (http://www.domen.me/cms/site_files/dotME_Premium_Names.txt)
and
Reserved names (http://www.domen.me/cms/site_files/dotME_Reserved_Names.txt).

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GoDaddy - Cheap Domain Name Registration and Renewal Prices

2008-05-23T07:37:00.000-07:00

In the last couple of years I have found two very convenient ways to achieve lower prices of .com domain names at GoDaddy. Over the time they are saving me quite a lot of money. Some people probably already know them but I suppose there are many others that are not familiar with these hints so here they are.

How to register cheaper .com domain names?

While you may use some promo codes to lower your .com registration prices there is a way that has been working for years (although I cannot guarantee that it will be working forever) and enables you to buy .com names for $6.95 (+$0.20 ICANN fee). In order to achieve this, you simply have to open Google and enter GoDaddy in the search bar. You will get an adsense advertisement that offers you .com domains for the above mentioned price. Just click on the ad and you'll be sent to GoDaddy site where you will receive the discount in your shopping cart at the time of checkout. I don't know if this option will stay available forever but it has been for quite some time. So, if you cannot find a promo voucher when trying to register some new .com names just try this method.

How to renew .com domain names cheaper?

Another cool possibility is to renew your .com domains for a lower than regular price. It changes over the time but generally it is another big saver. The current price I'm talking about is $7.50 (+$0.20 ICANN fee) and it could be changed in the future. Again, you may use some discount voucher code and get a good price on a renewal but here is another method that works and I have used a lot. When the expiration date of your domain name approaches you will receive notification(s) from GoDaddy to renew your domain. You should just ignore them until you get a notification email with a GoDaddy link inside that allows you to renew the name for just $7.50 (+$0.20). Usually this email will come 5 days before the expiration date. I am renewing all of my .com domain names at GoDaddy this way and it's quite a good saving. This hint is also valid for .net domain names usually.

While for the first hint the obvious reason for its existence is a promotion I am not quite sure what is the reason behind the second one. My guess for it is that GoDaddy makes an assumption that if you have not renewed your domain name until 5 days before the expiration date, your intention is to drop it and that's why they are trying to bait you with this final big renewal price discount so you keep the name registered.

The above two hints practically means that you may permanently register and renew .com domain names for very decent prices without being dependable on the current availability of promo codes. It's a good constant discount and it should save you a good amount of money if you are an owner of a big domain portfolio at GoDaddy.

P.S. Currently you may get the $6.95 (+$0.20 ICANN fee) promotion at GoDaddy also by going directly to GoDaddy and entering the promo code OYH3 at the time of checkout.

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Register .me domain names - Montenegro domain name registrations at EuroDNS

2008-05-15T01:07:00.000-07:00

Along with all other various country code domain extensions a new one is coming and it's quite interesting. The top level domain for Montenegro is .me and while it should be interesting just because it is new, there is also additional appeal that it possesses. Of course, the reason for the latter is that the extension is identical with the English pronoun "me".

The .me TLD is one of the successors of .yu domain extension that has been in use for Serbia and Montenegro. After Montenegro's declaration of independence the new .me extension along with .rs (for Serbia) comes to replace .yu TLD. The registry for .me is operated by doMEn (www.domen.me) and the Sunrise period for .me registrations has already started.

Whether .ME will be a successful domain extension is yet to be seen in the future but it's clear that there will be some very good domain names under this TLD. We just might mention finance.me, love.me, find.me, register.me, etc. It could be expected that except for a web presence of Montenegro's entities, .me will be also used for personal www addresses and tempting marketing names around the world (especially in English speaking countries). Even third-level domain names in the .its.me subdomain could be registered with the idea of .its.me treated as "it's me".

Currently you may apply for a .me domain name registration at EuroDNS for both Sunrise and Landrush periods. The Sunrise phase is restricted to trademark owners whereas .me Landrush period is unrestricted. Have in mind that while the both types of applications are accepted simultaneously the Sunrise ends on May 20th and Landrush ends on June 26th. After the end of each period auctions will be held for the domain names with more than one application. The names with just a single application will be awarded directly to the appropriate applicant. After the Landrush period has ended the .me domain names will be available on a first come, first served basis.

The current prices at EuroDNS and minimum registration periods are as listed below:
Sunrise - 175 Euros per year (min. 5 years)
Landrush - 48 Euros per year (min. 2 years)
GoLive - 24 Euros per year (min. 2 years)

There is also a discount code available at EuroDNS for .me domain registrations. The promo code is 7ME10 and it's valid till the 26th of June. The voucher is for a 10% discount of the price.

Even with the promo code the .me domains are still pricy at the moment but if you want to protect a trademark of your own or if you really want to register some nice .me name you have the possibility to do it. The other option is to wait for the GoLive period and to hope that not all of the good names will be gone at that time.

In case you do not have an EuroDNS account you may make such from EuroDNS.

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What Is Wrong with Sedo Domain Parking Program?

2008-03-26T16:40:00.000-07:00

Or maybe it is better to ask "Is there something that is not wrong?".
Well, to start with I still have some domain names parked at Sedo but they are quite fewer in number than they've used to be. If you've noticed that there are many people like me recently and you've been wondering "Why does this happen?", below are a few reasons to consider.

Maybe, the most important reason is that the revenue has been going downward steadily during the last couple of years. No matter what I've tried with my domains the earnings has been going down and down in middle and long terms.

The most annoying reason probably is that apart from the overall trend of downwardness there are some unexplainable high revenue peaks per domain over the time lasting for several days and magically disappearing after that. Maybe, these peaks are only some kind of bait for domainers so they keep their domain names parked with Sedo...

The most "boring" reason should be that you have to experiment and change your keywords constantly in order to have at least the smallest chance to preserve you pay per click at a decent level. Sedo is trying to tell me that the PPC for "mortgage refinancing" is rather high for let's say ten days and after that nobody bids on that keyword... Well, I just don't believe it.

The "official robbery" reason is that Sedo pays you only for the first click if a user clicks more than once on the ads displayed on your parked page. The "motive" is that “Sedo pays more for that one click”. Do you really believe it? I do not. I even think that Sedo pays you for only one click per user across your whole domain portfolio parked with them and they keep the rest of the revenue for themselves.

The "amateurish" reason is that their support and PR people spread over domain forums react very unprofessional and they rarely answer to the real questions asked. Instead, they are just permanently trying to bullshit the domainers with pseudo explanations and cheap PR tricks.

The "foolish" reason is that they approve your keywords in a very stupid way. Not only that you should optimize the keywords over and over again (in order to get a better PPC, according to Sedo) but often you are waiting several days to get an approval for the changed keywords. The most ridiculous thing here is that instead of making a list of already approved keywords for each domain, they are going through the same approval process for same keywords and domain endlessly.

Other more "ordinary" reasons to leave Sedo are that their templates are worse than the ones of many other domain parking programs; there're also a lot of other parking providers that are paying more than Sedo. And even for the European and Asian domain names Sedo has been left behind NameDrive domain parking recently.

So, personally I've found a good list of reasons to move my names to other domain parking services. Just to give Sedo some pro's maybe one of the last fair reasons for someone to use them is that they do not require a domain portfolio in order to approve you for their regular parking program. They are good for starters but I would prefer Namedrive at least for their better support. And another advantage of Sedo is that their domain parking program is integrated with their really big domain aftermarket.

At the end, it's your decision where to park (or not park) your domain names. I just hope I've been helpful a little bit and if somebody has anything to add to this article you're welcome to post a comment on it.

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NameDrive.com Domain Parking - Park Domain Names at Namedrive for Free

2008-03-20T16:31:00.000-07:00

What is domain parking?

In just a few words, domain parking is a service that provides you with the opportunity to make some money from your unused (undeveloped) domain names. If you have domains that you haven't developed and if it is possible that these names get some natural type-in traffic, it is almost mandatory to park these domain names "somewhere". A parking provider generates dynamic pages full of ads which are shown when somebody types in your domain name in a browser. If somebody clicks on any of the ads displayed on the generated page for your domain you get a small amount of money for that click. There are people out there that are making thousands of dollars daily using such kind of services. While you cannot expect to be amongst these people since the beginning you should start from somewhere and try to squeeze the most of your domain names. One of the popular domain parking programs is NameDrive.com

Why NameDrive?

To start with, the registration at NameDrive.com is very simple and intuitive. There is no approval process and the sign-up is practically immediate (this is not valid for most of the other domain name parking providers). The service is free and there is no requirement for a minimum number of domain names or for their quality. There are almost not any restrictions on the names - you may park adult or gambling names but you cannot park some kind of typos (for example "google" ones). No tax information is required and you may specify your payment preferences at a later stage, long after the sign up process has been finished.

Another positive side of NameDrive is the customization of the pages and keywords. You can choose among lots of page templates, you can select a category and a subcategory with related links for your domain and you can choose a picture for the template. You may also provide your own keywords and they are approved quite faster compared to Sedo for example. You may even customize your dynamically generated pages with different parameters for the variety of world regions.

Even a bigger plus for NameDrive is that European and Asian domain names perform well at it. The main competitor of NameDrive in this field is Sedo but to be honest lately I have not been satisfied with Sedo.com at all and I've moved almost all of my European domain names to NameDrive.com. Having in mind that the rest of domain parking programs are targeted at American traffic mainly, NameDrive has a big advantage for non-American names.

NameDrive reports your real earnings with an up to 48 hours of delay. Initially some estimated values are displayed while waiting for NameDrive’s advertising partners (Google's Adsense feed, for example) to report the real earnings. Once they get that report the real earnings are shown – at the end, you might have earned more or less than the initial estimated values but at least you know what is you real revenue achievement instead of getting some random values as it is at Sedo.

Some further pros are that you have the possibility to see how your pages will look in different countries/languages and that you may also generate different kinds of reports in order to make tracking of the stats more convenient for you. You may also group domains in categories/folders.

NameDrive provides some other services useful for domainers as well (for example, to put your domains in an auction and try to sell them). These options are not discussed here but you can check them easily by yourself at NameDrive.com site. I hope this review has been helpful for you but if you have any further questions just put them as a comment below and I’ll try to answer them.

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Register .Asia domain names - Cheap .asia registrations at AsiaDNS / EuroDNS

2008-03-03T08:20:00.000-08:00

They are finally available - .Asia domain names are here at last and everyone can register them during the landrush period.

Although the .Asia landrush has begun with 300,000 applications on its first day, having in mind that the public registration for .asia domains has just started recently there are still plenty of good domain names left and now is the time to make our sting by trying to capture some of the good names the big players will miss.

Of course, there are some obstacles. In order to register .asia name you have to provide a contact in Asia. This may be a hard requirement to fulfil but be aware that there's a solution to this problem. You can register your names at EuroDNS / AsiaDNS and the registrar will kindly provide you with their Asian contact so you can make your .asia registrations easily.

In addition to that kind offer, there is another "thank you" we need to say to the guys at EuroDNS for providing us with a big discount for .asia domain registrations. The corresponding voucher code is 6ASIA28 and the promotion for .asia names lasts until 12/03/2008. (For discount codes after this date just visit the EuroDNS site and look up for a .ASIA banner in order to get the most recent code since the .asia promo vouchers are being changed quite often lately.)

The last bonus coming from EuroDNS / AsiaDNS is that for every successfully registered .asia domain they also offer the same domain name ending in .asia.com for free (one year free registration).

Having in mind all of these bonuses and especially the provided Asian proxy contact along with the promo code I'm definitely in and I'll try to register a nice list with generic names at EuroDNS. If you are like me or if you have a brand name you want to protect in the Asian region as your online identity just take care to do this as fast as possible in order to leave your competitors behind.

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EuroDNS Discount Code, Voucher Codes, Promo Codes - Cheap Domain Names Promotion

2007-11-02T17:49:00.000-07:00

Hi guys,

The domain name registrar EuroDNS / AsiaDNS offers very cool discount codes on some of their gTLD and ccTLD extensions on a regular basis.

The most recent promo codes are available below and they are listed in the following format: voucher code in green, TLD, discount, expiration date of the code, domain name price per year in red. Sometimes, there is more than one code for a domain extension so go carefully through the whole list.

6DED
.DE (German Domain Names)
71 %
30/11/2008
6.64 euro

IN22
.IN (Indian Domain Names)
22 %
30/11/2008
18.72 euro

9EAT
.AT (Austrian Domain Names)
67.86 %
30/12/2008
7.71 euro

BE4U
.BE (Belgian Domain Names)
66.67 %
10/01/2009
5.28 euro

DE50
.DE (German Domain Names)
50 %
10/01/2009
10.00 euro

EU9EU
.EU (European Union Domain Names)
50 %
10/01/2009
9.00 euro

F5EF
.FR (French Domain Names)
66.67 %
10/01/2009
5.94 euro

ITGO7
.IT (Italian Domain Names)
42 %
10/01/2009
16.24 euro

SE288
.SE (Swedish Domain Names)
42 %
10/01/2009
16.24 euro

UK2U
.CO.UK (British Domain Names)
46 %
10/01/2009
8.10 euro

GOCOM6
.COM (.COM Domain Names)
33 %
10/01/2009
12.00 euro

GOASIA9
.ASIA (Asian Domain Names)
50 %
10/01/2009
9.00 euro

GLU24
.LU (Domain Names for Luxembourg)
30 %
02/02/2009
23.80 euro

ES7CB
.ES (Spanish Domain Names)
66.67 %
02/05/2009
6.00 euro

For the latest EuroDNS discount codes click HERE.

In order to utilize a promotional offer, after login at EuroDNS go to the "Voucher Codes" section and enter the corresponding code.

I'll try to put here all promo codes that I'm aware of and I hope they'll help somebody.

If you have not an account with EuroDNS you can make one from HERE.

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P.S.
You may read more about .me domain name registrations at EuroDNS by pressing the link.

About .asia domain registrations at EuroDNS / AsiaDNS you can read more here.

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Some thoughts on WidgetBucks.com

2007-10-13T16:47:00.000-07:00

I should admit - WidgetBucks site seems really nice, the widget itself also. Everybody is talking about the higher revenue with Widget Bucks. There is a $25 sign up bonus. Most people are quite enthusiastic.
So, everything seems fine at a first glance.

I'll try to make some kind of review on WidgetBucks.com and hopefully I will update it from time to time with a recent information about this new PPC program.

To start with, there are a few things that still worry me a bit.
1) WidgetBucks is a new project and noone has received a payment from the guys behind it yet. Of course, this is not a crime but still it is something to have in mind about every start up money making program.
2) There is a sign up bonus. It's a little bit strange for a company whose primary subject is anyway to offer money in some way.
3) They claim that the CPM for their clients is even higher than $6 and it's written like it is something incredible. In my opinion, it's a decent but not so much of a great revenue so it's nothing to praise about.
4) Sometimes the site seems to be not in a good operational state. Errors are reported here and there. For example, "There was an error creating your account. Please try again later.". But then again, WidgetBucks.com is a new site so it's acceptable to some extent.

So, these were my first "bad" thoughts on Widget Bucks. And they were really just thoughts. It's normal to be suspicious on new sites.

On the other hand, lets put together some "good" thoughts and impressions.
1) WidgetBucks really takes off very fast. I should admit that I've also signed up with them and I am going to see by myself in the near future how it's going.
2) They have written that only English language is acceptable for the sites showing their ads and also that the sites with English speaking traffic are prefered because their advertisers are targetting such audience. So, this is a plus in my opinion 'cause if they were scammers it's not very likely to limit their potential client base this way.
3) The widget ads seem quite nice and catchy. To be honest one of the nicest in the online advertising industry.
4) The sign up process for this pay per click program is really fast and without complications, you can sign up practically in a minute. This is a good thing for a new company to expand their customer base in the beginning.
5) The obvious good thing: you anyway lose nothing (except for some time) if you sign up but in case the site becomes a leader among the ppc companies you'll be of the first on the board.

So, this is enough for a start. I'll keep to add some new stuff related to WidgetBucks in the next days so you may check the comments below for updates. If you want to try this traffic monetization program you could follow the link http://www.widgetbucks.com. Let's hope it will be a great experience for all of us as publishers.

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I've noticed that many people are asking questions that have already been answered on the WidgetBucks site in different sections (FAQs, Terms OF Use, etc.). Here are the answers to the most popular of them.
1) They pay out for the earned revenue within 45 days after the end of each month, if you have earned a minimum of $50.
2) The $25 sign up bonus is viewable in the section "My bucks".
3) You can place more than one WidgetBucks ad on your site.
4) According to their site WidgetBucks is compatible with all other ad systems including Google AdSense.
5) You can easily place the Widget Bucks ads code in blogs like Blogspot / Blogger and Typepad.
6) Impressions and clicks are updated each hour. The revenue reporting of the actual earnings is done up to 72 hours later.
7) The WidgetBucks code should be placed only on pages that have content primarily written in English.

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23/10/2007

Some new criticism here. I should mention that pages on WidgetBucks.com site are loading quite slowly. Also there are some pages that lead to loss of the user session in the browser so you must login again. Of course, these are not major drawbacks but they are still some issues needing improvement in the near future.

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25/10/2007

Another update with a dark and a light side:
First, I need to mention that there are some obscure things related to the referral program. One of them is that earnings of the referrals are not shown at all for a long period of time and it will be very good if they are visible (even with a delay of a day or two). Not showing referral stats for a whole month leads to suspicions at least.

Another thing related to the referral program (and I admit I cannot prove it) is that it seems the referral ID is lost when browsing between the pages of the site. So, if a new user is referred from your referral link and he/she decides first to browse through the site's pages awhile and after that goes to the signup page the ref ID is lost somewhere in the process.

Now, the new good thing I've noticed is that the WidgetBucks guys have made some improvements recently. The last one has been the faster loading widgets. We could consider this a good sign since it's not very likely for scammers to put efforts in such activities.

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28/10/2007

Here goes another update.
It seems that along with speeding up the loading of the widgets the WidgetBucks guys have removed the link pointing to their site from the widget's code - these are really good news.

Another good thing is that they seem to use cookies to track the referrals.

And finally, I have written to them that it will be a very good improvement of functionality and trust in them if they make referral stats available in real time or at least to delay them only with a couple of days. They've answered that they'll put this on their "requested features" list. So, let's hope we will see the referral stats available soon without that month of delay.

There is still some more to be desired from the WidgetBucks program but I see some good changes are ongoing and now I can recommend this PPC program with a little more confidence.

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01/11/2007

A new update.
I have noticed that the problem with the user session lost while browsing the WidgetBucks site seems not present currently. I would suppose that it has been fixed.
Also it seems that the guys maintaining the site take the feedback from the publishers seriously and this is quite a good sign.

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http://www.widgetbucks.com