I made the mistake and let myself get carried away by recommendation of Veerle, a decent designer I would say, and subscribed to the Layers Magazine e-version for some 30$ a year. First of all, I did not receive any order confirmation, which is really unprofessional when you give someone your credit card number and allow them to charge it for 30$ – then I mailed them asking if they had received my subscription for the international e-version Layers Magazine. An employee replied that they were sorry but did not receive anything. Four days later I did receive a confirmation (a bit pathetic I find) – now today I got the first copy of Layers Magazine and I must say I am shocked.

First of all, the email said that the Magazine was being published six times over the year. That is one magazine every two months?
Most of the articles are contributions by well-accredited designers such as Veerle from Belgium, who has been in the business since 1992 – then they drop in some reviews and miscellaneous tips and tricks that you can get from any cheap tutorial site or tech-review page.

Where is the added value?!
Half of the magazine (it has some 110 pages) is advertisements, so you pay 30$ a year for a magazine that is published every two months that is filled with ads, ads, ads. (UPDATE: I counted: 51 full pages of ads!) I must say those ads are really targeted and interesting to the audience, but still that is way too much for my taste. I will not pro-long my subscription and find it stumbling that people like Veerle recommend the magazine so highly (e.g. under every post). Of course, her tutorials (which are great!) are published there, but still the Layers Magazine SUCKS as for the reasons given above.

I cannot recommend Layers Magazine

P.S. The Zinio delivery manager is very annoying and looks like spyware, I don’t trust it. However I can imagine that Layers Magazine does not want to send around PDF files directly (else people would upload them to their blogs and sites bluntly).

If you want to waste some money you might be interested in subscribing to one of the worst paid e-zines I have read and visit Layers Magazine here at www.layersmagazine.com

I can recommend the Before and After Magazine, which is short, concise and to the point. Nine to Fifteen pages, no advertisements, sources included and cheap (costs 24$ which is like 16Euro for 32 articles that really help you out)

BA Magazine offers even free samples of articles for PDF download: free of charge, high quality! Link 1 | Link 2 – and no I do not work for them or am related or anything, I am just stating my honest opinion and review here)

While the EEE is more economic in terms of price (one-seventh of Macbook AIR price), it is limited in functionality and size – but the Macbook Air looks like a portable Notebook for the fashion-victims to me. $1700 is a lot of money, even though the Dollar keeps on declining to the EURO (1,150€) I would rather not get a Macbook Air right now. The screen is powered by LEDs, so it is said. This new LED technology should reduce the battery drain and increase the usability. I am waiting for the first reports to come in, because this feature sounds really interesting… clear and crisp picture while having longer usage time? Also the keyboard has received an ambient-light (often called ambi-light). A neat feature, but worth that much? I am already cursing buying an ordinary Macbook (discounted student version for 950€), even though the battery times are great (6 hours), the performance is not that great in comparison to my old Sony VAIO which was 3 years old).

The EEE looks like a tool/toy for kids just by the looks of the promoting website – while the Macbook Air is sure to appear on managers’ desks in no time. I project Macbook Air sales to be massive… my quick 5 cent

UPDATE: more pictures

Sometime around May I decided to have my website transfered over to zone.net as I outgrew Dreamhost.

Dreamhost, which now offers quite some cool setups (such as pimping up your server by additional ram etc), has kind of “chucked me” off due to excessive CPU use that was triggered by my WordPress install (running WP-Cache of course).
I was told, I outgrew a shared environment and should opt to either switch to their (at this time) 360$/month plan or get another hosting provider. when asked what to get, I was told “a vps with plenty of ram”.

I had a particular setup in mind and was thinking of either joining jaguar pc hosting or zone.net.

What I did like at zone.net at this point was the working live-support. I clicked “live support” – chat now and within seconds I was talking to someone who had a clue and cared about getting me to move over.

I opted zone.net as they promised to set-up my domain(s) in before of moving for free and making the transition happen without any downtime.

It worked this way, I sent my sql databases to them and uploaded a four gig rar-file to third-party server (always handy to have another one at hand). They downloaded everything and setup my VPS with CentOs, plesk and virtuozzo.

From my GoDaddy-domains I know there were plenty of discount codes around- as I couldnt find any for zone.net I blunty asked them if they had a promotion campaign running and if there was a zone.net discount code.
Their honest reply, which I appreciate, was “yes” and I was given the code to discount my setup and monthly fee by 10%. Seeing as I did not find any codes on Google, this was a good catch.

The transfer went smooth and the first weeks passed. Without any trouble, my site(s) ran smoothly, quicker than ever and with no downtime. Thanks to the watchdog module, that one employee installed, services that killed itself were automatically loaded again.

Ever since I moved my site to zone.net it has been growing prosperously with 15,000 visitors daily and increasing. WordPress and WP-Cache are working smoothly, Permalinks with htaccess are operational, too.

When I had trouble setting up WP-Cache (at one point you have to run a shell command to create a sym-link file), their Live-support helped me out in seconds.
I really liked the free and high-quality support at zone.net and the polite, yet direct employees.

The advantage of “sticking” with a company with a dozen employees is that in due progress you get to know everyone and they get to know you. You dont have to explain your setup and problems all over again, as your setup is known and sending passwords over etc has become obsolete.

Amongst my domains are also two German denic (DE) domains, the setup of them is very annoying, as you have to observe all kinds of regulations (like specific TTL time), different class C ips etc. – zone.net has been so accommodating to setup those different C-class ips for free.
I am quite sure that I would have had to pay additional money at almost every other company.

At my VPS I had Plesk and CentOS running, what I did not know is that you SHOULD not (seriously!!!) try to update your VPS (plesk) manually.
I pressed “auto-update” under plesk, and the whole vps went into full-out lockup mode. zone.net´s experienced techies had the website up within minutes, but still plesk was unaccessible.
This was the case for a week roughly and I did not receive any email for one week. This really annoyed me, but who to blame? It was all my fault- if I had not played around with things it would not have locked up so bad (internal errors all over the place). I decided to wait one week for them to find a solution, as the website was up, I was earning good money with it (around 40$ a day) and I did not care about emails… since it was only a secondary email address.

yet I wanted to have my plesk back.- so one employee worked on my vps for two days in a row and tried all kinds of hacks. still I did not work. so without asking, and I appreciate that, they cloned my “running” site and setup another vps and routed all traffic over there. wow. I did not know this was technically possible!!!

anyway, I had my plesk back and every setting I had done, was input kindly by the zone.net tech-man. If I had to do this all myself I would have lost valuable time at university that (at this point) I did not have.

Just a few weeks ago I received an email saying that my vps (and basically) every VPS had to be moved, as zone.net had bought their own network or net of servers or datacenter, I cannot remember what it was, anyway… my vps had to be moved, meaning starting at “zero”. A new vps was setup again, but since the ips changed, too I had to undergo the whole IPs annoyance with the german denic domains again.

luckily zone.net helped me out quickly and assured me things would work.
Indeed it did, the transfer went very smooth, as the old vps was not shutdown until the new one had been successfully “talking” with my nameserver.

Bad thing though was, that I lost several posts and comments, as in the meantime I was accessing (randomly) two different sites on different servers.
At one time, the old site loaded, the next hour the new one loaded and vice versa.

If you plan to transfer sites, you should not post anything and close comments. just as a matter of fact, that was my learning…

What I did not like about zone.net is that after the server move and in the meantime, they have seem to taken off the live-support. I loved to quickly address my problems and have them sorted out.

Now I have to reside to their (working!) ticket system, where I usually receive a reply within hours, but sometimes also days (but that´s my fault then again to not “bump” my tickets every now and then).

In general, I am very satisfied with the performance at zone.net, the level of support and the possibility of having almost EVERYTHING customized to my needs. I appreciate being a customer there, seriously! as soon as I experience something else, I will post it here, promised!

Yours,
jez

(lol this is almost a whole book of a post)

Anyway, today I wanted to share my experience with you that I made with different advertisers that can be used to monetize your website or blog. I will briefly list them here and then go in more detail one by one as far as I have information also the pros and cons of each advertiser will be shortly addressed.

http://www.google.com/adsense
http://www.kontera.com
http://www.miva.com
http://www.valueclick.com
http://www.burstmedia.com
http://www.tribalfusion.com
http://www.adconion.com

Google Adsense

Probably the most prominent Advertiser when it comes to monetizing websites.
It is often discussed whether Google Adsense is ripping off their users by selling low cost ads, which results in low income for the website/blog owner. I made the experience that it all has to do with positioning, coloring and last but not least the Ad Format. Every website owner should experiment with those three variables until he has the desired success.
Sometimes it is not smart at all to put Google Adsense on pages at all. At tech-sawy sites for instance, little people will click the text-links offered by Google. One thing, that does work really well -as far I as I experienced it- is the payout. I get my money on time (between 27th and 29th of every month) and straight to my savings account. Only downside is, that Google Adsense pays you in Dollar and in case of not living in America the Dollar is currently less worth than the Euro: Meaning for every Dollar I get only 70 Eurocent. A quick example: for 200$ earned a month with Google Adsense, I only receive 140 Euros. Still this is good money, but due to this currency fluctuation and a growing European Economy, I get less money for the same ads. Google Adsense offers a variety of different advertisement formats, such as the famous skyscraper banner, the rectangle banners, recommendation banners, Firefox recommendations with Google Toolbar and so on (maybe also interesting is the Google Picassa Photosoftware)

My intermediate recommendation is to sign-up at Google Adsense, nevertheless, read the other comments below, because maybe another advertising company is better suitable for you!

Kontera

The people at Kontera offer in-text ads, that means you don’t place banners on your site, but your existing content (text passages) are run through a filter and than advertisement links are added automatically. A Kontera context-link is indicated by a double underlined link. This -to me- looks very ugly, but on the other hand it is prominent and people might click it as it “sticks out”. Once you hover over one of these special links a tooltip will show with an image and some text in it. This is the actual ad. Another click takes you to the advertiser’s website. The sign-up process as Kontera was very easy: Though they do have some requirements to their publishers – you have to have a minimum of page impressions and loads of content. Every account is manually reviewed within few hours, at most one day. I got contacted by one Account Manager, Nick, who was very kindly welcoming me to Kontera and offering all kinds of help and advice, he also told me that I will be contacted by one of his co-workers to help me with the setup. The setup, as read later on, in this announced mail, is quite easy: you simply but a javascript at the very bottom of the page (in my case the footer.php of my templates).
Downside: The ads are not content-related; that is why I chucked it off after 48 hours. Nick promised me to personally try to achieve a higher level of content-relation, but this did not work out.
My recommendation: keep an eye out for Kontera, they are a nice bunch of people, but their system does not work that well. At least it did not for me. No-one clicked those ads in 48 hours and that is 20,000+ impressions actually.

Miva

When I signed up for Kontera, I also signed up at Miva to compare response time and the ad formats. At miva they also have specific requirements for sign-ups. I urge you to read through those before, else you might not get accepted or get any reply at all. Anyway, I signed up and received a “go” after two days, which was quite okay, yet slower than Kontera. The ad formats range between rectangle and square banners and in-text relevancy ads. I tried out the rectangle banners for three days and earned a whopping 9 cent for 5992 impressions. Quickly dealt with the removal I can say that the pay-out is miserable and the relevancy not existent.

ValueClick

When I tried to sign-up at Valueclick some months ago I received 12,500 daily unique visitors and had an alexa ranking of 30,000 and rising (when I did all those free wordpress themes, remember?) – Formally I met their requirements (5000+ visitors a day), but still they did not accept my website as it is “(actual quote) a blog-like website that we do not support”. See, blogs are bad and people on blogs don’t click on ads, that is why it is not of interest to ValueClick. Strange thing is, that my mate’s website, www.christinazone.com (that I designed and coded) runs on WordPress, too. It is also “some kind of blog”, yet ValueClick likes to advertise there and he receives less than 12,500 uniques a day. I believe it is about targeting, as teenagers and young adults are more prone to click on those ads than my tech-sawy visitors here on h4x3d.com – so no ValueClick testing results here…
One disadvantage though that is very obvious: their website is cluttered and hard to find the sign-up form for publishers.

Burst!Media

Exactly the same as Valueclick above, but with one addition, they did not reply for weeks.

TribalFusion

Similar to Burst!Media, but from TribualFusion I have only heard bad things so far, so I was not surprised to get not accepted.

Adconion

Adconion seems quite “global” and large, they do have specific requirements about who signs up and who gets accepted. I have only applied as by today, I will be adding my experience with them as soon as I can.

1. Introduction
2. Order a Domain at Godaddy (detailed step-by-step guide)
3. Finding and entering a Promo Code (safe bucks in no time)
4. Zone.net Enterprise Hosting introduced (Quality VPS that work)

1. Introduction

I wrote this guide in order to help all those people that are confused by Godaddy’s spammy clustered Website.
There are some options you might want to click and others that you surely do not want.
In short, I wrote up an idiot-safe guide on “how-to-order a domain at Godaddy”.
After guiding you through the steps of ordering a domain I will shortly explain the so called “promo codes”, list some of the best that I collected over the weeks and then finish-off with a quick introduction of zone.net, the Linux people that keep this site running. Their Enterprise Hosting solutions are flexible and easily adaptable and priced. Even-though they do not list any promo codes on the net, I was able to sneak some out for you.

Update: Yay, I got featured on consumerist.com – thanks for picking up my articles, it means a lot to me!

2. Order a Domain at Godaddy (detailed step-by-step guide)

I have created screenshots of the Godaddy website and greyed-out the unimportant and confusing parts.
A click on a thumbnail will open the full-site overview with boxes that will point out the important areas.
The most important boxes are shown in details within this post, but why not take a look below:

Okay, so first of all go to Godaddy.com if you are not at the moment. Using a browser with tabs is advised.

The main site of Godaddy is so crowded and confusing that I immediately wanted to leave again and register my domain elsewhere, but Godaddy is the industry leader for Domains in Northern America (they have the most domains registered for end-users like you and me). Also their prices are the lowest available on the internet. You are looking for an area where to enter the domain you want to register, look below the lady in leather. An close-up excerpt is added below.

Enter your desired domain name and select the extension in the field below “Domain Name Search:”.
Press “Go!” afterwards. You will be taken to a page that is going to tell you whether your desired domain is still available or not.

Well, in this case the domain “h4x3d.com” is already taken. Surprise Surprise.
Look out for the area highlighted in the second box. It is a bit lower and titled “Search for another domain”.
Enter your domain name and press “Search”.

If you entered your desired domain directly, you will not get the screen above, but a “success screen”. It is listed below, please scroll down.

So you have entered your domain and it is available. Great! You will get a screen looking like the one below. I have selected the domain “some-cool-domain.com”, I know not quite creative, but it will do for now.

Yay, the domain is available, now let’s crush some confusion! Below the “(my domain) is available” you will find loads of options. Most of them will make no sense to you for now, and can be added later on. So ignore them unless you want to spend some extra money on stupid domains you are not going to use (most likely).

Scroll down the page till you real “continue”. It is kind of “hidden” below a long table of alternative domains and stupidity. See below screen excerpt for the position. I highlighted the box for you.

Click”Continue” to continue. You will get to a page with even more spam and uncool offers.
They say “STOP! You have found a great domain” – no doubt you have, but no need to throw stupid offers at us, is it? Scroll down till you see “YES…”, but DO NOT press it, select “NO-thanks, continue to check-out”, else you get even more spam. You might not want that. Again, see the highlighted boxes below.

You are almost done: A new page will open and ask you to input your personal information that is needed for the domain. See the below screen cap.

I have selected “make this purchase under my current Godaddy.com account”, but I could also have choosen to fill-in new registration information or selected “login to my account”.

Finally you reach the checkout options. This is where you get to select the contract length.
In most cases I select between 1 and 2 years. You get extra credit if you select longer periods. You can also specify whether you want to auto-renew your registration (you will get re-billed when the domain registration is about to run out) or do the paying manually the next time. Keep in mind that a longer registration period will generate a higher amount-due. Godaddy has some insane savings on amounts over 50$, but more under “promotion/promo codes” below.

Untick “customize my order”, and select “no, thanks, I am ready to checkout”. Press “continue” to get to the next page. You have not been charged or anything till now, so relax.

The next page you get to is interesting: here you get to see the full amount payable and an option to paste godaddy promo codes. Every code or change has to be “applied”. So once you pasted a promo code, press “apply code”. If you decide to change the registration length, be sure to press “update cart” (right side near “apply code”). A new amount due will show. Some promo codes work, others do not. Be sure to experiment with that for a few minutes. There is cash to be saved. Even with orders around 10$, you can save 30% and more. I just registered a domain yesterday and selected “private registration”: A promo code I found deducted 4$! Check chapter 2 (Promo codes) for Promo codes. I do not make money with promo codes, as I do not know how to issue them, but I have listed some that will safe you money!

Anyhow, select your payment option (paypal is available), accept their Terms of Service (TOS) and the Domain registration yadayada and press “checkout now”. Below is an detailed excerpt and even further below a screencap of the important areas.

Congratulations, you have successfully ordered a domain at Godaddy. Now was that easy?
Read about Promocodes for Godaddy that will safe you real money on at Page 2.

THE S A I N T
by Jonathan Hensleigh

Director: Phillip Noyce

February 8, 1995

New York City

The only difference between the
saint and the sinner is that every
saint has a past and every sinner
has a future.
- O. Wilde -

FADE IN:

The majestic city and bay, as seen from the elevation of the surrounding Shan Ho hills as we SUPER –

HONG KONG – 1965

PANNING away from the city, we come before the bleak facade of the SAINT IGNATIUS ORPHANAGE.

BOY’S VOICE (o.s.)

Simon Magus was a magician and sorcerer in uhhm… Sumatra.

INT. HONG KONG – SAINT IGNATIUS ORPHANAGE – DAY

Twenty boys, aged 7 to 12, sit at spartan desks, bibles raised. FATHER O’NEAL walks amongst them. A career Jesuit with razor eyes and thin lips. An awful man.

FATHER 0′NEAL

(sternly)

Sumeria. And what happened to him Francis?

FRANCIS, 12, is the eldest and largest boy.

FRANCIS

Jesus’ disciples came and performed miracles. When Simon Magus saw the miracles he offered disciple Peter gold for the powers of God.

FATHER 0′NEAL

What did disciple Peter say to that? Michael Quinn?

Father O’Neal stands before the youngest, littlest boy, who, unlike the others, exhibits no fear in his huge, intelligent eyes. Father O’Neal hates this boy.

The boy, MICHAEL QUINN, doesn’t respond. Father O’Neal snatches his bible, revealing a SECOND BOOK hidden behind it.

It’s a dime store pulp adventure with a gaudy cover entitled “THE KNIGHTS TEMPLAR.”

FATHER 0′NEAL

Answer the question Michael.

The little boy stares up at him.
–
One of the best movies that I watched in the cinema in the 90′s!

Full movie script of “The Saint” is available here

Part four of the Starcraft gameplay demo shows Protoss air-units battling Terran air and ground units (Marines), again the Terran cruisers seem to be useless. The Mothership has loads of different attacking options and specials. In this combat scene shown, the Terran battle-tanks are also shown. They seem to be quite powerful. The dark templars or templars in general are also shown joined by a Colossus Protoss ground unit. It then says “nuclear missile ready – deehuu – nuclear launch detected and three nuclear missiles strike the scene. Every units (Teran and Protoss) are eliminated!

In case the IGN video is too slow, either download the mov file (below) or view it in the flash viewer (also below)

Starcraft 2 Gameplay Video Part4

Download link for Starcraft 2 Gameplay Video Part 4 WMV coming
Download link for Starcraft 2 Gameplay Video Part 4 MOV 55mb (320×240)

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

var FO = { movie:”https://media.dreamhost.com/mediaplayer.swf”,width:”320″,height:”240″,majorversion:”7″,build:”0″,bgcolor:”#FFFFFF”,
flashvars:”file=http://static02.h4x3d.com/starcraft2/4_starcraft2_direct4_051907_qtlowwide_320x240.flv&showdigits=true&autostart=false” };
UFO.create(FO,”4_starcraft2_direct4_051907_qtlowwide_320x240.flv”);

Full 449MB 1280×720 divx movie (starcraft2.com)

Part three shows Protoss Air units combating ZERG and Terran air units. Later on some beamy-weapon Protoss air units strike a Terran base and are shot down by Marines. The Terran heavy cruisers with their Ion-Cannon seem to be useless. Just by the look of this video, the Protoss are very powerful. The Protoss Mothership is shown in this video. It is amazingly powerful: has a shield that counter-acts incoming projectiles, some ground laser and guns… really amazing, check it out.

In case the IGN video is too slow, either download the mov file (below) or view it in the flash viewer (also below)

Starcraft 2 Gameplay Video Part3

Download link for Starcraft 2 Gameplay Video Part 3 WMV coming
Download link for Starcraft 2 Gameplay Video Part 3 MOV 71mb (320×240)

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

var FO = { movie:”https://media.dreamhost.com/mediaplayer.swf”,width:”320″,height:”240″,majorversion:”7″,build:”0″,bgcolor:”#FFFFFF”,
flashvars:”file=http://static02.h4x3d.com/starcraft2/3_starcraft2_direct3_051907_qtlowwide_320x240.flv&showdigits=true&autostart=false” };
UFO.create(FO,”3_starcraft2_direct3_051907_qtlowwide_320x240.flv”);

Full 449MB 1280×720 divx movie (starcraft2.com)

Thought you might appreciate this trailer, the animations and effects are really amazing. The level of detail is overwhelming!

In case the IGN video is too slow, either download the mov file (below) or view it in the flash viewer (also below)

Download link for Starcraft 2 cinematic trailer MOV 55mb (320×240)
60 MB divx high quality movie from the offficial starcraft2.com site

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

var FO = { movie:”https://media.dreamhost.com/mediaplayer.swf”,width:”320″,height:”240″,majorversion:”7″,build:”0″,bgcolor:”#FFFFFF”,
flashvars:”file=http://static02.h4x3d.com/starcraft2/5_starcraft2_cinema_051907_qtlowwide_320x240.flv&showdigits=true&autostart=false” };
UFO.create(FO,”5_starcraft2_cinema_051907_qtlowwide_320x240.flv”);

Full 449MB 1280×720 divx movie (starcraft2.com)

Part two is mainly about Protoss vs. Zerg an some ground combat. The stalker unit of Protoss can beam itself nearer to the enemy. Also all Protoss ground units seem to be able to climb over different levels of ground (means where others have to stop because of the “wall”, Protoss units go up and down without trouble!) Also the Arbiter is shown teleporting units in (Berserkers).

In case the IGN video is too slow, either download the mov file (below) or view it in the flash viewer (also below)

Starcraft 2 Gameplay Video Part2

Download link for Starcraft 2 Gameplay Video Part 2 WMV coming
Download link for Starcraft 2 Gameplay Video Part 2 MOV 65mb (320×240)

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

var FO = { movie:”https://media.dreamhost.com/mediaplayer.swf”,width:”320″,height:”240″,majorversion:”7″,build:”0″,bgcolor:”#FFFFFF”,
flashvars:”file=http://static02.h4x3d.com/starcraft2/2_starcraft2_direct2_051907_qtlowwide_320x240.flv&showdigits=true&autostart=false” };
UFO.create(FO,”2_starcraft2_direct2_051907_qtlowwide_320x240.flv”);

Full 449MB 1280×720 divx movie (starcraft2.com)