Category: Contest

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Woot-Off today!

If you don’t know what a Woot-Off is then you probably don’t know what Woot is. Woot is one of those wonderful ideas that makes you slap your forehead and cry out, "why didn’t I think of that!" Woot is associated with Overstock.com and releases 1 product Monday through Friday at 12am Central time (1am Eastern). The product is available in a limited number and often sells out in the first hour. The product is almost always significantly cheaper than anything you find on Froogle.

A Woot-Off is basically a chance for Woot to clean out their warehouse.

Woot-Off Light…a short term frenzied mutation of our product posting procedure. In Woot-Off mode, a new product is launched immediately after the sellout of the previous deal. There is a half-Woot-life of 12 hours maximum on any product within a Woot-Off that does not sell out. The number of Woot-Off items, sequence, and quantity will not be announced. When Woot-Off mode is over, the orange lights will disappear and our normal schedule will resume. Depending on its success, this may be a mode we would go into once or twice a month for a relatively short duration of time (24-72 hours generally.) [Source]

I have purchased twice through Woot and been thrilled each time. Both the products are regularly used and were fantastic bargins. I wish we weren’t in tight budget mode or I would buy my wife the Bluetooth iPod headphones right now. My other favorite bargin hunting site is Slickdeals.net which reports coupon and rebate combinations that often result in wonderful deals or free products. It’s sister site is Slickfillers.net which helps you find low dollar items to push an Amazon order over the $25 mark to gain free shipping.

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Another win!

Blingo

Woohoo! One of my referrals won a movie ticket on Blingo so I win too! I received the choice of a movie ticket or a $10 iTunes gift certificate. This time I chose the movie ticket. Cathy has won 4 times and I’ve won 3 times. We use the iTunes certificate or movie ticket as a bribe for Sarah.

Today’s Blingo Blog notes that Blingo is becoming PCHBlingo. Yes, you read that correctly. Publisher’s Clearing House (promise to give away $10million while secretly stealing old people’s retirement under the guise of selling magazines) has purchased Blingo!

Over the last two years you’ve come to enjoy great search results and fun prizes at Blingo. We’ve given away over 22,000 gifts since we started, but in an effort to give away more, even bigger prizes, Blingo has partnered with the king of sweepstakes. Yes, you guessed it: Publishers Clearing House, the folks who give away things like $10 million at a time. The new PCHBlingo will be the same great site but with a bit more punch.

Watch the site for new features and exciting prizes, and thanks for searching and winning on Blingo!

I’ll hold my judgment. Maybe I’ll need to switch to Ask’s Searchchips.com. Ask has produced some better search engine results than Google here lately anyhow.

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$10,000 for your idea; $2million for your robot

Microsoft is having a contest for your ideas. 12 entrants will actually develop their ideas.

It begins with contestants submitting their cool ideas for projects built with Express, and completes when 12 selected finalists complete their projects and compete head-to-head with each other. The Grand Prize winner walks away with $10,000.

Oops. The rules state that the idea phase just ended. "The Idea Phase of the Contest begins 12:01 a.m. (PT) on March 13, 2006 and ends at 11:59 p.m. on April 30, 2006."

You still have time to enter the Darpa Challenge!

Teams will compete to build an autonomous vehicle able to complete a 60-mile urban course safely in less than 6 hours.

For track A, $1million development funds are available; for track B, $100,000 is available.

One way involves teams submitting a detailed proposal for up to $1 million of technology development funds in response to a DARPA solicitation. The Government will obtain limited license rights to technologies developed using this funding.

or

The second track is similar to that used for Grand Challenge 2005: teams will submit applications and participate in a series of qualification activities. Each team that participates as a semi-finalist in the National Qualification Event (NQE) will be awarded $50,000. Each team that is successful at NQE will receive $100,000 and compete in the Urban Challenge final event.

Details on competing for funding are available.

I so want to do this!

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March Blingo Frenzy Continues

Have you signed up with Blingo yet? No spam. No catches. Signup under someone and that someone wins too. More info.

Looks like I’ve been misspelling frenzy as freenzy so I get top ranking if you search for "blingo freenzy" but I have no placement on "blingo frenzy."

Looks like they had another frenzy Sunday afternoon.

for an hour in the afternoon we distributed 40 Visa Gift Cards valued at $25 each

We scored another movie ticket but turned it down in hopes of winning something better (think iPod…) since we are limited to winning 2 prizes per household per month.

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Blingo March Freenzy continues!

Have you signed up with Blingo yet? No spam. No catches. Signup under someone and that someone wins too. More info.

A couple of brief notes regarding Blingo. The main rule to be aware of is that each household is limited to winning 2 prizes per month. If I win a movie ticket, since I signed up under my wife, she also wins. She has the option of turning it down but if she accepts that means our household has won 2 prizes and within that month and we are no longer qualified to get more prizes. I wrote Blingo to ask if during their freenzy they would temporarily increase the number of prizes each household could receive and, with a very nice letter (unlike the evil Blogger.com employees), Blingo explained that the freenzy is to help increase awareness of Blingo and that the prize limit has to remain at 2 per household even during the freenzy.