Oz Bargain Blog started its life almost 2 and half years ago, and has been on the domain, OzBargainBlog.com, since April 2006. At the beginning it was hosted on my home server off my ADSL connection, moved to off-shore budget hosting as the hard disk of my home server crashed, moved back to a Sydney server with Jumba in April 2006, and then moved to a Sydney VPS November last year, just before we launched OzBargain.com.au. So much moving around over the last 2 1/2 years!

… and we have just moved again!

First of all, it is the URL — we have moved off its own domain to a sub-domain of OzBargain.com.au — Blog.OzBargain.com.au.

That pretty much says how much this blog has transformed since OzBargain launched last November. I no longer report the latest bargains that I found here. Instead, all the actions are happening at OzBargain, and I am merely summarising them here once or twice a week. I also blog more about the progress of OzBargain, which has become my main focus. It is also confusing about the relationship between these two sites. So well, it makes sense to make this blog a sub-domain instead.

I am also moving the hosting to overseas again — this time to a new VPS in Portland, Oregon. My Sydney VPS feels like running out of steam due to increasing traffic. Actually there is still plenty of CPU time but my traffic level goes way up. I am still hoping to host my main site in Sydney so most my visitors can get fast response. Instead of throwing more money to pay for the expensive bandwidth in Australia, I am now moving this site overseas, as blogs are not that interactive anyway.

Okay. That’s the update this week. Have a good weekend everyone!

How is everyone this week? There has been no short of great deals posted at OzBargain. Let’s check what were the best deals from the last 7 days.

Daily Deals Catch A Thon #10

Wait. It is actually not a deal from last week. In fact Daily Deals‘ Catch A Thon #10 starts mid-day today! If you have missed out from previous Catch of the Day deals, then you might be able to catch it again in the next 12-36 hours, depending on how long this Catch A Thon will be.

Free $5 Credit for Big W Photos

Big W’s photo service now has its own website! To encourage sign ups, they are offering $5 Free Credit where you can spend in the shop. At 19c per 6×4 print, and minimum $1 transaction charge, you can get 32 prints for just $1.08! You can then pick it up from your local Big W, or pay for delivery at $2.95 per order.

Thanks to barguy for posting this deal.

30% Off Lonely Planet Books

You thought Lonely Planet’s 20% Off deal last week was pretty good, then you’ll hate it when you can now get 30% off discount using the coupon code KAYAK30. There is also a great discussion on how you can get the most out of all different combination of Lonely Planet discount. A must for keen travellers.

Thanks to yousuf for posting this deal.

3 Large Pizza for $10 from Domino’s

Back in early 90’s, when there was few competition, 2x large pizza delivered would cost you $20. With these Domino’s Pizza coupons, you can now feed many more people with $20 if you are willing to pick them up yourself. Now, how many pizza can you get for $10? Not one, not two, but three large pizzas from Domino’s!

However the code provided actually does not work on their online ordering system, but Skippy managed to scan the coupons, and KLoNe actually tried it in his local Domino’s… And it worked! Hmm. Did I just feel hungry again when I typed up this blog post?

Free Memory Card Delivery from ShoppingSquare

Again there are some great deals from ShoppingSquare.

• Genuine Sandisk memory cards — buy 2 get free delivery. Very good price as well.
• 2GB DDR2 PC5300 RAM for $59.93. Yes, you know your Vista-infested PC really needs it!
• HP Compaq Presario B1973TU Laptop $1489 + Free delivery. A bit out-dated, but a nice business grade ultra portable at very good price nevertheless.

That’s all folks. Thanks for contributing to OzBargain!

While browsing through the latest Harvey Norman catalogue online, I spotted this on page 11:

It reads Price Breakthrough — Plasma TV below $1,000. Indeed, thanks to advancement in technology, manufacturing, the strong Aussie dollar and cheap Chinese labour and currency, Harvey Norman is now selling this 106 cm/42 inch “HD ready” plasma TV, branded “Celestial”, for merely $999! Those 42 inch beast used to cost 10 times the price! They were so expensive 4 years ago that even John Howard had to borrow one! Yes I know that there were only expensive brands like Sony and Panasonic back then, but I am still fascinated on how quick the price has dropped.

Apparently Harvey Norman is not the only one that breaks through the price. Actually if you find things sell this cheap in HN — you will probably find them cheaper elsewhere. Yesterday the new Big W catalogue came out, and the catchy item on the front page? AWA 42 inch/106cm Plasma TV for $998, and it is an everyday price, not even a promotional item. The same deal — High Definition ready, HDMI input, 1024×768 good for 720p, and good brightness and contrast that you normally get from plasma TVs.

It also emphasised “Made in Korea”, which I guess Big W is trying to distinguish it from other Chinese-made products.

Who said big plasma TV is a luxury item?

Alissa sent me her site to have a look at. She ran a site listing free samples in USA and Australia — FreeSamplesDirect.com, where you can get listing of free product samples. The site has a blog with new entries when the site gets updated, and RSS feed for those who wish to keep track the latest freebies.

There currently aren’t that many free samples in its Australian directory. However as the site has only started recently (domain registered in August 2007), hopefully there will be more freebies for the Aussies listed there in the near future.

My current favourite freebie site remains to be The Freebies Blog. The site has grown a lot since I last looked at it — 650+ feed subscribers according to FeedBurner! Thanks Teresa for doing a great job there!

Okay. Now the real reason I am writing this blog post is, that some changes I’ve made to OzBargain last week might put myself into competition with these sites. First of all, the fact — not everyone likes freebies. Sometimes you got to wonder why companies and manufacturers give out free samples or free promotional offers. After all, it is generally agreed that there is no such thing as a free lunch. So, as a recipient of these free samples, you are either

1. Doing marketing research for them, i.e. testing out “beta product”, or
2. Taking that first addictive bite so you might actually pay to get more later.

People who dislike these freebies voted against them on OzBargain, which generated some discussion and some proposal to remedy the issue. Basically at the end of discussion is — freebies should be separated from bargains and coupons, and an option to hide them in user preferences.

So I coded the solution in a few evenings, and from now on, as a registered OzBargain user (register yourself an account if you haven’t!) you can set up your own threshold for the number of minimum votes before the deal appears in listing. You can basically set the freebie type to a very high minimum vote threshold to filter out the free product samples that get posted on OzBargain.

However, there are always people who don’t care about being a test druid and would love to try out all the free samples — this link (and corresponding RSS feed) will list every freebies submitted to OzBargain. Hopefully the current setup will keep everyone happy.

Upcoming development tasks — migrating to Drupal 5.2 (OzBargain is currently on Drupal 4.7 with lots of mods), and implement a new theme. If you have any feedback and feature request, please post them to our announcement & feedback forum.

Another busy week at OzBargain. I know that I should not try to post anything past mid-night but it has also been a busy day for me. If you can’t understand what I am posting, hopefully I will remember to correct all the spelling and grammatical errors tomorrow morning. Meanwhile, here are some great deals posted by the community members at OzBargain.

Free Olympics Official Pin

Time flies! It is almost 2008 already, where the Olympics is going to be hosted at Beijing China! Thanks to dansor for posting this deal, where you can get free Official Pin from olympics.com.au.

By signing up to olympics.com.au, the Official Site of the 2008 Australian Olympic Team, you’ll automatically receive the Beijing Bound eNewsletter in your inbox on the 8th of every month.

You’ll also receive a FREE official olympics.com.au pin.

Hmm. Beijing 2008 is only 300 more days to go!

More Air Ticket Sale

Cheap air fare seems to be our regular feature here, as there are more competitions coming to Australia.

• Tiger Airways $9.95 tickets, thanks to yousuf.
• Air New Zealand everyday cheap fare, thanks to ozpete.
• Air Asia Gold Coast to KL $289, thanks to yousuf again.

Competition is good as it drives down the price. Competition is bad because it has made my work so busy that I don’t have time taking holidays to use these incredible deals :(

Lonely Planet 20% Off

Tell me about a mega-combo deal. ozpete posted this great deal on Lonely Planet —

• Lonely Planet has regular deal where you buy 2 books and get 1 free.
• Use CITIBANK as coupon code to get 20%
• Orders $60 or above get free shipping.
• 10% from MoneyBackCo

Time to shop for some travel books.

When I wrote about RaboPlus’ InfoChoice $100 Free Credit Deal 2 months ago, quite a few was disappointed that it was only available for one day and they have missed out. This week, RaboPlus, who currently has the best interest rate in Australia for online saving accounts (not including honeymoon rates), is offering $50 free credit when you open a new account to SMSup users! Well, now the secret has been unveiled and everyone can apply for it with an appropriate coupon code. Moreover, this offer is available between 7^th and 13^th of October — so plenty of time.

Special offer to SMSPup members: earn yourself $50

As an SMSPup member, apply for a new 6.70% pa RaboPlus online savings account between Sunday 7th October and Saturday 13th October 2007 and we’ll kick start your savings with $50 when your account is opened.

Important Note: To take up this offer, please quote SMS1007 in the promotional code field when you apply online. Conditions apply.

Having been with RaboPlus for 2 months now I am pretty happy with the service. Its online banking interface is top notch, where you can manage your saving account, term deposit and managed fund from the same place. The “security device” can be a bit inconvenient as you don’t usually carry it around — but you do carry around your notebook computer to log into their website. My wife actually could not remember her PIN to her security device and locked it up after 5 failed entries, but they were happy to send a new one to her free of charge (plus a temporary master password so she can get through the security, but that’s another story…)

Thanks to T2 who submitted the deal to OzBargain.

I was at work this afternoon and one of my university friends, who knew that I ran a bargain website, IM’ed me a link, asking whether I knew about RetailMeNot.com. “Sure! I actually blogged about these guys almost a year ago!”

When I came home after work, my wife asked me whether I have heard of RetailMeNot.com (not again?!) and said that they are on Herald today — and surely it is, a big above-the-fold story “interviewing the Melbourne developer behind RetailMeNot.com!

They have significantly improved the website since I last wrote about them. The new theme is much nicer on the eyes (reminded me that I too need a new theme here). Besides the good old bookmarklet, they now also have Firefox extension and Mac OS X Dashboard widget. And forums. And revenue sharing via AdSense. Yet the core functionality retains its initial simplicity.

Congratulations to Guy and Bevan for making the news!

Some of the top deals that have been posted at OzBargain over the past 7 days.

Free Wii Remote Jacket

Thanks to MiCCAS for posting this deal, where Nintendo is offering Wii Remote Jacket for free for Wii owners! From the number of votes I think there must be a lot of Wii owners reading OzBargain. It’s not FREE as in completely free — you still need to an owner of a Nintendo Wii to claim this offer.

Moreover, what is the point of having your latest free Wii remote jacket without the actual games to play with? Big W is currently having a big console game sale for many recent game consoles. $348 for Wii console and $88 for 2 Wii games! Thanks to ih8parties for posting this deal!

As for me? Still in the process trying to get a Wii…

Kingston 1GB 667MHz DDR2 RAM $29.97 from ShoppingSquare

1GB Kingston DDR2 RAM for $29.95 from ShoppingSquare? Even with $10 delivery it is still cheap! Actually I am really surprised to see how cheap memory are, thanks to Microsoft and Windows Vista that helps to drive the demand. It is now quite common for desktop computers to equip with 2GB or 4GB of RAM just to browse the Internet and run the latest FPS. I thought 640kb ought to be enough?!

Thanks to kcyw for posting this deal.

Cheap Flights

Cheap flights have always been popular on OzBargain.

• Gold Coast-Kuala Lumpur Malaysia (via Brisbane) for $99 one way from AirAsia (thanks to ozpete)
• Perth-Melbourne for $49 one way from Jetstar (thanks to John)
• Sydney-Nagoya Japan for $299 one way from Jetstar (thanks to stonedewok)

Now I just need more holidays.

Great Freebies

Quite a few nice freebies have also been posted at OzBargain this week.

• 30 days trial with Quickflix where you can burrow up to 8 DVDs for free (thanks to kcyw)
• $20 free credit to David Jones card (thanks to yousuf)

Freebies, especially free samples, have been a touchy subject at OzBargain recently. Some people like them, but some people don’t. There is always that fine print under every free deal, but on the other hand what can you complain when you pay nothing for it?

It has generated a bit of discussions on OzBargain so I am in the process of separating the freebies from regular deals and coupons. This feature should be available next week — stay tuned.

There is also going to be a change on our weekly competition, after a bit of discussion today. Basically if you submitted a deal hours before 12PM AEST on Thursday, there is little chance your deal can get enough of votes to win the popularity contest. We even have people keeping a list of deals, and will only post them AFTER the draw to maximise the winning chance for the following week.

So for the competition next week, we will change the criteria for the most voted deals. Instead of drawing from the pool of deals posted over the last 7 days, we will use a 2 week running window. We’ll see how it goes.

I am totally flattered when I learnt that OzBargain was mentioned on the BRAN podcast. BRAN is a like TWiT for the Australians, where three journalists Roulla Yiacoumi, Angus Kidman and Nathan Taylor chatted about the big tech news of the week. The only person that I actually recognise is Angus as I have been a long-time subscriber of APC Magazine. It is in Episode #65 which was published two weeks ago. The discussion on OzBargain starts at around 26m:02s and finishes at around 27m:29s.

Nathan> I really want to bring up a great concept site that I found this week. There is a site called OzBargain.com.au, and it is essentially a digg for great shopping bargain…

Wow! Then they talked about the problems they had on OzBargain where reported price is different from the price on the linked site — I guess that’s what happened when you miss out a sale :) Also as each user can either vote or “bury” (make negative vote) any published deal, hopefully the good ones will stay at top and dodgy spammy ones will go into the void.

Thanks to Charmaine from OO.com.au for reminding me that — they are having Free Delivery with PayPal this labour day long weekend! You get free delivery site wide when you pay with PayPal, and no coupon code needed so you can still use the $5 gift voucher from their previous promotion. This offer ends Monday 1^st of October 2007.

And don’t worry — you can still get free delivery if you happen to live in Queensland, Victoria, Tasmania, Western Australia or Northern Territory, who actually do not have a public holiday this coming Monday :)

Ever since Apple iPhone was released in US back in June, there has been a great anticipation on when it is going to be released in Australia. According to unofficial sources on the Internet, we probably will not see this most desirable Apple gadget in Australia until sometime in 2008. Moreover it is likely that it will be locked to a specific network, like AT&T in US, O2 in UK and T-Mobile in German.

Should you wait? For myself I have absolutely no desire of an Apple iPhone — at least not at its price point. However there are many who simply cannot wait, and have already started importing retail packaged iPhone from US, terminated the contract with AT&T, unlocked the phone and then used them in Australia’s GSM network! It did not take long for the entire process to be streamlined into a business, and “unlocked iPhone” deals started to appear on OzBargain.

08/09/2007 — $1,400 from Quikshop

Quikshop started it first. Actually I am not sure whether they were the first one commercialise this process but I spotted them first when I searched for iPhone on Shopbot. At $1,400 it is more than double the price of buying iPhone out-right + cost to terminate the contract. I am not sure how many suckers have bought from them at this price, and Quikshop has already dropped the price to $999.

17/09/2007 — $999 from ShoppingSquare

ShoppingSquare seems to be taking big orders of importing unlocked iPhones from US. $999 seems to be quite reasonable comparing to Quikshop and furthermore then are providing 1 year limited warranty in Australia. Not sure how ShoppingSquare does it but I think it should give buyers a peace of mind just in case your new iPhone turns into iBrick during an update. They have since dropped the price to $979.

20/09/2007 — $979 from OzBazaar.com

You know it! It did not take long for importers to compete on price. OzBazaar.com is bringing the price down to $979, merely $20 cheaper than ShoppingSquare but with unknown status on warranties. They did drop the price to $898 soon afterwards. Delivery is $19.95

25/09/2007 — $899 from Nobeta Place

iPhone under $900?! Only if you are willing to buy from an online store with no “About Us” section nor any ABN information. Nobeta Place is actually a Western Australia operation but will you part your hard earned cash ($899!!) with these guys? The price war has certainly started, and they have just dropped their price to $869.

25/09/2007 — $650 from VoiTech

I guess it is about time for a company to introduce extreme pricing to eliminate competition. VoiTech is selling locked iPhone for $649.99, provided that you are a Whirlpool or OCAU member (see the relevant iPhone buying thread at WP). You can also get unlocked version for $799.99, but why bother when there is already an Open Source GUI application that can do it for you?

Since the pricing has been posted, they have subsequently increased the price of locked version to $679.99, but also introduced refurbished iPhone at $639.99 locked or $749.99 unlocked. Cheapest by a big margin. Many people have received their phone on Whirlpool’s thread so they have to be genuine.

$640 for a refurbished locked iPhone + open source unlocking application — tempted? What I can’t understand is — why pay so much for a high-end phone when data can only travel at GPRS speed? Haven’t we all moved into HSDPA for mobile broadband already? What will you feel when all your pals with their latest 3.5G phone watching YouTube online, but your iPhone can barely make VoIP calls?

“But iPhone is so cool!” Here is an alternative — CECT P168 for USD$159 delivered from DealExtreme, and most people won’t be able to tell the difference from a distance. I think that will be the path I’ll go for, until HSDPA phones dropped down to $200 mark.

Update 28/09/2007: Just noticed that many iPhone related .com.au domains have been registered and ranked well when you search for buying iPhones related terms on search engines.

One interesting website is BuyIphone.com.au which came top in SERP, and sells 8GB iPhone for $950 (with nation-wide free delivery). It’s relatively expensive, moreover it is nothing but an affiliate site to Aussie iPhones with 10% commission. I have not yet been able to locate Aussie iPhones in MoneyBackCo‘s database (probably a new merchant), but even at 10% moneyback it is still more expensive than the best offer.

Anyway. For all of you who want to make money online maybe it’s not too late to make affiliation websites that sell someone else’s imported and unlocked iPhones. However at OzBargain, we’ll just report the cheapest deal :)

Update #2: iPhone firmware update 1.1.1 came out, but don’t get your imported unlocked phone bricked. Not sure how are all these Australian importers going to handle all these bricked phones after the upgrade.

Last week I posted a question on OzBargain forums asking for opinions on social networking sites. Everyone ignored me so I guess I have figured out the general opinion on this matter :) Nevertheless, I love social networking sites and had spent my last 1-2 weeks getting OzBargain onto Facebook using their developer API. Hopefully it will be useful to some :)

I have been a user of various social networking sites over the past years, but have never managed to be active on anyone of them. Too busy I guess, and none of my friends use them. I guess it is an issue with those social networking sites — they are pretty useless until they have reached the critical mass, when you can actually find your RealLife^TM friends on there. When Facebook opened up to the world everything changed — for me at least. Due to the church I go to, most friends I have are actually university students and new graduates who are pretty much natives on Facebook. I ended up using this platform more and more to catch up friends who have since graduated and are scattered all over the world.

I think one big different between Facebook and, say MySpace, is the ways you can pimp your profile page. With MySpace you can modify your cascading style sheet, insert your own Javascript, etc to make it look very different from your friends’ profile pages. However not everyone is artistic inclined, and many MySpace profile pages are simply site for sore eyes. On Facebook however, customisations are provided via independently developed applications that need to conform to standard set of APIs and style guide. There is a limit on what you can do so everyone’s profile will look different yet consistent.

Okay. Sorry about the long introduction. Let me just introduce the OzBargain App on Facebook.

What can you do with it?

• Display front-page, recent and popular deals and coupons from OzBargain.
• Share bargains with your friends on Facebook.
• Display the deals that have voted (login required).
• Vote on the deals (login required).
• Display recently voted deals on your profile (login required).

For those that requires login, you need to log into OzBargain (using your OzBargain username/password) from inside Facebook so I can match up two IDs to properly register votes.

Yes I know that the functionality is quite limited. The speed is pretty bad too because all pages have to travel from Sydney where my server is, to Palo Alto where Facebook’s servers are, and then back to Australia where most of our users are. However it is a beta product (beta: an excuse for half-baked software :) so feel free to test it out and tell me what you would like to see in this OzBargain + Facebook integration.

It has been another busy week at OzBargain. Many new users signed up, many new deals have been submitted, and Google is now the number 1 site where the traffic comes from. Moreover, I have been busy coding a new module, which will be announced tomorrow. Meanwhile, let us check some of the top bargains from last week.

Free Movies

It has been a week of free movies.

• Free tickets to see “The Kingdom”, thanks to stonedewok.
• Free tickets to see “Super Bad”, thanks to yousuf.

More Domino’s Pizza Coupons

Domino’s Pizza coupons have now been a regular feature on OzBargain. Sometimes you can get a large pizza pick up as low as $3.95 on special occasions. This week we have large pizza pick up for $4.95 or 3 for $13.95. Thanks to ozpete for sharing.

I wonder who is still buying at the full menu price? Then again consumers are paying what they are willing to pay, and those who pay $9.95 for a large pizza usually don’t care.

Tiger Airways $14.95 Tickets

Tiger Airways is almost about to go live, and they have preemptive attack on price by offering one way domestic tickets from as low as $14.95! Thanks to yousuf again for posting this deal.

These are for flights fly into Melbourne between 23 Nov 2007 and 18 Mar 2008. That means you still have to source cheap tickets to fly out from Melbourne. Now we just need to see what VirginBlue and Jetstar have to compete against their Singapore rival.

PC World and Snapfish Deal

Last year APC offered me $20 off to continue subscription and I took the bait. This year they did not even bother to offer me any promotion so I ended up terminating my subscription of APC magazine. I got my up-to-date news from the Internet anyway, and most are pretty good journalism so I actually don’t miss the dead tree version of computer news.

So the traditional publishers are now fighting hard against the “new media”. How about show me some incentive to subscribe to your magazine? Would 100 free photo prints from SnapFish + free delivery good enough? Pay $25 for 3 months of PC World subscription, and you’ll get free photos from SnapFish.

Thanks to ozzie.

MyNetFone ATA for $9.95

Still trying to get started with VoIP? Don’t like the proprietary Skype? Can’t stand those free SIP phones that took packets half way around the globe to reach your friends down the street 2 seconds later? Don’t want to be tied to the computer?

MyNetFone’s Spring Sale is offering NetComm V100 Analogue Telephone Adapter (ATA) for $9.95, which also includes $10 call credit! It lets you connect your regular telephone to MyNetFone’s reputable VoIP service at a bargain basement price.

There are more deals submitted this week, and the best way to keep up-to-date deals is subscribe to OzBargain. Until next week…

Big news in Australia this week concerning the security of online shopping, where database of Roses Only was breached earlier this year, and many have their credit card details stolen and used by fraudsters around the world.

Quite an unfortunate event for those whose credit card information has been stolen. What is the point of 128 bit RC4 or 256 bit AES encryption between the browser and the eCommerce website, when the sensitive information is stored in plain text (or trivially ciphered) on the database? It is easy to verify how strong the front-door a website has (from how many “VeriSign Secured” seal it has on the homepage of course :) but how can you verify the process of handling and storing sensitive information, once it has been transmitted?

Your budget IT computer-parts osCommerce sites probably won’t tell you that.

In my opinion, SSL certificates is nothing more than marketing hype — it gives you a false sense of security, when the only thing that is verified is their email addresses (when they buy those $20/year RapidSSL certs), and the only thing encrypted is the TCP connection. It is useful nevertheless, but which fraudster is still sniffing the wire these days?

Use a more secure middle man, like PayPal or Google Checkout, might be a solution, so that the “dodgy eCommerce sites” will never receive your credit card detail. Big gateways like PayPal and Google Checkout are also more likely to be properly audited by security experts. However I would be kidding myself if no fraudulent activity has ever occurred at PayPal and friends…

Sorry about the rant. Although I’m not affected by this Roses Only incident, these security issues have certainly put me off from using my cards online.

’nuff said. Fun gadgets:

• Doro 635IPW Cordless Skype phone — $69.95
• Centrex High Definition Set Top Box — $79.95
• Mio A701 Digiwalker Phone+GPS+PDA — $579
• and more…

It’s run for the next 24-48 hours depending on the availability of stocks.