Do you know what day is it today? It’s prize give away day!

Although the digicam’s box got a bit dusty the camera is in excellent shape, and with the warranty seal intat on it of course(the warranty applies world wide, because it’s offered by the producer(BENQ) and you will get all reciepts and legally signed stuff that i got from the store with it)

A total Number of 1771 IDs were gathered and they were all entered in the draw, but there can be only one winner which is gh0ul_1@[email hidden].com

I’ve sent him a mail about 5 minutes ago, and as soon as he replies i will edit my post with more details on him.

Here’s an actual print screen of the draw:

His ID number is 155, for some reason most of the IDs in the top 25 were IDs with digits between 0 and 180, most of the 1000+ IDs got to the middle of the randomly ordered list.

I would like to thank everyone for participating, and keep heads up because in about 3 weeks when i get back home from Greece(i’m leaving on the 11th) a new contest will start!

That’s right! You can win a BENQ DC C640 Digicam just like mine in such a simple way!

Before i jump to the point, i want to tell you how i can give it away, and other gadgets as well in the upcoming months: A friend of mine is working at a consumer electronics retailer, and they have the promotion to their employees that they can buy gadgets and items that are sold w/o commission prices and extra fees. So basically he can buy gadgets a lot cheaper that the raft price. This means that every month i will be buying a gadget from him and giving it away to a randomly picked user who will get a number for each entry(the numbers will be shuffled using www.random.org). This means the more numbers you have the higher your chances to win are.

This month i decided to give away a shiny new BENQ DC C640 Digicam which has lots and lots and lots of cool features, and i own one for more than half year and i’m VERY VERY pleased with it. BENQ DC C640 has a retail price of ~120$.

The camera is in perfect shape, in matter of fact i took some pictures with it:

Shipping will be supported by me, and is available almost to all the world. Those of you who live in Africa - sorry guys, i can’t send you the digicam there, shipping alone costs 40$.

How to gain entries?

There are several ways to gain entries:

1) Subscribe to my feed using your email address - 5 entries:

2) Post 4 comments on my blog - 1 entry:

You may post 1comments/day. Well you can post as many as you like, but only 1 will be counted every day. Spam comments will be deleted. You can start by commenting this post (!!! Make sure you use the same email address)

3) Write a blog-post about the contest - 10 entries:

It’s simple. Write a blog-post about this contest(at least 100 words) and link to it. This will get you 10 entries in the contest.(make sure you email me your email address and the location of the post)

4) Stumble/Digg this post - 1 entry

Stumble my post, review it after which digg this post. This will get you 1 entry.(email me your email address and your digg/stumbleupon username).

5) Technorati Favorite my blog - 1 entry

Add my blog to your technorati favorites and gain one extra entry to the competition! (email me your email address and your technorati username).

These are the ways you can gain more entries, if i get a new idea on how to gain more entries i will update this post(mail me your idea, and if it’s used you will get 2 entries).

My email address is tom@thaslayer.com , just in case you missed it in the sidebar.

The contest will end on 30th June, and the winner will be announced on 1st of July. There’s no second place! Winner takes it all!

Good luck to everyone!

Update #1 - 4th June 2008 - In 4 days more than 50 readers have entered the contest representing 286 unique IDs. To get the 5 credits for subscribing to my feed you need to confirm your subscription

Update #2 - 8th June 2008 - You can win 30 extra entries if you mail me your prognostication regarding the number of ID’s in the end.

Update #3 - 20th June 2008 - More than 1500unique IDs are in the competition, hopefully by 30th June 6PM GMT 2000IDS will be entered in the draw!

Update #3 - 1st July 2008 - Winner Announced!

Damn…more than 9 days have passed since i last posted. Trust me i would have posted with pleasure but since i got back from the informatics competition i was busy all day working on the project for my degree.

At the competition i was on the 12th position. We had 2 tests before the presentation of the project, ALL of the tests were related to programming: PHP/MYSQL/HTML/CGI, on the first i got 33 points/50, on the second 45 points/100. The first tests point number was doubled: 33×2 = 66 points. My total score after the 2 tests was 45+66=111. If i would have had 120 points i would have gotten to the presentation part.

Since i didn’t get there i worked on my project for nothing. At least the chick from my county who was in the competition in her category got first place!

Everything was great, except the rooms which were pretty messed up, but i can’t complain about the food: 3 meals/day each of them containing meat, and plenty of it.

The competition was held at FSEGA = Some accounting college, which has a brand new modern building, with HI-tech equipments and of course hot-spots. The only problem was that all of them were passworded -> we couldn’t access them.

Here are some pics from the competition:

Last week i did 4 projects:

1) Project for my girlfriend’s degree in Hotel Management

2) Project for a friend’s degree in web design(hell..he doesn’t know anything about web design and he learned it for 4 years,lol)

3) The project for the competition i attended last week-end.

4) An other degree project for a friend in Hardware and pc configuration.

So yeah, last week was a pretty fucked up week and its continuing this week also.Yesterday i worked my ass off on the documentation for my electronics project, because we had to give it to the professor today, but it got finished and i gave it to him before the deadline. I still have some minor adjustments to make on the actual project, but it will be 100% completed by friday when i have to present it in front of a 7 man commission.

If everything goes well my project will be stamped with APPROVED label and i get my degree, if not…well lets not think of that option.

Tomorrow i will have an other maths final simulation(3rd), and hopefully i will get a decent grade like on the last 2.(first was 6.60/10 | second was 6.30/10) I blow at maths so these grades are a great achievement for me, although if my private maths professor tells me i can do better. Usually when he tells me that i reply to him: ‘i hate maths, so give me a break will you?”

Anyway, this time i promise a situation like this will never happen again(not posting fro a long period), you will see many improvements on the blog in the next weeks(mostly in posts/day).

In a previous post i told you that i’m first in my county at the informatics competition:

…my informatics professor told me to go to an informatics competition where the best from my county i web development and programming will be there. I participated at the technical section.

After waiting 3 hours to get in i finished the test in 20 minutes, and went for a walk with my girlfriend. I didn’t wait for the results because i was VERY pissed because i had to stay in line for 3 hours.

On friday on my way to electronics class professors started congratulating me. Later i found out that i’m first at the contest and that between 23-25 may i’m going to the national section of the contest. Of course all expenses are supported by them.

Yesterday i had to go and talk to the informatics professor who gave me more details about the competition. As said before it will be held at Cluj between 23-25 may. In order to participate all contestants have to create a project which is no way related to webdesign and development neither to IT&C, but mostly to philosophy.

The topic is TIME - EGO - VALUES which should be a multimedia project.

How the project is evaluated:

- The idea of the project should be in in consonance with the topic of the project.

- Usage only of own materials and resources

- Artistic achievement (the harmony of colors, mix sound-image, animation)

- The way information is structured

- User friendly interface, usability.

- Accurate technique (technical, resolution)

- Presenting the application: written documentation (paper presentation, user guide, bibliography etc), installer

To say it straight this is bullshit. What the hell has philosophy has to do with informatics or IT&C or web development? NOTHING! The topic of the project consists in 3 freakin’ words and the organizers think that people will stay a week and figure out what exactly is required by them.

I talked to my philosophy professor who gave me a weird look and it took him a time to understand that this is an informatics competition and not a philosophy one. He suggested that i make an autobiographical presentation in powerpoint, and i think i will stick to that idea and if i make it to the 3rd phase of the contest then i will present it. If the organizers won’t like it it’s their problem.

This really bugs me…why the hell couldn’t they make up a topic like create a web page or create a poster or i don’t know what, something thats actually IT related. They put a great accent on the content of the project. Anyone can write a random text related to the topic, this will only prove that the contestant has writing abilities and in the future he may be a good writer.

But who knows? Maybe i won’t make it to the 3rd phase and will fall out at first(i doubt it, but if i get pissed enough then i’ll hand in the test the way i got it), at least then il have more time to hang out with some friends from Cluj.

There are some pretty hardcore sponsors and i’m pretty curious about the prizes:

You probably know some of the above shown brands, google those which you don’t know

Now that i got to the end of my post i’m not as mad as before because now i know that you as a reader will feel a bit like i felt when i found out the topic. One thing’s for sure I’ll go to have fun and not to get pissed.

Overview

The Craziest Internet Marketing Contest started just 20 days ago on 8th March and will end in 5 days on 2nd April.

This is not any ordinary contest, the prize of this competition is $13,647 which isn’t an amount that you can just pass by of which most part is cash and the rest are marketing products and services.

Prizes

- Most of the cash prizes are offered by advertising networks like AzoogleAds, NeverBlueAds,Bidvertiser.

- Shoemoney sponsors the contest with an 8GB Apple IPOD Touch, which i’m sure anyone would like to have(in my opinion it’s the coolest Apple product after the Macbook)

- SEO memberships are offered by SEOBook,SEOmoz and RankSense

- Softwareprojects is offering $2,000 in email marketing services

- Lots and lots of affiliate marketing and website tools are put up to the grab by the winners

- Last but not least: Lots of advertising prizes are offered mostly by bloggers

To be honest i would have also sponsored the contest with a custom blog theme(i like contests ) so those of you who want to make a contest in the near future don’t hesitate contacting me, because i might offer my services(design) as a prize.

How to enter?

Subscribing to the newsletter is a must and will gain you 1 entry. If you blog about the competition and link back to the post you will get 10 extra entries. Also for every 5 comments you make on Winning The Web blog will get you 1 entry.

You have the chance to gain more entries by following the contest’s clues which range from stumbling the page to signing up to advertising network, and my favorite: by submitting your own clues!

The top 20 participants with most entries will also get a free Winning The Web T-Shirt, its value isn’t big but it looks cool!

Winners

There will be more than 100 winners(including the 20 shirts), this means that you have great chances of winning a prize. Heck!, it’s better than trying to win at the lottery where the odds of winning are like 1 to 1billion.

The random draw will be held on 2nd April(5 days from now), so we can say that this is a short term contest(if i would have held it, most probably it would have lasted at least 3 months)

Conclusion

So trust me on this: this competition is something that you just can’t miss. You can’t bypass a chance of getting free money/gadgets/advertising/premium services for free!

The Mozilla Store is having its first-ever t-shirt design contest. Your creation could become the official Firefox 3 shirt.

Contest holder: Mozilla Foundation

Contest webpage: http://www.spreadfirefox.com/tcontest/

Contest Type: Design/Illustration

Deadline: Sunday March 16th 11:59 PM Pacific Standard Time (PST)

Prizes: 1st place: Worldwide recognition for designing the official Firefox 3 T-Shirt + a free Firefox 3 T-Shirt + 250$ Amazon.com voucher.

2nd-5th places: A free Firefox 3 T-Shirt + 50$ Amazon.com voucher.

The contest idea is simple: use your creativity and create a firefox 3 T-shirt just like you imagine it. It’s true that those who are Illustrator experts or can draw professionally have higher chances of winning, but who knows?, you might be the winner.

The 1st prize is a huge prize even though it doesn’t involve much money. Just by adding the shirt’s design to your portfolio you can attract lots and lots of customers looking for custom T-shirts. This means that money will roll in by itself. Cool eh?

Before even starting to design the shirt make sure you read the Guidelines. Also check if users from your country are eligible to participate(some countries are restricted)

You have to submit your design for review in the Flickr FF3 design contest group. The top 5 designers will be contacted via flickr to supply the high-resolution SVG file. After that their designs will be posted on the Mozilla Store for voting. The firefox users/fans will choose the winner!

All i can say is good luck and i can’t wait to see the winning design.