Do you have a website? Do you shop for web hosting companies for the best deal? Now let me tell you when you can find the best web hosting deals — when another popular web hosting company is having extended outage!

MD WebHosting was having hardware issues with their racks, resulting many hours of downtime for their customers. Depending on how important a website is to you, but for me I will become anxious if OzBargain is offline for 5 minutes, frustrated if down for more than half an hour, and angry if last for more than 2 hours! OzBargain was in fact having availability issue a couple of times before. Half of them were due to my own stupidity, but if your provider is not helpful and communicating during down time, the first thing that comes up in my mind is usually — “Enough!! I want to ditch you guys!! I want my sites to come back as soon as possible!”

Exactly the mentality other hosting companies are looking for.

There were at least 4 different web hosting companies offering “special price” on OzBargain for refugees from MD WebHosting.

• Unlimited-Space.com — 50% off first invoice
• Jumba.com.au — 50% off first invoice
• GDWebHosting.com.au — 50% off first invoice
• HightekHosting.com.au — 60% off first invoice

All are Australian companies offering Australian server space. Not sure whether you need to prove whether you are indeed a MD Web Hosting company.

On an unrelated note, you have probably find the theme of this blog is now in sync with OzBargain. Finally my last year’s new year resolution has been completed. I will also use this place to test out some new theme ideas before I push them out to the main OzBargain site.

OzBargain has long been able to list deals from a specific domain — just add the domain name after http://www.ozbargain.com.au/deals/! For example:

Moreover, you can append /feed at the end of URL to get the RSS feed for all the deals from that particular domain! It is very useful to keep track the latest pizza deals for example.

Now, combining with a simple Javascript bookmarklet (check this Wikipedia entry if you are not sure what a bookmarket is), you can now go to any merchant website, click on the bookmarklet, and it opens an OzBargain web page listing all the past deals from that merchant!

OzBargain Bookmarklet

I know this functionality is very much RetailMeNot-alike, but

• The deals will be Australia focused.
• There will be coupons + deals + freebies.
• You’ll get related information about that shop.
• More features are planned around the bookmarklet — I promise :)

Now, install it on your browser, and happy shopping!

Just in case you have not noticed a little new feature on the front page of OzBargain, I have created a little sidebar-item Top Users, showing the top contributors on this collaborative bargain hunting website.

OzBargain has been getting many great contributors over the last 14 months and I thought it would be a nice idea to show the world who have been our top users on OzBargain. It is currently listed just below the fold on the front page only so you have to scroll a bit to see it, but still a little ego booster may I say :) I am currently showing the top 10 users on OzBargain, updated hourly, but you’ll probably get a full brown page with all the interesting statistics in the future.

How Can I Be A Top User?

Now, how can you get onto the Top Users list? I am still experimenting with the scoring system but basically this is how things work at the moment.

• You will get points/credit/karma/scores from both the actions you do and the actions other people do. There are also positive points or negative points against your account. For example,

  • Positive points:
    • Contribute a new deal.
    • Write a new forum post.
    • Comment on someone else’s deal/forum post.
    • Your deals/forum posts get commented on.
  • Negative points:
    • Cast negative votes on deals
    • Your deal gets negative votes

  Note that you don’t get points for voting positively on a deal (no reward on something that you ought to do!) but negative points on negative voting to discourage people from making too many of them.

• Your daily score is calculated like this:

  score = floor(sum(points) x rdays from today)

  Where 0 < r < 1, i.e. a discount of your previous days’ scores, so that your recent activities will have heavier weight. The activities that were too long ago will have no weight.

• Your overall score is the sum of all your daily scores. Users are then ranked according to everyone’s total score.

• Calculation is done once per hour at the moment, i.e. not real time.

What Is In for Me?

Currently the top users are just listed on the front page, together with their avatars, and that’s it! Don’t you feel special?

Obviously there might be other uses, for example.

• Special prize for topping me on the top users list? Nothing has been planned yet, but don’t quote me on it :)

• Moderation capabilities for persisting top users? I would like to keep OzBargain as automated as possible, but sometimes it is good to have someone around fixing up glitches and killing off the trolls :) Instead of setting up multiple permanent moderators, we can get OzBargain to be self-moderated by rewarding the top users.

I am happy to take any feedback here or on the OzBargain forums.

Last night, Neill @ Melbourne Metblogs asked on OzBargain about opening deals in a new window. He also asked:

Also, surely OZbargain has grown enough to be out of beta?

OzBargain has been sitting on beta release for as long as it has been alive. It has gone through regular updates and I consider that it is still “in development”. However I guess different people see the word “beta” differently. Some can easily shun away thinking they better not touch it else it will fall into pieces. Some reckon you simply can’t be an exciting Web 2.0 website without a “beta” flashing right next to your logo constantly.

Since the users of OzBargain might be biased towards the former than later, I went ahead and removed the beta sign…

… and A New Theme!!!

I have actually been working on this new theme on and off for a few months, and OzBargain has finally switched over this morning at 12:40am. The new theme has a simpler and fresher look. It also has “Store Profile” code in the deal pages so you can easily find other deals from the same shop. Moreover, it has more banner space (one 300×250 rectangle and one 468×60 banner) so hopefully I can recover a bit more $$$ from my ridiculously low CTR :)

By the way, if you do not like banner ads for whatever reason, you can:

• Install Firefox Adblock Plus, or
• Change your user preference on OzBargain to not show banner ads.

Although “beta” is no longer shown, I can assure you that more development is still on the way. I have a few new features planned so stay tuned!

Woke up to a great bargain this morning. ShoppingSquare has won HitWise‘s Australia Top 10 Online Store, so they are offering $1 Postage Site-wide until Monday 21^st January, excluding the Computer IT category!

I think the tricky thing is to figure out what belongs to Computer & IT, and what does not. It can be really hard to tell as an item can belong to multiple categories so the best way is actually click into the product and check the cost of postage.

For example this HP iPAQ Mobile Messenger, it is a computer, and it belongs to IT, but still shows $1 postage. Whereas most CPU, RAM, LCD monitors are excluded.

It has indeed been a great news for shoppers as ShoppingSquare has often been criticised on OzBargain about its relatively expensive postage cost. Now there is no excuse :)

It is the week where all the major retailers start their “Back to School” campaign.

Having someone at home who is going to school for the first time in 2 weeks, it has certainly been very exciting! There are heaps of things you need to buy for a new student, like… Hmm. Exercise book?! They are surely going cheap!

• 10 64-pages exercise books for 10 cents from Big W.
• 1 64-pages exercise book for 1 cent from OfficeWorks.
• 48 pages exercise book for 2 cents from Kmart.

My 3 1/2 year old daughter probably won’t use that many exercise book, but maybe we should stock up enough to get her through K12 :)

I like to talk about my ever-so-reliable laser printer, a Brother monochrome that has lasted me almost 8 years now and is still going strong. Paid around $600 back in 2000 and thought it was a bargain. Colour laser printer? You probably need a budget of a small car back in 2000 to ever consider that.

However, like all computers, gadgets and general electronics, colour laser printers drop in price over time as technology advances. Especially in the last year or two, it is quite reasonable to pick up a basic colour laser printer for under $500.

But what about a HP Colur LaserJet for under $150?!

Thanks to cexing for posting HP’s latest cashback deal on printers. Now when you buy:

• HP Color LaserJet 1600 (Price Comparison)
• HP Color LaserJet 2600n (Price Comparison)
• HP Color LaserJet CM1015 MFP) (Price Comparison)
• HP Color LaserJet CM1017 MFP) (Price Comparison)

You can get $200 as cashback!

Offer valid on purchases from 23 November 2007 to 31 March 2008 from participating HP Resellers. Final claims MUST be received by 5pm EST 14/04/2008 to be eligible for your HP Colour Cash Back. To claim you just need to download the online claim form, fill in the details and mail it back to HP.

That makes the cheapest HP Color LaserJet 1600 under $150! Very good deal if you are looking at upgrading your home printers.

Alissa from Free Samples Direct has given out a few great tips on getting freebies online:

1. Keep your Personal Information Private
2. Read Everything Before Requesting a Sample
3. Make Sure You Are Ordering Direct or from a Quality Source
4. If You Like The Sample Buy The Full Product
5. Make Life Easier when filling out Forms
6. If It Is Too Good to be True, It is Too Good to be True

Great tips. I have always wondered why I am getting so many spams and unsolicited calls — maybe not always keeping (1) is the reason. On the topic of RoboForm which was mentioned in (5) — you can now get 33% off discount which has just been posted to OzBargain this morning.

Read the full article here.

Some of the most voted bargains this week.

Free Antivirus Software

Do you find your Windoze-powered computer infested by virus most of the time? Your 30-day free trial antivirus package that came with your computer has already expired? Maybe it is time to grab some commercial grade antivirus software — for free! You can either download AVG Pro 7.5 for free until Jan 17, or buy Norton Antivirus 2007 for $39.95 from Harris Technology or OfficeWorks, and then get $40 back from mail-in rebate (effectively free after all).

Fortunately my primary computer (my work laptop) comes with CA eTrust Antivirus that is frequently updated, and my wife’s laptop runs AVG Free Edition — no problem so far. Although personally I hates antivirus software as it adds more overhead when you open applications, download files, etc, but it is kind of a necessary evil when you are unfortunately enough to run Windoze everyday. It is not the matter of “I don’t visit dodgy sites, I run Windows update every 2 days, and I will be fine”. There have been cases of 0-day exploits on pwn3d legitimate sites…

Thanks to kcyw and chrisg for submitting these deals.

Free Movies — Juno and 27 Dresses

Thanks to dansor for posting these deals, where you can get free screening of Juno and 27 Dresses.

(Click on the image to go to the deal)

8% Off Big W Entertainment

Thanks to mgexiled for posting this deal where you can get 8% off from Big W Entertainment before Jan 11 (including CD, DVD, games, etc). The discount only applies online.

Happy new year everyone!

I have got a problem to solve here. I want a cheap low-end notebook — not something I need, but just something that is nice to have. I want it for my 3 1/2 year old daughter who spent around 1-1.5 hour a day in front of computers playing with sites such as Sesame Street Workshop and ABC Kids Playground (yes she is pretty good at using mouse). The problem is — she does not like the computer I built for her! I guess the fact that her computer is an old recycled Compaq desktop with 400Mhz Celeron, 15″ CRT monitor and runs Xubuntu could be the issue. Worse, it is actually not connected to the Internet!! No wonder she always used my wife’s Dell Inspiron, but left icons all over the place, bookmarked strange sites and made my wife really annoyed…

“If only she has her own computer that actually works“, sometimes I thought…

Then today we received the latest OfficeWorks catalogue in the mail (you can get the online version at Catalogue Central, but no direct link to the catalogue), and there are two lappies at around $500 — Asus EEE PC for $488, and Compaq Presario C710TU for $548 after cashback.

Asus EEE PC

• Intel Celeron-M ULV 353 900Mhz
• 512MB DDR2 RAM
• 4GB SSD
• 7″ LCD at 800×480
• Xandros Linux + KDE
• 0.92kg

Compaq Presario C710TU

• Intel Celeron M530 1730Mhz
• 512MB DDR2 RAM
• 80GB HDD
• 15.4″ LCD at 1280×800
• Windows Vista Home Basic
• Dual Layer DVD Writer
• 2.99g

Comparison

Specification-wise, the Compaq seems to win hands down. It is faster, bigger, comes with optical drive and larger storage. It actually comes with Windows that runs your favourite games like Free Cell and Minesweeper! However,

• Compaq Presario might be made in China but Asus EEE PC is manufactured in Taiwan so potentially better made (sorry I was born in Taiwan so the bias here :)
• 512MB is not enough for Vista, so I have to either (1) upgrade the RAM, or (2) install Linux
• You only buy it for $548 if you can successfully claim the $150 rebate.
• 2.99kg is maybe too heavy for a 3 1/2 year old, not that she is going to bring it to pre-school :)
• EEE PC with Linux probably has more Wow factor than Presario with Vista.
• Most importantly, because daddy wants to play with an EEE PC :)

Again, CFO at home (i.e. wife) needs to be consulted before making any financial commitment, however the likeliness of getting either is pretty slim, because 3 1/2 year old should not spend that much time in front of computers anyway.

Happy New Year everyone! How is your Christmas/New Year holidays? For me it is a matter of staying at home, playing with kids, enjoying the family time and not doing anything (including blogging and updating my websites). Life will hopefully get back to normal tomorrow when I head back to work, and I will hopefully pick up working on OzBargain again.

While it is still the New Year’s Day, let me pounder on what OzBargain has achieved in 2007, and what my goals are for in 2008, in a similar fashion as my post last year.

2007 — Out!

2007 is the year where I moved this blog to its current URL, which reflects the direction I am taking for OzBargain and this blog. It used to be my blog where I shared bargains I found with my readers. With a full time job as a Software Architect and 2 kids, this arrangement simply does not scale, thus the birth of OzBargain in November 2006 where everyone can post deals. Throughout the year I started to post less and less deals here, and this blog has shifted its focus from bargain sharing, to my soap box to announce updates on OzBargain.

2007 has indeed been a year of growth for OzBargain. The growth has been slow but steady. In January 2007, there were 10,000 visits and 5,500+ unique visitors. In December 2007, there were 125,000 visits and 50,000+ unique visitors — almost 10 fold in traffic! It had no RSS subscribers back in January, and now boasts 660-700 daily RSS subscribers.

Some of the most visited deals:

• Big W’s Toy Sale back in July, almost 14,000 hits. Somehow it came up in Google for that specific term, although it was not a highly rated deal.
• Domino’s Pizza Coupons posted in May, getting 9,800+ hits this year. Domino’s coupons have been great, which had made me eat more pizzas than I should…
• Dell 2407WFP for $778 delivered posted in June with around 9,800+ hits as well. It has been linked by various popular forums such as Whirlpool and OCAU. You can now get 24″ LCD monitors for less than $600 now, even from Dell! (E248WFP is currently at $599).

Reflecting last year’s plan,

• Focusing on OzBargain.com.au — big tick on this one. In fact I felt sorry for the readers here that I have been neglecting this blog for a while.
• Giving away more prizes — more than $2,000 cash/gift voucher prize given out to 57 different prize winners this year. Thank you very much for participating!
• More community — OzBargain has really grown into a community of its own. There are people actively participating in discussions every single day! I have also personally made quite a few friends here. Thank you everyone again!
• I need a new theme — well, you are still looking at that good old theme when this blog started more than 2 years ago…

It has been an enjoyable ride, but enough of yester-year. Let me spell out the plans for this year.

2008 — In!

Some of my 2008 plans for OzBargain:

• Spend less time on the community — yes I think I had spent too much time blogging and looking after OzBargain in 2007 where I should have been working and spending time with family and church. I have to tell myself that OzBargain is just a hobby. Sorry I have to put the priority right :)

  I have appointed my very first moderator on OzBargain last week — JeffreyM, and hopefully more later on during the year to help out keeping OzBargain a useful place for bargain hunters in Australia.

• Developing new features — another reason why I want to withdrawal myself partially from community work is because, hmm, I am not that good at it. I rather spend time doing what I am better at, i.e. coding and developing the website, than blogging and building the community.

  I have a big pile of TODO’s for OzBargain but I am not sure whether I can find time to implement them all. However I am hoping that for 2008, OzBargain is not just a great community to find cheap stuff, but also a great web application platform to find good bargains.

Yes, I know that the description is a bit vague. You might have expected things like “2 million unique visitors per day” or “$20,000 advertisement income each month” but sorry I prefer to keep things a bit vague for the moment because (1) no big disappointment later this year (2) plan changes all the time (3) it is only a hobby site, after all.

I do hope, however, that OzBargain can continue to provide a useful service to you, the bargain hunting community, that everyone can have a great 2008 saving money from the deals we share together.

First of all, I know it’s a bit late, but MERRY CHRISTMAS everyone, and HAPPY NEW YEAR! I think my weekly update on this blog has gradually shifted to fortnightly, and my blog posts have also been hit and miss. Maybe getting my act together and keep this blog alive shall be my new year resolution?!

Let me answer one frequently asked question first. Darren asked today:

Why doesn’t bargain blog simply list all the items in ozbargain? Ozbargain
seems to be far more up to date.

When you are comparing OzBargain and Bargain Blog, then yes. If you are a bargain seeker then the choice is easy. Subscribe to OzBargain and get your daily fresh dose of true Aussie bargains! Why then do we have a bargain blog that simply paraphrases what others have submitted in OzBargain?

Well. Long long time ago on an Internet domain far far away, Bargain Blog was born as a way for me to share some deals I found with my friends. Then some of you guys started sending me deals to be posted on my blog. At some point I got fed up with all the requests, so I launched OzBargain last year where everyone can just post their bargains themselves… This blog is now the official blog of OzBargain, where I can post about the best deals of the week, what has happened at OzBargain, all the new development, etc.

Clear? Anyway. Here are some great deals posted last week.

Domino Pizza — $3.95 on New Years Eve

We have not had a pizza deal for quite a while — and thanks to hallfamily24 for posting this deal to put a stop to our pizza cravings! On New Years Even only, you can get large Domino’s pizza pick up for $3.95.

Now, Domino’s “large” pizza has recently been criticised by Eagle Boys with their Full Size Large Pizza campaign. Yes, they are getting smaller and smaller — no doubt about that. However at $4-$5 per pizza with their regular coupons, I guess not many people would care. At least from the number of votes on that Eagle Boys deal, you know where most people will end up be buying from anyway.

To track the latest Domino’s coupons, use this link (and this RSS feed).

Boxing Day Stock Take Sales

Lots of boxing day stock take sales posted this week. What do you expect? To many bargain hunters, the most exciting thing about Christmas is the Boxing Day sale!

• Myer Stock Take Sale Part 1 and Part 2 — definitely one of the most popular one. Myer opened at 6am on the Boxing day — anyone queued up?
• Target
• Big W, and
• Kmart.

I have actually been to none (but will go to the Toys “R” Us one tomorrow morning). Wish me luck grabbing something cheap. Thanks to winter and JeffreyM for posting these deals.

Free Delivery from OO.com.au and Deals Direct

Free delivery from OO.com.au — has already ended today at 4pm, but you still have a few minutes to get free delivery from Deals Direct. 10% off coupon for Deals Direct also reported to work.

Better be hurry if you have only seen these deals now!

Koorong vs. Word.com.au End of Year Sale

Let’s leave the battle between online department stores aside. Battle of Christian bookshops seems to be even more fierce. Koorong launched their end of year sale with 20% off everything, and 25% off when you spend $200 or more. How would WORD.com.au strike back?

They simply give us exactly the same deal, plus up to 50% off Christmas books, CDs and DVDs.

Both deals finish on January 5 so plenty of time to shop.

Didn’t OO.com.au just had a free delivery weekend less than a month ago? I had already bought all my Christmas presents last time, but apparently they are now doing it again for today and tomorrow! Lucky you late shoppers! Free delivery until 6pm Thursday December 20, if you pay by PayPal.

From the fine print:

We typically ship within 1-3 business days of receiving payment.

So I guess there is no guarantee the goods will arrive before Christmas.

There has also been a small drama at OzBargain. Initially princessmya posted it this deal yesterday at 3:50pm in the afternoon. However she titled her post “Free gift with pay pal purchase at oo.com.au”, which I mistakenly thought it was a duplicate to this deal posted earlier this month (which has the coupon code for free gift from OO.com.au). Like all other duplicated deals on OzBargain, they got deleted pretty much soon afterwards.

However, princessmya‘s post actually contains information about the free delivery, which I have obviously overlooked. Then today barguy posted the same deal again with a better title, “Free Delivery + Free Gift Valued at $15 if you Pay by Paypal @ OO.com.au”. Only at that point I knocked my head, heh I have deleted something that I wasn’t supposed to delete! Some verdicts:

• Move questionable deals back into moderation queue instead of deleting them.
• Choice of words for a deal-post is very important.

Back to bargain hunting…

Sorry for skipping a week last week. Well, I was busy organising the server move, I was sick, and yes I think I have advanced my ranking in the “Australia’s slackest blogger” leaderboard :) Fortunately the bargain hunters at OzBargain have been working hard last week sharing many great bargains.

Lenovo Thinkpad T61 Only $1,199

Following last month’s Thinkpad T60 sale, Lenovo is now offering their award-winning Thinkpad T61 for $1,199 to members of Lenovo Affinity Purchase Program (or $1,299 otherwise). You get Core 2 Duo T7500 (2.2Ghz), Vista Home Premium, 1GB RAM, 160GB HDD, 15.4″ WXGA LCD, etc. Thanks to jackychen for posting this.

A nice price for this solid built business class notebook, although besides the CPU the spec is a bit “basic”. Upgrading it to 2GB RAM, a DVD burner and 3 year warranty brings the price up to $1,661. Still a good price for this machine, but not as cheap as it appears to be initially.

Rent One Get One Free from VideoEzy

Thanks to dansor for posting this deal — Rent one DVD/video get one FREE of a lesser or equal value @ VideoEzy.

Limit one per membership and expires end of January.

Pennytel’s VoIP to Mobile Flatrate

My wife rang my sister-in-law in Melbourne on Monday and talked for 30+ minutes. Afterwards she went, “ouch, I think I called her mobile number!” because somehow AAPT “accidentally” disconnected thier land phone. Anyway, this latest deal from Pennytel — 28.88 cent flat-rate calls to Aussie mobiles, would have saved me a small fortune!

Pennytel already has super-low call rate at 12.78 cents per minute to the mobiles, so you’ll actually come up in front if you make calls longer than 135 seconds. What about if you hate talking on the phone and struggle to converse with someone for more than 20 seconds? No problem! It is actually a toggle-able option in your account interface so you can change fro and back at will.

Thanks to Minotaur for sharing this deal.

10% Off All Computers at JB Hi-Fi

You probably won’t associate JB Hi-Fi with “computers”, but you might now have to because they are having a 10% off all computers sale until this Sunday! That is 10% off Apple, 10% off Acer, 10% off Asus, HP and Toshiba! It is still a very good deal if it’s just 10% off recommended retail price. Thanks to bevisaurus for posting this deal. Also thanks to Iain who works in JB Hi-Fi to confirm with the deal. It is only applying to floor items and no custom builds.

Subscribe to OzBargain (RSS, Twitter, Email, etc) so you don’t miss out on the latest bargains!

Here is one great deal that many of you will be interested in — Kmart 15% Off for Staff and Family from Friday 7 December to Sunday 9 December! Thanks to chrisg for posting it on OzBargain!

There are some exceptions that you can’t get 15% off. From the voucher:

Does not include LCD and plasma TVs, computer game consoles, whitegoods, iPods, iTunes music cards, cigarettes, gift cards, PixiFoto, phone recharge vouchers and Kmart & Auto Service centres. No rainchecks. No further discounts apply.

You will need to download the PDF, print it out, and bring it with you when you shop at Kmart.