That is what I always liked about ticalc.org, all calculators and no ads...

Well, my opinion is switch to a cheaper domain name service, or really up the "need" for donations...

The ads just don't look right on this website!

Because it's the 7$ a year for the domain name that's the problem.

lol, I'm sure there is more cost involved. over here if i wanted to host a site at home like Omnimaga, which barely get 500 visitors per day it would cost me around $65 CAN per month for a fast enough to handle all traffic internet connection, and for a site like ticalc.org i would need a much better connection, more like $90-$100 CAN. This make around $800-1000 CAN per year, think about it.

A can dollar is around $0.80 US btw

i bet it would cost alot cuz of all of the games and progs that people upload everyday. its like gb of text files. lol.

<insert comment poking fun at your inability to differentiate between DNS and hosting>

How high are the current running costs?
Is sponsorship enough to keep ticalc alive?
Probably a donation-campain would help to keep the systems up for a while...

Is money a SERIOUS problem for ticalc?

It's not today, but it's getting to be. The main cost is the bandwidth - the usage we have goes above most small, medium and large hosters. You need to go to more "enterprise hosting", which means a lot more money per month.

Given our userbase, we have serious doubts that donations would be enough to keep us going, which is we are doing this as a trial. But again, remember that this is a *trial*. If it doesn't work out good enough, and/or doesn't make enough money to matter, we will take them down again.

Oh, also, if you have any specific suggestions of ad placements that are bad, or that we should use instead, during this trial, please let me know via email, and we'll consider making those changes. After all, we're definitly not here to make the site worse...

Maybe you could put the ads (if needed) at the bottom of the page where nobody looks?

I personally think that ads would distract from the theme and tone of ticalc.org, but if they are needed to maintain good service, i don't mind. (As long as the ads are appropriate)

We try to make them discrete. For example, we will *not* be putting ads "inside" news articles/comments as some other sites do. Look at the frontpage right now for the approximation of what we're thinking. (The placement in a box on the right, and a small add between news and files)

I personally don't like the box of ads on the right side, because i have to scroll further to see the survey and other things. Moving it to the bottom would be an improvement in my eyes, but it would be better if they weren't there.

And about how much money is made from ads, and how much money is needed to run the site?

Actually you don't, because we took out a different box that was there before :-)

What was there before? I dont notice anything missing...

Also, you could limit the ads on the home page and expand to all of the pages on the top bar, and put more ads on there and less on the homepage.

A box showing site updates, that we kept forgetting to update.

ohhhhhh *laughs*

Maybe i'm just paranoid.
I'm okay with that.

In my entire, almost 2 year stay here, I never once saw that box updated, so I dont think anyone is gonna miss it....

You haven't been looking carefully, because the last update was about a year ago.. The rest of your point is still valid though.

oh yeah i remember this box, i didnt looked at it cuz there is the news anyway

On that note anyone remember the "My Netscape" box? It was right between the "Older news" one and "Newsletter" one back in 2002

Yes. This is now served by our RSS feeds.

You could maybe put them in some discrete location, like a long lost directory and i will go there every day and click on all of the links repeatedly, if you are using google ad sense, or paid per click.

I guess it might be fine for just a little bit... However, I advise that youkeep them to a minimum.

No, that's not permitted by the agreement with the adprovider, in this case Google.

The idea doesn't really bother me as long as they are text ads or are relatively small. Some people are still stuck with dialup and there is nothing more that angers me than Flash Ads....

We will definitly not do anything other than text ads.

As long as the ads are only text, I'm fine with it. It's just those huge, flashy ads that drive me (and I'm sure many others) nuts!

What I care about is the site, and if some ads are needed, I say, "Go for it!"

It is for that reason I don't have Flash on Firefox. If I need Flash I just copy the URL into IE and look at it there. I never get any of those Flash ads that way, and most sites I visit don't require Flash.

unless they use a moving GIF for the ad...I've run into that before

yeah those flashing GIFs are frequently more annoying than the flash ads. Looks like here they are just doing Google's text ads, which aren't very annoying unless they are in the middle of the page text.

If your already using Firefox, then just install Adblock and FilterSet.G Updater (both are FF extensions). Together, they block *everything* (everything that's bad that is).

I use Adblock but I manually configure the filter. Tried Filterset G updater and, at least to me, it blocks too much-- not just ads but stuff I might want to see.

Yeah! Adblock is the way to go! All I see are two titles of "Ads" on the main page (the content is suppressed). So, it's fine by me if ticalc.org decides to keep the ads or even expand their placement. I won't see them, so I'm happy as a clam.

Or you could use Opera and not have to download extensions.

:-D exactly... i didn't even know there were ads until I went to ticalc.org at school (we only have IE... I really need to download opera there...)

Seeing as those sideboxes are only on the main page, I really don't mind them at all. If they were on the discussion pages then I might start having issues...

Ads by Goooooogle

FormCalc does math on
QuickBooks forms: calculated columns, Quantity subtotals & more
www.goflagship.com

Ti 83
Browse a huge selection now. Find exactly what you want today.
www.eBay.com

TI-84 Graphing Calculator
The Classic from Texas Instruments Now with More Software - 40% Off at
www.WaresDirect.com

MathXpert
Software to help with algebra, precalculus, and calculus.
www.HelpWithMath.com

:-D

You and me are going to start having issues ! >:(

:P

I'm just teasing you. I don't like ads either, especially the ones on the TICT HQ forum. Yuck! Fortunately, I have them all blocked by my hosts file.

I think you should put the ads up there at the top of the page in that big white spot to the right.. nothing else ever goes there, and if the ads were there, the general feel of the site would still be in tact, yet the ads would appear on every page.. I'm sure a table with 3 or so ads would fit up there. If this isn't enough, then put the remaining ads at the bottom of the page like centered above the Copyright notice..

I forgot to say: The section on the right of the homepage doesn't really bother me, but the ones like between the News and new programs are kinda sketchy.. and then like the one at the top of this page under the news item before the comments is kinda blah..

>and then like the one at the top of this page under the news item before the comments is kinda blah..

Yeah, the others are fine, but that one really gets in the way.

Guys Seriously... the day i saw this update i didnt even see the ads, then i ran through these posts and saw that they were already up and i was like WO didnt even see that. they are google ads guys, no biggy at all.

I didn't see them either. I read the article and I was like wha?? then I looked farther and saw the ad. I just scrolled right over them.

I've never found Google ads to be annoying, plus the fact that they're actually topical to the site.

My point was that the only one which really stuck out was the one at the top of the article. The others are fine.

What if you broke it up over smaller sites dedicated to each calculator?

If you did that then no one would port games to their calculator. Many people who have ported games ported them because they saw them for a calculator other than their own, then ported to their calc. Segregating calculators would keep different calculator owners separate, and less porting would be happening. The only way I could see the site splitting without losing too much porting is if there were only 3 categories: z80 calcs (73,82,83,83+,84+,85,86), 68k calcs (89,89T,92,92+,v200), and other programs

Idea: seperate the sections into multiple sites so it spreads out the bandwidth requriement (as suggested previous) and then make all the hyperlinks cross-connect the sites so they act as one and appear no different than they do now.

Think it could work? /Theoretically/, it would solve both problems mentioned here.

I've noticed a decrease in posts in news article and a massive decrease of program submitted over the past 3 years, does it mean traffic is kinda decreasing as well? That said even if it went to the amount of traffic back in 1999-2000 I'm sure it would still be costly

Kevin, check this out:
http://www.ticalc.org/about /webstats.html

2005 was the first year of an overall decline of activity over the previous year.

It seems that as time goes on, the user-base of TI calculators seems to be getting younger. This especially evident on the z80 calculators where almost every freshman at my school has a ti 83 plus or better. This user base is now what fills the TICalc.org website. These users have no way of making such donations. They have no credit card themselves, and their parents certainly won't fund a site devoted to mostly games (ticalc supports all calculator files but at least 60% of the download base is games). The donations have decreased significantly because of this fact. As donations decrease, and user-base increases, TIcalc has no choice but to have ads.

PS: anyone who has a ti 84+ or 84+ SE and gets an access denied (80070005) message when trying to send files via TIConnect you need to disconnect from the internet before sending the file to your calculator. I have no idea why this is, but it is. If this helped plz reply to this comment!

rtard

I've noticed a decrease in average user age nowadays on TI website. On my forums last summer there is lot of 13-14 years old people who signed up, and I remember only getting 15-17 years old people

I've noticed a decrease in average user age nowadays on TI website. On my forums last summer there is lot of 13-14 years old people who signed up, and I remember only getting 15-17 years old people

yea, I think it's as schools and parents push the kids to do more sooner. they then need better calcs sooner...

and that's part of the problem with me, since 6th grade, all the teachers took the attitude "you have a calc, use it" so now I start college precalc and can only use scientific calcs so its a real struggle...especially with stuff I only ever learned on a graph calc.

Example: x^3+4x^2-x-8=0 solve for all zeros
I'd start by graphing it and looking for any/all real zeros, then use a synthetic division program to reduce the equation, and a quadratic formula solver to get any imag. answers.

I don't know where to start without my calc. I remember something about fractions and trials but that's it.

Well, you'd start with synthetic division. Possible factors of this 3rd-degree polynomial are +/- 1,2,4,8
I'd start with 1 and -1, and see if those were zeros. Once I found what one factor was, then I could tell what type the other zeros were (real, repeated, complex) and use the quadratic formula to find them. Technically, you don't need a calculator for this operation. . .

But I know I am frequently very dependent on my 84+SE even for basic arithmetic. . . :-)

diddo, I had to write out all the addition when I started getting numbers like 7*58...and I had a tendency to punch in things incredibly simple, like 4^2...

/this/ year, we can use *simple* scientific calculators (just to approximate answers with e^() and ln()/log()

*ditto