Tag: CONTEST

On Saturday, iTunes VP Eddy Cue called a woman named Gail Davis of Orpington, Kent, U.K., to congratulate her on winning Apple's 10 billionth app download sweepstakes, and to award her with a $10,000 prize. Davis, however, politely declined the offer, and hung up. "I thought it was a prank call," Davis told Cult of Mac. "I said, 'Thank you very much, I'm not interested' and I hung up." But one ...

Jay-Z's release of an a cappella 'Black Album' inspired the creation of brilliant, yet unauthorized, remixes. Amateur music-mixers now have access to another icon's raw material, but this opportunity is officially sanctioned by Sony. The record company recently announced its Remix Project, which allows amateur and professional producers to manipulate -- without fear of reprisal -- a classic tune ...

Destructive, deceptive and belligerent robots predominately attract the public's attention. Occasionally, though, there arise welcome reports of inefficient, worthless and downtrodden 'bots that reassure the doomsday crowd. The Bacarobo competition serves as just such a comforting event, because it celebrates the most ridiculously dumb robots in the world. Part stand-up routine, part robot ...

Challenge.gov is a new site, created by the U.S. General Services Administration to serve as a one-stop shop for government-run contests, challenges and prizes. Federal agencies are able to post contests to the clearinghouse in an effort to increase visibility and increase citizen engagement. Most of the challenges offer prize money to citizens who are able to provide compelling content, such as ...

Unlike some other aging gangsta rap icons, Snoop Dogg continues to prove himself both a prolific musician and a complacent corporate shill. (We're thinking of his recent collaborations with the TV show 'True Blood' and fembot Katy Perry, and even his contribution as a celebrity voice for TomTom GPS -- "Turn rizzle at the next intersizzle"?) And now Norton, the global computer security giant, is ...

This week, Microsoft hosted the final rounds of the Worldwide Competition on Microsoft Office, during which 50-odd young people gathered in Park City, Utah, and competed to prove which four were the most proficient in Microsoft Word 2003 and 2007, and Microsoft Excel 2003 and 2007, respectively. Those few dozen showed themselves to be the best of the best among a pool of 115,000 entrants. As part ...

It's rare that a pitcher achieves a perfect game, where no opposing batter reaches base or scores. And since realism is the focus in sports video games these days, developer 2K Sports figured the feat would be just as tough to accomplish in its new 'Major League Baseball 2K10' game. That's why it offered a prize of $1 million to any gamer who could "throw" a perfect game between the game's March ...

They might not have as high a profile as the Oscars, but Britain's first annual Google Street View Awards ceremony was held Monday. The Telegraph reports a panel of U.K. experts, selected by Google, and about 11,000 online participants voted a cobblestone road in York, called The Shambles, "Britain's Most Picturesque Street." "It has been the backdrop for many a jigsaw, chocolate box and railway ...

Share What would you do if you picked up the phone and the voice on the other end said, "This is Steve Jobs from Apple?" Laugh, hang up, utter a choice word or two? All would be appropriate responses -- unless you happen to be 70-year-old Louie Sulcer. According to Rolling Stone, the grandfather from Woodstock, Georgia recently received a personal phone call from Jobs after he downloaded ...

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the research arm of the U.S. military, has been hosting public contests with cash prizes, for the past five years. Previous years have seen challenges such as asking people to build robots that could walk from Los Angeles to Las Vegas (no one managed to do so), but this year, DARPA has a Web 2.0-based trial for contestants. Beginning ...

With obesity levels rising, the U.S. population's affection for junk food is obvious. In case you needed further proof of our flabby nation's torrid love affair with gut-bombs, we would like to present the Eat N Tweet Challenge. Created by This is Why You're Fat, the Web site dedicated to all things artery-clogging, the Eat N Tweet Challenge pits contestants in a race against time, each other, ...

Grab a pair of earplugs, folks. In what's sure to be a painful and embarrassing marketing ploy, Yahoo! is asking people to record and submit their version of the site's famous yodel as part of a worldwide contest. If your yodel is viewed 1,000 times, it even goes "gold." In Times Square, celebrity yodelers Jewel and LeAnn Rimes, along with other inexplicable celebs like Randy Jackson, Pete Wentz, ...

Engadget isn't just the world's most linked-to tech blog -- it's the world's most linked-to blog. Period. With that kind of Jedi mind power over the gadget-buying masses, imagine the piles of tech freebies its editors must get sent. But, since keeping any of those toys would be unethical, Engadget has cleaned out its closet and is giving away more than 100 gadgets to its readers starting ...

This week's tale of completely inappropriate behavior comes from Kuwait, that tiny gulf state just south of quagmire. The story goes something like this: A man, Haggag Al Saadi, is accused of raping 18 childred in the town of Hawali. Among the local press, he is referred to as the "Monster of Hawali." What really makes this tale stand out is a Kuwaiti company that started a race to whip up ...

(WARNING! Explicit lyrics in the above video.) Crunch Gear is running a contest, and a fun one at that. All you have to do is send in a video, via e-mail, YouTube or any other video-sharing service of you going medieval on your land line phone. Take a bat, a crowbar, a 20 pound sledge -- it doesn't matter -- and destroy that vestige of land line-based communication. The best entry wins a prize ...