Advertising on ticalc.org
Posted by Chris on 1 April 2001, 02:00 GMT

Although our policy always has been to avoid putting advertisements on the site, we were recently forced to decide between closing ticalc.org or finding immediate ways to cover what has become a very large monthly bandwidth bill. The site's level of traffic has attracted the interest of some large advertisers, and we are pleased to announce that we will be able to continue operating the site with their generous sponsorship in the form of banner advertisements at the top and bottom of our front page.

We realize our visitors have come to appreciate the lack of ads on our pages, while nearly every other large web site blinks and flashes like a two-dimensional Las Vegas. We hope to return to an ad-free policy in the near future once we have secured alternative sources of funding. But for the time being, we plan to use our banner ads to benefit the community as well. In addition to commercial banners, we will also be accepting banners advertising other TI-related web sites and displaying these in our ad rotation at the bottom of the home page. If you would like to participate, please send your site's banner as a static or animated GIF file (dimensions 468x60, under 30k please) along with your site's URL to ads@ticalc.org. We hope this will make the presence of banners advantageous for both the site and for you, our visitors. Thank you for your understanding.

Update (Chris): Of course we're kidding. Our regular visitors should know better than to believe anything we post on 1 April. If you missed the gag, here are the banners we concocted for the event:

Incidentally, the TI-81 web site is not fabricated, as some have insinuated. Our apologies to the author; it's nothing personal. :)

We also received at least one earnest banner submission for a TI web site. Since we feel bad having the sender spend his time for nothing, here's a free plug.

Update (Eric): The newsletter, which was encoded in ROT13, can be read (in English) here.

Update (Henrik): Don't forget to take the survey and tell us if you fell for it or not.

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