David Attenborough's season on Eden

With a career spanning nearly 50 years, Sir. David Attenborough is one of the World's greatest naturalist film-maker.

To celebrate their David Attenborough season, Eden (Sky channel 532 and Virgin TV channel 208) is now featuring a number of natural history programming, including some of Sir David's greatest works. They are also running a competition where you have to guess what Sir David is describing in a short video clip for a chance to win an Olympus digital camera.

This is the fourth and last week and the last chance to win the Olympus TOUGH 3000 digital camera. Go over to the Eden contest page to take part.

Before you send in your answers you might want to take a look at the clip here:



Visit Sir David Attenborough's BBC website.

Thanks for the info Sophie.

Update to my last post - Prizes and Charity

In my last post "My Research Methodology", I forgot to mention that there is a £100 cash prize as well as Amazon vouchers involved and you can do your bit for charity as well.

I have pledged to donate 50p for every completed questionnaire to the Cancer Research UK.

Please click the link to take part in the survey.

First Commentator
Julie

3 Skypephone competition

I lot of guys have been asking me about the 3 Skypephones. Well I have some great news from you. The guys at 3mobilebuzz.com are running a competition. The winner stand to win not one but three 3 Skypephones, the second place gets two and third place gets one.

Also, two devices will be awarded to the blog that refers the winning entry. So, I may win too if you name me as your referrer.

All you have to do is say why you want a 3 Skypephone – and this is not limited to bloggers. It can be a forum thread, a webpage, a set on Flickr or even a YouTube video. Check out the the clip below:

It depends on your creativity. However, the content should be original.

Finally, one more thing - don't forget to inform Jack (the hallowed keeper of prizes, enforcer of rules and judge of all) about your entry by emailing him at Jack@3mobilebuzz.com

The deadline for submissions is midday on Monday 17th December

Check out the post on the 3mobilebuuz.com site for more details: "3mobilebuzz is running a competition!"

Search for the best cameraphone photographer

A friend of mine was showing me his latest Sony Ericsson phone that comes with an amazing 3.2-megapixel camera, complete with with auto focus and flash. It has promptly been added to my "object of desire" list.

Taking about Sony Ericsson phones, have you heard about "The Search" site. They are on the look for the cameraphone photographer of the year 2007. This site allows you to upload the cameraphone images to the voting gallery.

You can choose to put your images in any of the three categories, namely Fashion, Adventure and News & Sports. They have amazing prizes for each category. For example, in the 'Adventure' category, the winner stands to win an all expenses paid trip around the world. Isn't that amazing?

Google $30 million moon contest

Space the final frontier

Last Thursday, Internet search giant Google announced the sponsorship of $30 million prize to anyone that can land a robot on the moon and send back images and data. Known as the Lunar X Prize, they are offering it in partnership with the Los Angeles based X Prize Foundation.

According to the post "Fly me to the moon" on Google's blog, they hope that the prize could

lead to important developments in robotic space exploration, a whole host of new space-age materials, precision landing control technology, and who knows what else.

Peter H. Diamandis, chairman and CEO of the X Prize Foundation said:

The Google Lunar X PRIZE calls on entrepreneurs, engineers and visionaries from around the world to return us to the lunar surface and explore this environment for the benefit of all humanity

The contest is on till Dec. 31, 2012 unless extended.

Don't count your chickens before they are hatched

This is the big lesson I learnt today. I know I told some of you that I was in the top 5 (at 12pm EST American time). However, I later found out that the voting had continued after that and I am sorry to announce that my post iByot - the multi-tasking next generation house robot didn't make it to the top 5 on the "Blog Battle Royale" competition.

I received a total of 229 votes (6th position), which is actually a lot. However, only those in the top 5 positions will get a iRobot Roomba robot vacuum.

Thanks to all you guys who were kind enough to spare some time from your busy schedule to vote for me.

Special thanks to:
- Ramina in India who had her whole office voting for me.
- Roby in Italy, who contacted all her friends all around the World to vote for me.
- Eju who had to go to a hotel with Wifi, because the connection in her office was too slow.
- My wife who had literally the whole University of Warwick voting for me (or so she claims).

And all my family and friends in India, Malaysia, UK and all around the World, including those in Orkut, Friendster, MySpace and Facebook.

Congrats to all the iRobot First-Round Winners.

Sing your troubles away

If anyone told you that the had no problems in their life, they are either lying or there's something wrong with them. Of course it varies from person to person. While some have really big problems, others on the other hand only have some quite minor one. The fact is totally free from problems.

Is that too philosophical?

Anyway, I was going through the GotTrouble.com directory, and realise that my problems might not be a big deal after all, looking at what some people have to go through. This directory gives solutions to common problems that people go through everyday.

I guess my problem comes under employment. And I even wrote a song about it:

Walking down the road,
searching for a job.
degrees coming out of my ears,
doesn't mean a thing.

It's terrible, I know. If you feel that you are more talented, check out GotTrouble.com’s Video Promotion. Put your pain into music, create a commercial for them and share it with the World on YouTube and you stand a chance to earn US$5,000.00 as a cash prize.

Tricked into holding a contest

Warning: This is a long post.

Some of you might recall that I had organised a Nitro T-shirt contest on my auto blog. It was not as successful as I had hoped it would and even though it received a fair bit of interest, there were no takers for it except for two bloggers who were also the winners by default.

That's when the problem started. the Dodge Nitro T-shirts were supposed to be sponsored but I totally lost contact with the sponsors (or they cut me off).

How did this saga start?

Well I was approached by a Corrie Zielinski from a company called New Media Strategies. I later found out that this online advertising and Marketing firm is based in Arlington, Virginia.

Given below is her first e-mail to me:

Hi Adam,

My name is Corrie Zielinski, and I just came across Auto Lah. I’m working with Dodge Nitro and have some t-shirts available for a contest. Would you be interested in running one? I think your site is great, and I’d love to work with you.

Thanks!

Corrie

I told her that I was interested and asked her to tell me a little bit more about the contest and what I would be required to do. This is her reply on Feb 22:

Hi Adam!

The contest process is pretty simple:

I provide you with the number of shirts I can make available to you, pictures of said shirts, and some additional picture assets you can use for the contest if you want. Then, we usually suggest a simple "enter to win" contest, where people email you and you can randomly pick a winner.
You send me the address, and I'll send the t-shirt to the winner or winners. That way, you don't have to pay for postage - we ship a LOT of stuff, so we have a pretty well honed system for getting stuff out the door quickly.

Does that sound good?

I told her what I planned to do and she wrote back on Feb 23:

Hey Adam!

That is the best idea - I love it!

I can give you one Dodge Red Long Sleeve T-Shirts and One Short Sleeve
Black "Can" T-Shirts. (If you look at the "Can" picture you'll totally
get why I call it that. I still can't figure out how they do it.)

I'd really appreciate it if you could include a link to official Dodge
site at (http://www.dodge.com/en/nitro/index.html). I'm also sending you
a link of a bunch of assets that we've collected from Dodge - pictures,
logos, magazine articles, etc. You're free to use whatever you want! The
asset links are available here: http://www.media-file.net/dodge/nitro/

Thank you so much, and let me know when the contest is live - I can't
wait to see it AND read the stories (have been personally drooling over
the Nitro since we get this project).

Thanks!
Corrie

The contest ended and on March 26 I informed Corrie about the results and that I had two winners.

I received the reply dated Mar 26 :

Corrie Zielinski

Hey adam - go ahead and get their addresses o we can get those sent. No worries on the parcipitation, it happens. I have no internet right now - thank god for blackberry!

Thanks, corrie
--------------------------
Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld

That was the last time I ever heard from her.

I obtained the addresses of the winners and sent them to her ... No acknowledgement! I had a bad feeling about that.

Then early this month, I learned that the winners hadn't received the t-shirts till date.

Sent Corrie another e-mail from an alternative e-mail address as I was afraid that the one sent from my Gmail might have landed in her spam filter ... No reply!

I then contacted the company through their website ... No reply! Sent email directly to them ... Still no reply!

Finally I realised that something was definitely wrong.

Searching on the net, I found out that a similar contest had ran on Kineda.com. On contacting Terry, the webmaster of the site,he informed me that he had had no problems with Corrie and

She delivered everything as promised.

I am not sure what happened. One thing is sure. I am never going to have a sponsored contest on my blogs again unless I have full control.

In the end, I had to send the winners Don and Doris a T-shirt each from my own online store.

Let this be a warning to all bloggers out there.

UPDATE:
I am really happy to announce that everything turned out great in the end. The whole fiasco was due to e-mail problems.

Tags: Contest Corrie Zielinski Dodge Nitro New Media Strategies Scam

University of Warwick students are the best

Wanted to blog about that earlier but I left it as a draft and forgot all about it.

I don't know about you guys, but quiz shows can be really exciting. You feel really great when you know the answer but the contestants don't and followed by "the answer is xyz, stupid!"

It has been proven that the University of Warwick has the brightest students in the country. A team from the University recently won the TV show University Challenge 2007. This was out of a total of 28 teams from various Universities here in the UK, which entered this year's competition.

The winning team from Warwick was made up of Daisy Christodoulo ( the Captain), Harold Wyber, Rory Gill and Prakesh Patel. To reach the finals they beat Emmanuel College, Cambridge in the first round; University of East Anglia in the second round; Aberystwyth in the quarter finals and University College London in the semis. In the finals, they beat Manchester University, the previous year's champions (170 points to 140). The finals was aired on BBC 2 on 16th of this month.

Related links:
- The University of Warwick Wins University Challenge
- Warwick wins University Challenge

Am I the hottest daddy blogger

I am in running for the Hottest Daddy Blogger on the Blogger's Choice Awards.

It is perfectly clear that I won't be able to break into the top 10 (unless there's some miracle). However, was quite pleased to find that till date I have received 16 votes (when I last checked) and in the top 20.

What most people don't know is that my blog is also self nominated for the "Best Marketing Blog" as well as for the "Best Blog About Blogging"

If you like my blog, please vote for me.







Tags: Blogger's choice awards hottest daddy blogger

Fuelmyblog photo competiton

For those who are not aware, Fuelmyblog is organising a photo competition titled "View from my window".

The first prize will be a Digital camera (not sure which brand or model).

Hurry up and send your entries as the competition ends on the 20th of April 2007.

Tags: fuelmyblog photo competition

T-shirt contest update

I have a contest running on my auto lah blog, which ends on the 25th of this month. However, I am really disappointed with the response. Only 1 entry so far.

On discussing with my wife about the poor response, we came up with some possible reasons why the contest has not attracted that many entries.

1. Number of visitors to my auto blog is quite low.
2. The prizes (2 T-shirts) are not attractive enough.
3. Very few people have actually driven the Dodge Nitro.
4. Asking people to link back to my blog with keywords may have turned off some people.

As a result, I am putting the link back to my blog as optional.
You also don't need to have driven the Dodge Nitro to write about it. Just tell us what you like about the design or the specs.

There are 8 more days to go, so feel free to join in.

Contest announcement

I am organizing a contest on my auto lah blog. I recently got my hands on two Dodge Nitro t-shirts and I have decided to give them away.

So if you would like to get your hands on a cool Dodge Nitro T-shirt, click this link here for more details.



Tags: Auto lah Contest Dodge Nitro

Singer Songwriter contest

I am sure all of your are familiar with various singing contests where contestants are judged by their ability to sing and perform. However, The Singer/Songwriter Awards is a contest with a difference. It is a song contest for performing songwriters. Yes! That means that contestants not only perform, but they also write their own songs as well.

The latest We Are Listening song contest winners for 2006 (Round 2) are Michael Logen with his song "Amazing", Debra Arlyn with "FIne" and KIFF with "How It Feels".

You can listen to the songs for FREE. I was a bit skeptical but surprisingly, they were great. I especially liked Michael's song. So go over there and vote for your favourite.

If you are an aspiring singer who also writes your own songs, you can also join in. The entry fee is only £15 or the foreign currency equivalent. You are welcome to join even if you live outside the UK. However, all songs must be in English.