Contests

Just in case you haven’t heard, all this week we’re having a big, surprise-filled anniversary sale. But we decided, why let the website have all the fun? The blog should get to join in the celebration, too! And so, without further ado, below are the rules to the first mini-giveaway we’ll be having on our blog this week.

This first little game is going to be a scavenger hunt. Throughout our site, I’ve hidden six of our little party hats, just like the one the guy with the binoculars is wearing above.  So here are the rules: the first THREE people who search our site and find TWO of the hats each are the winners.  All you have to do is copy the URL of the two pages into the comments for this post. If you find more than two hats, please don’t post more URLs – that way three people will have a chance to win. To win, you just have to make sure both pages you found haven’t already been answered in the comments.

What do you win, you might ask? Great question! The three lucky winners will get an Ilium Software swag pack – 2 click-pen styluses, one stick stylus, and one luggage tag. As soon as all six of the pages are accounted for, I will send out emails to the winners to get more info from them – so be sure you enter a valid email address when you comment!

One more thing – just so everyone doesn’t go crazy trying to count the falling hats on the home page – that page is not part of the contest.

Happy hunting!

Thank goodness for little electronic reminders – without them I never would have remembered that today is June 1st. Where did May go; it’s such a long month but it just flew by! Ah, well, I didn’t forget, and I’ve just waved my magic wand (or clicked my magic mouse, rather), so now it’s time to give stuff away!

This month the lucky blog contest winner is Scott B., who commented on the post eWallet 5.0.2 is out (and other news). Congratulations! I just sent you an email explaining how to get your prize. If you don’t receive it just reply to this post and let me know.

Now, as for that “something extra” I promised. Let’s just say you might not have to wait until July for our next fun blog contest. Perhaps you should tune in next week and see for yourself…

I’m so happy that May is here – it’s finally warm, I think it’s safe to pack my snow boots away, and since it’s a new month, I get to pick another blog contest winner!

This month the lucky winner is Dianna, who commented on the post Extreme Makeover – Ilium Software Style. Congratulations! I just sent you an email explaining how to get your prize. If you don’t receive it just reply to this post and let me know.

To everyone else, keep the comments coming, and we’ll do this again the beginning of June. You could be the next winner!

It’s March, and you all know what that means – it’s time to pick another winner in our ongoing blog contest, and give stuff away!

 This month the lucky winner is Kay, who commented on the post Spread the Word – it’s National Consumer Protection Week. Congratulations, Kay! I just sent you an email explaining how to get your prize. If you don’t receive it just reply to this post and let me know.

To everyone else, it’s March 1st and time to start all over again. Keep the comments coming and maybe this month, the winner will be you! 

There’s a lot being written right now about Microsoft’s giving Vista PCs to bloggers, and the ethics of the bloggers taking them. If you’ve managed to miss it, there are a few links at the bottom of this post that you can read, but frankly, I’m already tired of the whole subject, and imagine that many other people are too.

But since I’m no longer averse to stealing good ideas (way too many of mine have been lifted), and since we’re trying to drum up more activity on this blog (both posts and comments), we’re going to start a monthly giveaway to people who comment on the posts.

Here’s how it will work:

• Around the first of each month, we’ll give away one of our titles (recipient’s choice, and you can choose one of our suites, so you’d essentially get 3 or 4 programs) to someone who has commented on any of the posts in the previous month. People who have all the software they want can instead get some of our swag, which right now is still just stylus pens, though I’m thinking hard about getting something else.
• We’ll pick the winner each month using a random number that we map to the comment IDs.
• To be eligible, comments just need to be legitimate, and somehow related to the original post.

To help this along, I’ll encourage everyone here to post a lot more, so there’s more content to respond to.

And, as promised, here are the links to a few of the articles about the Microsoft giveaway:

I Started Something
Jason Dunn
Ed Bott
Joel on Software

There’s a lot more that’s been written about this, but starting with the above will probably lead you there.