New features and changes

[Otto de Voogd]

Dear Countdown Clock Members,

Several changes have recently been made to the countdown clock
generation tools. Not only have all the pages been reedited to give
them a somewhat cleaner appearance and make it easier for users to
find their way but there have also been a number of feature changes...

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Countdown Search Plugins

Firefox and Internet Explorer users can now create a completely
customized search plugin, that starts a countdown to the date they
enter in the search box. As usual you can determine the appearance of
your clock and the contents of your clock.

Check it out: http://www.7is7.com/otto/countdplugin.html

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Changeable Date Clocks

The page to generate changeable dates has been retired, however the
possibility to create such clocks has been integrated into the main
countdown clock generation tool. One only has the uncheck the
checkmark in front of the sentence that reads: "Uncheck for changeable
target date".

Try it: http://www.7is7.com/otto/countdclock.html

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Promotional Banner Reduced in Size

The promotional banner that is used to promote open source products
and services, has been reduced in size. It now consists of only one
line. This change is still under evaluation, but first results look
promising, not only does it get less in the way of the main purpose of
the clock, it actually seems to work better. I had expected the number
of click throughs to go down but surprisingly they seem to have gone
up!

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New Languages

As usual a few new languages were added as well, we wish the thank the
contributors and reiterate that new languages are always welcome.
There are also still a number of incomplete languages that are waiting
for someone who can complete them. Here is the list of new languages
and their contributors:

- Leet & Ultra-Leet - contributed by Otto de Voogd
- Macedonian - contributed by Vladimir Gjorgjijoski
- Gaeilge - contributed by Seán Ó hAdhmaill
- Võro - contributed by Maris Möldre
- Albanian - contributed by Kushtrim Fetiu

Contributor list: http://www.7is7.com/otto/countdown/contrib.html
Language resource: http://www.7is7.com/otto/countdown/lang.html

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Thank you for reading and I hope you will continue to enjoy using the
countdown clock!

Otto

[Otto de Voogd]

I hope that you have all had a nice Easter holiday. We used the time
to make a few improvements to the countdown clock. Here are two of the
more important changes since the previous update:

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A Choice of Short URL Providers

The countdown clock now offers a choice of short URL providers, the
three short URL services now on offer are: http://xrl.in/ , http://is.gd/
and http://tinyurl.com/ . There is a drop down box just above the
buttons that use short URL services to allow you to make your choice.
Initial data shows that only 5% used a service other than the default
one. Nevertheless if this feature does turn out to be popular we will
consider to add a few more popular services.

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Our Own Server

I finally took the big step and moved all our sites to a virtual
private server, this means that the resources on that server are now
all for us, so we don't need to share them with other sites. It's much
more expensive of course, but it improves the uptime and
responsiveness of the sites and I believe that quality is important.
Not that we had any serious problems before, but its better to be a
step ahead, especially given the way traffic to the site continues to
grow.

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Thank you for reading,

Otto

p.s. To follow me on Twitter or other social sites:
http://www.7is7.com/otto/about/connect.html