Contest Three: Finish this sentence....

This is it: the final contest in our week-long anniversary party. What will it be? Well, with the weekend coming up, we didn’t want to make you work too hard, because I hear it’s supposed to be sunny and I know you’ve got lots of gardening and stuff to do. So all you have to do is finish this sentence:

My ideal mobile device would….

That’s it - easy as pie! You can be honest, you can be imaginitive, or you can be both. For example, I sometimes honestly wish my computer would sprout arms and legs and start cleaning the house like Rosie on The Jetsons. (I get to cheat and say ‘computer’ because I don’t have any mobile devices of my own.)

So here’s your chance to tell us about the cool gadget ideas you’ve had. Maybe you’ve wished your phone could send music via Bluetooth to your hearing aid. Or you’ve always dreamt of being able to say “beam me up, HTC Advantage” and get teleported to work, avoiding the stress of rush hour.

You’ve got all weekend to get your thoughts together, so brainstorm as many as you like and send us a bunch of comments. I promise we won’t take any of your ideas and apply for patents. Well, unless they’re really, really good :)

This is the last contest in our week-long 12-year anniversary celebration. We will pick four winners during each contest: the winners can choose between an iTunes or Amazon gift card as their prize. First place winners receive a $50 gift card, and runners-up will get $25. Enter as many times as you like, by submitting your entries as replies to this post. Employees and friends of Ilium Software aren’t eligible to win, but are welcome (and encouraged) to participate anyway. Today’s contest closes at 12 noon Eastern Time Monday. Winners will be announced during the day Monday or Tuesday, after we sift through all the great mobile device ideas.

Winners: Kickin' it old school

Yesterday’s contest took us all for a walk down memory lane - and does anyone else find it strange that two of the comments were from people living in Zimbabwe when they were 12? One of those weird little coincidences, for sure.

Anyway, on to what you really want to know: the winners! There were a lot of great stories that reminded some of us here of our own childhoods. But, unfortunately, not everyone can win, so we finally settled on our four favorites.

The first place winner of a $50 Amazon or iTunes gift card is Robbie - your brilliant plan to use “Pong” to (try to) win yourself a girl won us over during voting!

Our three runners-up, who each receive a $25 Amazon or iTunes gift card, are: Singh (your calculator watch was probably pretty cool back then - I remember those), Melvyn (I actually do believe about your teacher’s name; it’s one of those things that’s so awful, it has to be true), and Patrick(wow - I didn’t have to run the mile until high school, but it was still dreadful then).

Winners, I’ll be contacting you via email to find out which store you’d like your gift card from. If you don’t get that email later today, reply to this post to let me know.

So, let’s give a big round of congratulations to all the winners, and a big thank you to everyone for playing and sharing your stories from yesteryear. There is one more contest coming tomorrow, so don’t stray too far from our blog because you won’t want to miss another chance to win a big prize!

And just a reminder: we’ve got a big anniversary sale running on our site this week too. All the software in our online store, and eWallet on the iPhone App Store, are discounted BIG right now. Check it out here!

Contest Two: Back in the day

For today’s contest you’ll need to exercise your memory, dust off the old photo albums, and think back to the good old days. As you know, we’ve just turned 12, and we want to know what to expect of the next year. So that’s where you come in. All you need to do is answer the following question:

What were you like when you were twelve?

Simple, right? Everyone was 12 once, and it lasted a whole year, so you’ve got to have lots of great stories about it. Were you the president of the computer club, or maybe a jock-in-training, or perhaps you were like, totally, the cheerleading captain. Did you have one of those awesome, giant cell phones like Zack Morris on Saved by the Bell? Maybe you liked to take apart toasters and turn them into shortwave radios, build model cars, or put together little dance routines with your friends (yes, I admit it, that was me).

Spend a little time reminiscing and let us know in the comments below - we’ve only been 12 for a couple days now and we want to know what we have to look forward to! And I promise, no matter how big of a dork - or how “rad” - you were, we won’t laugh…at least, not to your face.

This is the second contest in our week-long 12-year anniversary celebration. We will pick four winners during each contest: the winners can choose between an iTunes or Amazon gift card as their prize. First place winners receive a $50 gift card, and runners-up will get $25. Enter as many times as you like, by submitting your entries as replies to this post. Employees and friends of Ilium Software aren’t eligible to win, but are welcome (and encouraged) to participate anyway. Today’s contest closes at 12:00 noon Eastern Time tomorrow. Winners will be announced during the day tomorrow.

And don’t forget, we’ve got more going on this week besides contests! Shop for anything in our online store and get a big $12 discount off your purchase! You can read more here and start shopping now.

Winners: MadLibs fun!

The votes are in! There were a lot of strange, weird, and funny headlines from our MadLibs game yesterday, so it took us some time today to narrow down the list to four winners. But we’ve picked our favorites and now it’s time to let you know which headlines we liked best.

The first place winner of a $50 Amazon or iTunes gift card is Melvyn, for the crazy headline: “Today Microsoft announced its merger with Amazon and unveiled its plans to sell toenails to Bolivia.” Eww…gross. Can you even imagine a merger like that - or living in Bolivia and seeing toenails for sale at your local store?

Our three runners-up, who each receive a $25 Amazon or iTunes gift card, are: Paperjet, Shaun, and MikeCTZA. Well done, everyone! I’ll be contacting you via email to find out which store you’d like your gift card from. If you don’t get that email later today, reply to this post to let me know.

To everyone who played, thanks so much - the entries were great, and it was a tough decision. But don’t go far, because we’ll start a new contest tomorrow and you can try your luck at a prize again!

And just a reminder: we’ve got a big anniversary sale running on our site this week too. All of the software in our online store, and eWallet on the iPhone App Store, are discounted BIG right now. Check it out here!

Contest One: Say what?!

We’re going to start off our week of anniversary contests with a blast from the past - er, a blast from one year ago, that is.

One of the best contests we ran for last year’s party was a fun-filled game of mobile-style MadLibs; we got a lot of hilarious responses. So, I decided we really should go for another round!

If you don’t know what MadLibs are, well, that’s just sad - they were a childhood staple where I grew up. I’ve got some fond memories of rainy afternoons sitting around laughing at the crazy MadLibs my friends and I used to make up. And that was just last week! Anyway, you can get a crash course on MadLibs here, then head on back to this post more details on our contest.

Ready? All right - here’s the deal: go get a pen and paper (you do still know what pen and paper are, right? If not, open a new “note” on your phone) and ask someone (preferably not a stranger on the bus, but you can if you’d like) for just the words in blue on the screenshot below. Don’t read them the whole sentences! Trust me, you’ll get better results if the person isn’t trying to think of words that really fit the headlines. Write down all their answers, put them together in each headline, read the results aloud, and have yourselves a nice big laugh!

Fill in as many of the headlines as you like (you don’t have to answer every one), and send us your entries as replies to this post. You’ll need to type the entire headline into the comments, not just your answers to the words in blue - otherwise it’s going to make even less sense. We’ll do the judging and announce the winners tomorrow.

This is the first contest in our week-long 12-year anniversary celebration. We will pick four winners during each contest: the winners can choose between an iTunes or Amazon gift card as their prize. First place winners receive a $50 gift card, and runners-up will get $25. Enter as many times as you like, by submitting your entries as replies to this post. Employees and friends of Ilium Software aren’t eligible to win, but are welcome (and encouraged) to participate anyway. Today’s contest closes at 9:00 a.m. Eastern Time tomorrow morning. Winners will be announced during the day tomorrow.

And don’t forget, we’ve got more going on this week besides contests! Shop for anything in our online store and get a big $12 discount off your purchase! You can read more here and start shopping now.

Our 12th Anniversary!

Today is our 12 year anniversary! Yes, we’ve been making and selling mobile and desktop software for 12 years. How amazing is that?

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