2004-5-29 Test

Ignore this please, I'm setting up a new website, sorry to disturb

2004-3-10 Beta 2.0.4 released

Hi all,

I'm back from my trip to denmark, and have been working on EHC for about a week now, and I'm ready with a new update.
There isn't much new features in this one, but it fixes two major problems and a few minor.

1. Time-outs and max-download size is FINALLY working (I've been trying to solve this for around 3 months !)
2. A lot of users have experienced trouble with some weird transactions that has been going on lately, that contain a line-break in the memo field... This confuses EHC, and causes it to either freeze, loop or simply declare the downloaded history useless. I originally fixed this in version 1, but must have forgotten to put the fix in version 2. Someone sent me one of those payments a few weeks ago, and I discovered (and fixed) the mistake.
3. You now have the ability to interrupt EHC while a download is running.
4. Balances did not show correctly if for example you had one account with some gold and some silver, and another one with no gold-transactions, after updating the first you'd update the second, and the gold-balance of the first would still show.
5. Minor fixes.

Known bugs yet to be fixed:
1. For some reason certain date-ranges won't download from E-gold, this also applies to Internet Explorer, so I think the problem is at e-golds server, if you have this problem try the "Clear History and Update" function. That solved it for me.
2. Certain passphrases still cause problems in the encryption algorithm, which causes account numbers and passphrases to show completely garbled, and not work. Solutions if you have this problem: Change your passphrase, or simply don't use the save passphrase feature.
3. A lot of users have mailed me asking why the transaction total is different from the actual balance. Here is the explanation:
It is caused by gold fluctuations.
Example: If you received 100$ one year ago at exchange rate 380 your transaaction total would be $100, but your actual balance at the current rate would be more as the value of gold has gone up (or the dollar has dropped). Of cause it works the other way around as well.
The balance shown in the top is your actual current available balance.
The "Balance" and "Transactions total" fields are simply calculations of all transactions added together.
This is not a bug.

Many users has been confused by multiple update e-mails sent out, and has downloaded the demo version after paying for the full one, so I've deleted every e-mail address that was on both lists from the database.

Some pages of the website has also been updated since last. For example you might want to check http://www.oz-coding.com/ehhc/myinvest.asp if you're into HYIP-investing. Comshares and Bonded Investing are still going really well, but there's been a few other additions as well.

And the last thing: If anyone has asked for new features, and I've agreed to put them in the next update (this one), but they aren't here, please let me know again, I've probably forgotten :)

___________________
Mikkel Christensen,
Programmer of the E-gold History Checker
http://www.oz-coding.com/

2003-12-30 WARNING ! and EHC bug-reports?

Hi !

Sorry if you receive this twice, the first mailing failed half-way, and I wanted to make sure everybody got it. If you receive it more than twice it's because you're subscribed to more than one of the lists (ie. demo list, fulll version list and referrer list)

I've just seen a site that I have never seen anything similar to.

I state on the security page on the website that it is not possible to force your browser to display www.e-gold.com if that isn't the site you're on.

I have just for the first time in my life seen a site that actually manages to display that URL without it being the actual URL.

So: WATCH OUT, soon there will probably be more of them.

The site is www.egoldgame.com. DO NOT ENTER YOUR PASSWORD ON THE PAYMENT FORM !

You can see that the site is actually hosted on their server by right-clicking and chosing properties.

I imagine they use a chr(13) inside the URL to make your browser show only the first part of the URL. They have made a mistake though, it isn't httpS, but just http, so you won't have the completely correct URL, and you won't have the padlock. But soon other thieves will find out about this, and you'll see sites using the same method, but without the errors.


And about EHC... If there are any more problems that you haven't already told me about please do so within the next 48 hours. If no more bug reports come in for version 2.0.2 within 2 days I'll send out version 2.0.3, and if there are no bug-reports for that one we'll come out of beta. Thanks for your patience while testing.

Mikkel Christensen

2003-12-17 A few suggestions

Hi EHHC referrers !

I write to give a few tips on how to maximise your commision payments while minimizing your efforts.

One of the easiest ways to gain referrals is to simply put your referral link in the signature on forums that you are active in, obviously these forums should have a topic related to e-gold. i have referrers earning $20 a day simply by using this form of advertising. It's free for you, and click-through (and visitor/sales) rates are rather high. If you're active in a forum people will know you, and think of you as a serious person, therefore the high conversion rate.

Another way is paid e-mails / clicks / visitors. The conversion rate here isn't as high, simply because the visitors are usually incentivized, they get some sort of reward for visiting. The people who uses these programs are usually more interested in the reward for going to the site than in the actual site. Furthermore these people will usually think alot before spending $5... They are spending an hour or two per day, making only a dollar or so, so they'll think of $5 as 5 days work. If they thought of $5 as two hamburgers instead then it probably would be alot easier to make a sale (and they probably wouldn't spend much time surfing for 0.5 cents).
Last thing to mention on this one is that you should never advertise anywhere that pays in any other way than e-gold... That way you're guaranteed that every visitor at least has an e-gold account, and therefore a "need" for EHHC.

The last way I'll describe here is banner advertising. This form of advertising is often rediculed, and thought of as something of the past. Why? - Because if you buy 100,000 banner impressions you'll receive only somewhere between 100-500 visitors. For the price of 100,000 banner impressions you can buy 1,000 guaranteed visitors. So you'll get 2-10 times more visitors with the guaranteed visitor package.
So why go with banners? -Because out of a thousand guaranteed visitors (who get money for visiting the site) only 1 will buy... And that's if you're lucky. 1 in ten visitors who click on a banner without getting anything for it will buy ! So you'll get 10-50 sales from 100,000 banner impressions, compared to max 1 from 1,000 guaranteed visitors.
Why is the conversion rate so different? -Simply because when people click a banner it's because they're allready interested in the product, when they arrive at the site they are much more likely to buy. If people click a link that pays them 0.5 cent then they're interested in that incentive payment, and don't give a flying f¤%& about the site it opens.
Banner advertising is extremely cheap, I just purchased 1,000,000 impressions for around $12 that should give me at least a few sales every week for the next 3-6 months, ROI: several thousand percent.


There are still several users sending people to the wrong referral link. Please check that the one you're using is the one below:
http://www.oz-coding.com/ehhc/?ref=Admin
Referrals sent through an invalid referral link will not be credited to your account !

Mikkel Christensen

2003-11-27 EHHC version 2 released for BETA

Hi all !

I've just finished uploading EHHC 2.0 to the server. It's available for paid users now, and a bit later will be available for demo users as well.

It is BETA !

Version 2.0 has a lot of improvements to it, but it is an (almost) complete rewrite. I've optimized it for much better performance offline, and even more much better (grin) performance online.

EHHC no longer downloads the entire history every time you click update, but only fetches new transactions. This means that users with large histories and slow connections can now get their history in 10-20 seconds instead of the 4-5 minutes it could take before.
The update special function has been removed, and is replaced by improved offline filtering (meaning that you actually have much more options available for filtering than at e-gold own site). The filters must be set up seperately, but you can save as many filters as you like for easy access directly from the main form.
I've added an "export to file" function that will generate a set of .htm pages and .jpg graphs displaying the data in a relatively nice layout, this is convinient if you wish to share your history online, but also very convinient for those of you that have requested a print function. I will get to the actual print function, but everything takes time when you're working alone :)
The export function isn't finished yet, when I finish it it'll be able to handle two more formats, including .csv, and will have much more options available.
Also I've added an auto-update function, meaning that you can minimize EHHC to the system tray (next to the system clock), and have it update automaticly ever now and then and let you know if new transactions has come in.
You're no longer left in the dark while downloading, as EHHC now displays download status.
Should your download time out EHHC will automaticly try to recover the data allready downloaded, so that you don't have to start over.

Also, on the technical side:
EHHC no longer uses the Microsoft Internet Transfer control for downloading, but instead uses calls directly to the WinInet API (wich is basicly what the inet transfer control does as well, but this way I have much better control over the situation, and can display the download status). This was a bit of a problem to implement as the WinInet API locks the application while waiting for response. I solved this by opening a new thread (which isn't as easy as it sounds, took me 2 weeks searching various expert-groups before I found this solution).


All that is very good, BUT, yes there is a but:
As this version is completely rewritten it's like the first version I sent out: Probably full of bugs !

I need your help to find these bugs, and get them fixed, so whenever you see something that isn't the way it should be: Drop me a line or two by mail (reply to this one), in the forum, or by MSN or iCQ (read http://www.oz-coding.com/ehhc/contact.asp to find my numbers)
This also means that you shouldn't switch to version 2 if you are dependant on EHHC for some sort of work or the like. You may want to download and try it out anyway though, but keep version 1 just in case.

So, bottom line: This is a BETA version, don't complain about bugs, but please do tell me about them :)

Mikkel Christensen
Ps.: For referrers who haven't checked the referral center for a while: I've added some banners for you to put on your websites... Go promote :)