Two more words - premium membership

Support the site.

Yes! What they said!

It's not always easy for some people to afford, and that's fine.

But on a bigger note, I would encourage anyone that uses a website regularly to help support the site directly instead of relying on advertisements. Not just AQ, but any website that you find particularly useful. Advertisements suck the the joy and blood out of pretty much everything, and let's face it--you aren't a "really" the customer when you watch an ad--your limited time is what is being sold. You are the product.

For those with more time than money, it might make sense to look at ads instead of paying for a premium membership. Or if you just log in once every couple of months, it might not be worth the cost for such little use. I certainly don't subscribe for every site I've been to with a premium option!

Google actually sends me email updates about the ads on AQ and suggests that I could earn more money if I put ads on more pages, and have them pop up more regularly and now they have a new option that will block access to the website completely after a specified number of page views until someone actually sits through a 30 second ad video or something. I generally ignore such "helpful" comments and don't really change the settings, and there's even an exception in the code that premium members--except for me--won't see ads. Not that I really want to see ads either, but I kind of want to get a sense of how intrusive they are for those who do see them. So, for not, I don't really plan to change anything. It does help pay the bills.

But I do find myself preferring to get away from websites that rely so heavily on advertising. For example, nowadays, I prefer to use a service like Proton Mail instead of Gmail. Actually, I'm a big fan of all things Proton. I also use them for my VPN, Proton Drive instead of Google Drive, Proton Pass as my password manager. (And really, anyone not using a password manager of some sort--you're putting the security of all of your accounts in jeopardy!) They even have their own AI bot named Lumo that keeps your conversations private.

I believe all of their services do have a freebie option if you want to try them--with no advertisements at all!--but the paid versions have higher quotas, more features available, etc. A great way to get out from under the thumb of advertisers like Google.

More recently, I started using Kagi as primary search engine since search engines like Google serve up a lot of crap nowadays. There's even a somewhat crude term to describe the process: enshittification. (Links to Wikipedia to prove it's a legit term!) Sometimes, a search on Google won't show a single non-sponsored link on the entirety of the first page of search "results." It's awful....

I definitely avoid using Chrome when I can. I still mostly use Firefox, but I've found Brave a decent alternative browser. No reason to give Google even more information about your online activities than they already have!

Amazon searches will often show dozens of "sponsored" ads before showing what I'm actually searching for. I deliberately skip past them since I don't dare click one of those sponsored links--I don't really want to support those anyhow. But then, I don't really use Amazon much either because, well, they suck. That's usually a last resort for me if I can't find a product somewhere else.

But basically, if you're seeing ads, you're just going to get a worse experience and worse results. Facebook is rife with scam ads, but they don't really care as long as they get paid for them by the advertisers. (Even if there was an option to pay to not see ads, though, I wouldn't use it since I'm not on Facebook enough to justify it.)

Google will deliberately send you to worse websites (or even scam websites!) as long as the website pays to get it promoted. And if you don't find what you're looking for at the first website, they aren't at all bothered if you have to go back to do another search to find what you really wanted. After all, that's just another opportunity to show you more ads!

People have become so used to advertisements online that they expect everything to be free, but as the old saying goes... you get what you pay for. You can have "free," but it'll cost you.

But in any case, if you haven't thought about it already, take a close look at the websites you use most often and check if there's some sort of premium membership and, if not, see if there's an alternative that does have one and can give you better results.

Anyhow... I'll step off my soapbox now. Just some of my thoughts! =)

-- Ryan

Stupid question: is VPN included or is it extra?

Bundle or not, it appears that the choice is yours:
https://proton.me/pricing

It depends on what you sign up for. =)

If you sign up for the free option, you get:


I think I read once upon a time that you can be guaranteed that one of the countries is in the US, so if you travel outside of the US you can always connect to a US server. But this is off the top of my head--I could be wrong. I don't really feel like digging through the small print to see where I might have read that.

Then you can pay for just the VPN service (the "VPN Plus" plan), which gives you pretty much all of the VPN features but none of their other services. "Choose from 15000+ servers in 120+ countries" at a high speed.

Then there's the "Proton Unlimited" option which costs even more, but it'll give you all the VPN stuff plus all the extras that come with Proton Pass, Proton Mail, and 500 GB of cloud storage (you get 5 GB for free, but that's not really very much). So if you got the Proton Unlimited option, the VPN is included.

If you use at least two of their products, the "unlimited" plan is probably your best bet. If you only want the VPN and nothing else, you can save a little with the VPN Plus plan.

But if you just want to use a VPN and don't need to connect to a specific country and don't need anything to run with a high-speed connection (e.g. streaming videos from other countries), the free plan would work just fine. =)

Here's a link to the Proton VPN Pricing.

-- Ryan

Thank you, kind sirs.

I'm bored so I thought I'd post this...

I was out looking for box placements this weekend and stumbled across this.

I couldn't figure it out. Any takers? The second letter looks like an 'R' but if so, what's the first letter!?

Ok, I figured. I would get a premium membership. Except I have barely letterboxed in the last few years. I’ll probably just print out the clues. If my letterboxing picks up more than 1-2 times a year, I’ll consider it.

Ok, this might be for me. Thanks.

I was a premium member for several years, but I have not been very active in about 5 years, so I let it lapse. There didn’t used to be pop-ups, either. So I didn’t know if that was new or something I did wrong. If I actually get back to letterboxing, and not just events, I’ll sign back up.

throwie throw up

check out this video on drawing this style of graffiti

condo

I feel your pain, the ads are really bad like so bad you can hardly navigate the site there are so many pop-ups. I personally have a premium membership so had no idea. But I’ve recently recruited 2 new letterboxers and while out boxing and helping them on their phones, have gotten a peek at how AQ works without a premium membership and it’s frustrating and almost unusable. Sigh. I know, I know they need to purchase the premium and support the website. But that’s not gonna happen. The reality is they are happy to just slack box with me and will only use the website if I’m helping them.

It never ceases to amaze me how much and how fast technology is changing. When I started letterboxing (2001) I did all my searchs for clues on the website accessed from my personal computer at home or work. I would print out clues and head out to search for boxes, then come back home to log the find or attempt on the PC. If I was travelling on vacation or business it might be days or weeks before I logged results.

Now, almost everyone accesses the world wide web on a cell phone with a 3-6 inch screen. I'm 67 yo and my eye sight for fine detail is not what it used to be. If the clues include photos needed to determine the right place to look for a box I usually just skip that box.

Having to deal with pop-up ads must be truly annoying and if I could not afford or justify a premium membership I would probably drop out of letterboxing.

And then Clue Tracker comes along. I can still do all the research and then download clues for access where cell signals might be intermittent or non-existent. I can also log my results right away, out in the field (with cell signal) while details are still fresh in my mind.

Yes, great advice. Internet advertising is annoying and personally invasive. I generally use 3 browser tools to block as much of that crap as possible. And I make no apologies for the lost revenue.

However, if you have a website with content I desire and find useful, you bet I will pay the price to sign up! Unless you drive me away with aggressive ads before I can make the choice.

I believe it says "RAKE".

When I lived in California I was on a volunteer graffiti team. We were escorted by police cars front and back, paint donated by Home Depot, and we caravaned into neighborhoods painting over graffiti. But first a special officer had already photographed and interpreted what it said. With several cars it was pretty much a hit and run operation as we were not in good places. We were told this graffiti was a whole language that gang to gang understood. Simple words are not simple words. I know nothing about it, I only painted. And I took my dog, Rover, with me because she was a real junk yard dog.

I personally don’t think it’s a great idea to make the site so unpalatable for users who are new and trying to decide if they want to try letterboxing. They might not have a printer to print clues, or have to go to the library to do it, would turn off some people.

It might be RANT in their lettering.

Most of what you wrote sounded like Greek to me, but I’ll try to take the time to decipher it later. Thanks for the detailed response!

I am old school when it comes to clues and I print them out. Some of the trails I go to there is no internet access so printed clues won't let me down.

How about a free 30 to 60 day Premium test drive for new boxers. Or an introductory price for the first year for any boxer. Afterward, they can make an informed benefits vs costs decision.

A warning: who really takes the TV remote and puts in away in the closet.

Thanks, Condo - interesting video. Throwie, huh.

Good on you, that's noble work.

👍

Not sure if it'll make a difference for you or not, but that search engine I mentioned earlier has what they call a "fair pricing policy" which means they basically extend your membership for each month that you don't use the service. Basically, you won't get charged for what you don't use.

I thought that was a brilliant idea, though, so I've added a "fair pricing policy" to AQ today. If a premium member doesn't log in for a full calendar month, they basically get their premium membership extended by an extra month automatically for free. So if you only use the website every few months, you could stretch a premium membership out for several years. =)

This applies to all premium members, starting this month. Although anyone reading this message this month is clearly logged into their account and therefore won't get the extra month.

But in a nutshell, for those who drop out for a few months or even a few years.... you'll still have your premium membership when you come back.

I also logged into my Google AdSense account to look at the settings. It's kind of scary how many options they have now, not all of which I fully understand. But I did find a setting to reduce the "vignette ads" from showing every 1 minute to now show every 5 minutes, so maybe that will help make the ads a little less annoying. They'll still happen, though!

-- Ryan

That's an awesome feature! Thanks so much! I don't think I've ever gone more than a day or two without logging in since the day I started letterboxing, but what a generous gesture for those whose life events sometimes get in the way of our fun pastime.

So let me see if I have this right...if I have a Lifetime membership, and I go, say, 10 years without logging into AQ... do I live 10 years longer?

Yes! And, if you cross the international date line...

I get a date!

I don't care what anybody has to say, you really are a nice person