So who won, you ask? Hit the jump to find out….

And the winners are:

1. Scott S.
2. Roy
3. Adam – who pointed out that our company name has 13 letters in it; not a song entry, but we all thought that was pretty cool as we hadn’t noticed it, so I decided it was worth a prize!
4. NetCaptive
5. Ravi Penumaka
6. Mark S.
7. d..ecay
8. Kaur
9. Allen S.
10. David
11. Singh
12. czarbucks – from Twitter
13. Mouseboots – from Twitter

I’ll be emailing everyone (or sending a DM to the Twitter winners to get their email addresses) with the info for their Amazon gift card this morning. If you don’t get your card, reply to this post and let me know.

And that concludes our 13th anniversary celebration week. We had lots of fun and I hope you did too. Thanks to everyone who joined in our contest! And once again – many, many thanks to everyone who helped us get where we are today. We wouldn’t have made it 13 years without you!

See you next year, as we unveil whatever is we’ll come up with for the number 14 – good thing we have a whole year to think about it!

Of course, we know we would never have made it this far without you: our loyal customers, reviewers, friends, colleagues, supporters, partners, beta testers – everyone who has helped us out over the last 13 years, and kept us moving forward. We couldn’t have done this without you, and while we’ll never be able to thank you enough, I’ll put this in all caps so you can tell I’m really serious: THANK YOU!!

You know, some people say that 13 is an unlucky number – but that’s not always the case, especially not today! Hit the jump for some fun factoids about our new favorite number. And did someone say contest? Because we want to celebrate with you and give away some cool prizes.

13 doesn’t always have to mean bad luck – I know someone whose favorite number is 13. After a little bit of digging, I found out some interesting things (okay, granted this is from Wikipedia, but I’m going to assume it’s all roughly true):

• Some buildings don’t have a 13th floor thanks to superstition (this one I knew – I stayed in a hotel once where the elevator buttons went from 12 to 14!)
• No driver in Formula One racing has had a 13 on their car since 1976 – I wonder if the 13 car had a bad accident that year?
• There are 13 cards in a suit
• Friday the 13th is my favorite horror movie series. Well, right behind Nightmare on Elm Street. Okay, and Evil Dead. So never mind, it’s my third favorite (alright, that’s not on Wikipedia – just wanted to make sure you’re paying attention)
• Here’s the one I found most interesting: The Apollo 13 mission was launched on April 11, 1970 at 13:13 CST and the explosion happened on April 13th. Lots of 13’s in that instance
• And this one isn’t from the Wikipedia page either, but Ellen read it while looking up info about the number 13, and it’s another weird little fact so I wanted to share: Charles Manson, Jeffrey Dahmer, Theodore Bundy and Albert De Salvo all have 13 letters in their names

So you see? 13 is a complex and interesting number, and not necessarily always bad luck. And now that the lesson is over, let’s move forward to our:

REALLY AWESOME ANNIVERSARY CONTEST

Do you think it’ll have something to do with the number 13? If you’ve picked up on that theme, then you’re absolutely right. It’s pretty simple to enter, all I need is an answer to this question:

Can you name a song with the word ‘13′ in the lyrics?

That’s it! But it might be harder than it sounds. I’ve been trying to think for days, and have only come up with one song so far. I won’t spoil it and say the song, just in case you’re thinking it too.

So, how do you enter? Well, you can leave a comment below, of course. Or you can send us a tweet with a reply. Enter as many times as you’d like. In the event of multiple people with the same guess(es), the first person to get their reply in will be put in the random drawing.

I’ll keep this contest open until Friday morning, then I’ll dust off my ol’ contest hat and choose 13 winners . Winners of what, you ask? How about a nice hearty handshake and a great big smile from all of us to you. No good? You want stuff? Okay – each winner will get a $20 Amazon.com gift card so you can buy whatever stuff you like.

So that’s it – dig through your CDs (or shuffle through your iPods, whatever it is people do these days) and start thinking about songs with the word ‘13′ in them. Good luck to everyone, and I’ll see you back here on Friday!

First, Ellen answered some questions in a great five-part interview over at MediaBistro. You can catch up on all five days worth of posts from this page (this is the final part, and there are links at the top of the post to all the previous days).

Then, Marc was featured in Just Another Mobile Monday’s Developer Interview Series. You can find his question-and-answer session right here.

Both interviews are definitely worth a read – you might even find some interesting info about what we’ve been working on and what’s coming up!

Thanks again to both MediaBistro and Just Another Mobile Monday!

We’ve gotten a lot of mentions and writeups over the last 12 years – I’ve got several shelves of a bookcase dedicated to magazines in which we’ve been written up – but it’s always a thrill to go into a bookstore and find our name in print.

So many thanks to whoever called today and told Marc that eWallet was mentioned in the January 2010 issue of Consumer Reports. And thanks to the person who told us earlier in the week that we’d been included in an NPR segement. And to everyone else who’s gone out of their way to tell us about seeing or hearing our name somewhere, thank you too! We really appreciate it!

Also – if you’re just coming back to the blog, make sure to read the update at the bottom of the post!

For the full story on eWallet 7, read on after the jump…

Software is for People, Not Devices
I love the new features in eWallet 7, but I’m going to start with something that I think is the biggest news. With the release of eWallet 7 we’re reshaping the idea of how people buy mobile software. For years there has been an idea that you buy software for your mobile device. This doesn’t make sense to us. People aren’t buying the software for the device. The software is for the person. That’s why with eWallet 7 we’ve completely re-imagined how you buy the product.

Now, for $19.95, you can use eWallet on any device we support. No extra versions. No extra purchases. When you buy eWallet it’s for you – not your device. This is true even for iPhone users (see the information here for details on how this works for iPhone.)

And for our existing customers, upgrading just got better (and cheaper!) For just $10.00 you can use the latest version of eWallet on your Windows PC, Windows Mobile device, or BlackBerry, and get full access to the Mac Preview.

A New Desktop Version
The next big news is that we’ve rewritten eWallet for Windows PC from the ground up. With eWallet 7, the Windows PC version is easier to use than ever before, offers more options for customization, brings you some great new features, and looks amazing. We even included a way to get the Old School eWallet feel for folks who aren’t ready for a big change!

eWallet for Mac Preview
With eWallet 7 we’re also releasing a special 30 day preview of eWallet for Mac. It doesn’t include everything, but this special preview edition is ready for you to try. We even built a special tool into the iPhone version that  lets you manually transfer files from your iPhone to your Mac so you can try it with your own wallets!

And if you’re an owner of the complete eWallet package, use your eWallet registration codes to unlock the Mac Preview for unlimited use!

Image Synching and More…
And that’s not all…eWallet 7 adds a number of other new features as well, including synching for inserted background images. Now, you can create an amazing wallet on your desktop complete with background images and sync it over to your iPhone or Windows Mobile device where you’ll get the same, great looking wallet!

What Do You Need to Do?
We’ll be sending out upgrade notifications over the next week with all the information you need to get eWallet 7. If you purchased within the last 90 days, we’ll upgrade you to the full eWallet package at no charge. If you purchased before that time, it’s just $10.00 to upgrade the entire package.

iPhone customers will get the upgrade to eWallet 7 for free, but please be aware that if you purchased the desktop version more than 90 days ago, you will need to pay for the upgrade if you wish to use the eWallet 7 Windows PC version.

And if you use the iPhone and DON’T WANT TO UPGRADE your desktop software, we have a special version of eWallet 6 that you can use. Read all about it here!

RELEASE UPDATE 12-1-09
As you can probably tell this is a HUGE release. We’ve changed more things in more places than we ever have in any release of our software ever. We aren’t surprised to hit a few bumps along the way. SO here is what I can offer as far as how things are going!

People Love It! OK, I couldn’t resist mentioning this – in part as a pat-on-the-back to all the folks who have busted their tails on this project here at Ilum Software. Thank you to EVERYONE OUT THERE who has been emailing and posting compliments about this release. It’s great to hear so many positive comments!

Non-English Windows Installs: It looks like some folks running non-English installs of Windows are getting errors when they run eWallet 7. We are working on this as we speak and getting very close to discovering why this is happening!

BlackBerry Unlock Codes: We’ve also had some folks hitting snags when they try to register their BlackBerry version. Again – we’re working on this and will keep you updated.

Support Calls and Emails: We WILL respond to everyone, but right now Lee and Kevin are absolutely swamped – mostly good stuff but still swamped all the same – we apologize for the delays but at this stage we’re going as fast as we can. SO we’ll try to post on the biggest issues here on the blog and will try to get through all the request for support before the week is out. Sorry for the wait and thanks for your patience!

iTunes Reviews: We totally understand the frustration a lot of folks felt over the trouble with the iPhone update and we’re really sorry for the grief it caused. Even though we provided a fix, I imagine that not all of that has disappated – HOWEVER – if you feel so inclined to either provide us with a positive review OR improve a negative one, we would REALLY appreciate it. We’d really like folks to know that when something goes wrong we don’t just sit back and ignore it – I really hate asking for reviews but in this case we’d really appreciate the support if you feel so inclined. Thanks!

And that’s it for now! We’ll keep you updated as we go. It’s an exciting time here and I think as the year progresses you’ll find that this is just he beginning!

- Marc

If we’d done this years ago, we’d be in trouble. Our phones would have been turned off, as well as our internet, and we’d have racked up some serious late charges on the credit cards, if not had them cancelled as well.

But since we’ve been moving more and more of our bills to electronic only, it turns out that ignoring our paper mail for over two months wasn’t a big deal. Macworld sent a few testy “reminders” about our bill, and at least a few of us now have bigger than usual piles of stuff to read, but the only real problem was that Marc had ordered some live tadpoles to be sent here, and by the time we found them, they weren’t live anymore.

Sorry guys.

But it pointed out very clearly how unimportant physical mail has become. I wonder how long daily delivery will hang on.

Marc has been twittering like crazy since he got there – so there’s a whole lot to read: http://twitter.com/iliumsoftware

I’m sure there will be more to come so keep an eye out for his updates all week. And if you’re at WWDC – try to find Marc (that’s his photo with this post) and say hi!

I wish I could take credit for it all, but I’m a little too honest for that. We’ve been smart – I’ll never downplay that – but we’ve been very lucky too. I never know what the future of mobile software will be like, but we’ll be trying hard to keep up with it, without compromising our commitments to high quality software, in-house development, ethical business practices, and world-class tech and customer support.

Of course we couldn’t have done it without our many supporters: writers, reviewers, customers, beta testers, friends, colleagues, supporters, partners, and everyone who send us suggestions, information and kind words. Many, many, many thanks to everyone.

And particularly to the people I never remember to thank (at least not on the blog) – the committed, talented, and patient people who make up Ilium Software. To develop, test, release, maintain, support, distribute, market and sell the stuff we do is an amazing accomplishment, especially given how many of us are really making it up as we go along. If you’re reading this, please join me in celebrating this incredible accomplishment.

Julie’s got a week of sales and giveaways planned, so be sure to stick around. The sale has already started in our online store, and the first blog contest will be posted soon, with lots of chances to win great prizes!

AND – we’re on Twitter. Better late than never, I hope. Check us out at http://twitter.com/iliumsoftware

It turns out that:

• It’s a lot easier than you’d expect to snap hard disks.
• They break into many, many little pieces that fly everywhere.
• And the pieces are extremely sharp.

If you’re wondering whether we take our data security seriously, yes, we do. That’s my personal blood on the disc pieces and the desk.

I don’t recommend trying this.

It’s your chance to ask me your burning questions (yes, we’re working on the Mac version), offer up your ideas, and find out what we have planned for the future. We’d love to hear from you so come on over.

And if you can’t make it tomorrow, I’ll be there again on Thursday morning!

Just look for the stunningly handsome bald guy with an Ilium Software shirt on!

See you there!