The Ghacks T-Shirt competition has ended a few days ago and I finally found some time to draw the ten lucky ones who all get a free Ghacks T-Shirt. Free means totally free including shipping to any place here on earth, it might just take a while before it arrives.

I will contact all winners by email asking them about the T-Shirt design that they want, the size and their shipping address so that I can buy the shirts in the shop. Yes, I actually buy those T-Shirts myself, no sponsoring of any kind is happening here.

I’d like to point out that I will hold a competition every now and then that will have more t-shirts as prices so stay tuned or head over to the shop and buy one right away. Below are the two designs available at the shop.

continue reading "Ghacks T-Shirt Competition Winners"

I’m currently testing a Wordpress plugin that I always wanted to test but never had the opportunity to do it. It’s the Who Sees Ads plugin which allows the administrator to define rules on who is seeing ads on the website and who is not. I figured that regular readers would not click on ads that much / at all and want to test that theory by disabling Adsense ads, those that are on the left side of every article, for them.

A regular reader is one that views at least three pages on my website in 14 days. I’m not sure how this is going to be tracked, probably through the use of cookies. This is a test only and it could turn out that my regular readers are clicking the ads and the ones that are referred from other websites are not.

If that is the case and my earnings drop a lot I will turn it back on because that’s how I make my living. I hope that it turns out to be beneficial to everyone. Less ads is always nice and if the earnings remain stable I will definitely keep the plugin. Hope you can understand my motivation to do it that way.

continue reading "Disabled Adsense Ads for Regular Readers"

I’m very proud to announce that the first two t-shirt designs for Ghacks have been finally completed and are now available in the Splitreason Online Store. You can take a look at the Ghacks T-Shirts right now or wait and see what I have to offer. I think it’s something to celebrate, especially if you consider the quality of the shirts. I like them both and have ordered four already to see how they feel and look in real.

I would like to offer this opportunity to ten readers as well. We did not have a competition for some time and I thought it would be a perfect fit for a competition. Here are the rules. I’m giving away ten Ghacks T-Shirts completely free of charge paid out of my own pocket.

The shirts will be shipped worldwide to your location and you can pick the design and size that you want from the choices available. All you need to do to win a t-shirt is to tell me a little bit about your relation to my site. Maybe how you came to know it, what you like or don’t like, the funniest / worst / best / most helpful article here at Ghacks or anything else that you can think of.

continue reading "Ghacks T-Shirt Competition"

It’s time again to take a look at some of the new magazines and whitepapers for professionals. This is basically a cooperation between my site and the Netline Cooperation who provide access to these magazines and whitepapers free of charge. Magazine subscriptions are free and sometimes provided as magazines that are send to your doorsteps and sometimes as digital downloads. Still, there is no catch and if you are eligible you get them for free.

A few weeks ago there was a promotion to obtain a free one year subscription for the paper version of the US PC Magazine. No catch again. You can take a look at the frontpage of the store if you are interested in non-IT related stuff, a lot of categories are available there from various industries including finance, food, travel and energy.

Lets start with the magazines and whitepapers that I discovered that are worth a subscription in my opinion: (or take a look for yourself to see all available magazines and whitepapers). Hope you find something that’s of interest to you.

continue reading "Free Magazines and Whitepapers for Professionals"

I did make two large purchases in the last two days. I finally ordered my new computer yesterday, or better the parts for the new computer, and cannot wait to build it once all the parts arrive at my home. Most of the hardware for the PC did not change since my last article about my plans to buy a new PC. A chat with my accountant had the result that I had to buy a more expensive computer to gain the full benefits from the state.

The new PC basically consists of an Intel Core 2 Duo Wolfdale cpu, a Gigabyte DS4 motherboard, 4 Gigabytes of DDR2-800 RAM, a Samsung Spinpoint 1 Terabyte hard drive and a Leadtek 8800 GTS video card with 512 Megabyte RAM. I did add some other stuff to the mix to break the 1000€ goal. My plans are to write an article about the building process with lots of pictures and details about the hardware.

The second purchase was a Xbox 360 Elite video game system. I never thought I would buy one but this offer was just to tempting. The German Amazon website is currently selling each Xbox 360 system, that is the arcade, normal and elite system with a free copy of GTA IV, a free HD DVD drive and a free 3 month XBOX Live GOLD membership. I did pay 374€ (about $600) for the complete set.

continue reading "I’m on a shopping spree"