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Bing Bing Rewards Club Bing Internet Explorer Microsoft

Club Bing and Bing Rewards

I’ve been using Bing Rewards & Club Bing for over a month now. I’ve learned several interesting things out on the way as well. First off they extended Bing Rewards through the end of 2011. They have made some changes to the number of points it takes to get Microsoft points & have changed the limit on how many Microsoft points you can get per rewards account. I also found out that because my wife doesn’t go & do the searches everyday like I try to do when a period is up she will get a different set of rules for the number of points earned per day & how many searches it takes to get one point. I also found out that the searches I was getting 3 points for are not done every day.

After I had been using the Bing Rewards program for a while I found out about Club Bing which is similar in some ways & different in other ways.

  1. Most of the items on Club Bing will only be issued once per household. There may be a few exceptions.
  2. You can earn up to 500 tickets per day. (They may decide to limit you for their own reasons.)
  3. They have a “VIP” group, which have access to additional prizes & some of the prizes can be had for fewer tickets. Which means you have made Bing your default search engine, have the Club Bing toolbar installed, & are using Internet Explorer. (You can still play in other browsers if you want.)
  4. They have multiple games that you can play to earn the tickets all of which will do searches on Bing since that is what Microsoft is promoting with both programs.
  5. Both have a toolbar but if you do a search with at least the Club Bing toolbar installed you can earn one ticket per search up to 10 tickets per day at the time I wrote this.

I’ve also notice that if I play some of the games on Club Bing it will count toward my searches on Bing Rewards. Also each game can give you a certain number of tickets per play & some will only let you play once per day for points. You can see the current list at Maximum Tickets for each Game in the FAQ. Since Microsoft may change the number of tickets per game I’m not going to include the list here other than the name of games that they currently have to play.

  • Banana Shuffle
  • Chicktionary
  • Clink
  • Coffee Break
  • Crosswire
  • Dingbats
  • Flexicon
  • PickNick
  • Quote a Pillar
  • Seekadoo
  • Spelling Bee
  • Taxi Wrangler
  • Time Capsule
  • Travel Tracks
  • Word Duel
  • Word Slugger

So far I’ve only played Chicktionary, Crosswire, Taxi Wrangler, Time Capsule, & Travel Tracks so I’ll mention a little about each game. As I’ve played Travel Tracks the most it is going to end up with the longest description.

Chicktionary is a game dealing with anagrams. They give you 7 letters & you need to come up with words that are 3-7 letters long. Each game will have a certain number of 3, 4, 5, 6, & normally one 7 letter word. (I haven’t played enough that I can guarantee a puzzle will always have only one 7 letter word.)

Crosswire has three rounds where there will be something like names on one side & something they did on the left & you have to connect the items in both lists to the correct item. In the final round two items are incorrect & clicking on either one will reset the existing lines made already for that round.

Taxi Wrangler has several taxi’s that are listed to go to certain types of places & you have to put the passengers into the right taxi & send them off. It is a timed game so it can be frustrating at times.

Time Capsule will have one question about something that happened on today’s date one or more years ago. I’ve only ever had one question asked & subsequent times I played the same day I got 0 tickets.

Travel Tracks has three rounds where they have 20 pictures presented to you & only five will be places the game wants for that round. The pictures will change from one round to the next as will the places. You will start with the first place & can use up to three clues to figure out where the location is. when you click on a picture it will do a search for that City & State. The clues will also do searches based on the clue & the results of the search may tell you which picture that want. after you put the picture in the slot you click on the magnifying glass to see if you got the right one. If you did it will show that picture & the clues will go to the next box. if you put in the wrong picture it will say sorry try again.

I haven’t earned enough tickets for the first prize that I’m trying for on Club Bing mainly because it is more expensive than the 400 Microsoft points I’ve been going for on the rewards program.

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Bing Bing Rewards blog Firefox Internet Internet Explorer Marketplace Microsoft Mozilla Xbox Xbox Live Zune

Musings about Bing rewards program

The other day I saw a Google ad that said the following.

“Get 400 Free Xbox Points
Get 400 Free Xbox Points. Join Bing Rewards!
www.Bing.com/Rewards”

I was intrigued as I’d like to get some Microsoft points so I can buy some arcade games on my Xbox 360. The only issue I have with this ad is it sounds like you can get 400 Microsoft points just for joining the Bing rewards program. To get the 400 Microsoft points you need to have 400 search rewards points. Apparently from what I’ve read when they first launched the program you could redeem 100 search rewards points for 100 Microsoft points. I guess Microsoft realized this was to low of a number because they give you 250 search rewards points just for signing up for the program.

If you do the daily search items first they will also count towards the total number of searches that will earn you points as well. At the moment I’m writing this they seem to have two daily searches worth 3 points each & until January 29th 2011 you can earn one point per search up to a max of 10. So the current maximum you can earn a day is 16 points, which would take you 25 days at that rate to earn 400 search rewards points. But if you want to earn the first 400 search rewards points you can get that done in 10 days with your bonus 250 search rewards points that you start with.

One more thing before I rant about the installation process of the Bing bar. According to the Bing Rewards Preview Frequently Asked Questions “The Bing Rewards Preview ends on September 30, 2011. Credits accumulated expire December 31, 2011.”. So you have a limit amount of time to earn the points. Also remember that the Microsoft points rewarded from this method are only good for a limited time after you receive them from the program, so spend them shortly after you get them.

Now on to some of the issues I have with this program. First it installs three add-ons Mozilla Firefox Which if you are running the current version of Firefox they will be disabled right after they are installed, I haven’t tested with older versions as I refuse to run old versions of Firefox. They disabled the items because Microsoft said in Bing Bar support for Mozilla Firefox to disable them to prevent a security issue. While I applaud Mozilla for disabling them I’m irritated at Microsoft for installing software that they know will be disabled on install. When I last read the article it said “Article ID: 2430460 – Last Review: October 5, 2010 – Revision: 3.0”, meaning that they have known about this issue for several months at the point when I installed the Bing bar on my computer, & yet they insisted on installing the software they knew would be disabled.

You can see a complete list of what add-ons the current version of Firefox will disable on install at Add-ons Blocklist | Mozilla. At the time I wrote this post the first three in the list are the add-ons that the Bing bar installs. They are Bing Bar for Firefox, Default Manager v2.2, & Search Helper Extension.

I will admit I haven’t found a way yet to remove it from just Firefox. I have done some basic searches, but I have found nothing yet that will remove it only from Firefox. I have found ways to remove it from Firefox & Internet Explorer at Removing the Search Helper Extension and Bing Bar though.

Also during the install of the Bing bar it insisted that I close both Firefox as well as Internet Explorer. I closed Firefox on my own so that I would be sure to not lose the tabs that I had opened. It did reopen Internet Explorer after it finished & I was given my bonus 250 search rewards points.