Ladies and gentlemen, after extensive counting I have found that AV has won the Gadget Club contest with 91 votes. He and his Atomo are WINNAR! And with that we close our Gadget Club contest with special thanks to Radio Shack (le Shack) and Peek for sponsoring the festivities.
OK. I’m happy to report that Round 2 of the Gadget Club Contest passed by without a hitch and now we’re on to Round 3. Before I show you the new entrants, however, let’s announce the Round 2 winner, shall we?
Based on my queries, here is the breakdown:
Beer Pong 2
WIIPOD 37
NBPlex 5
Crazy Camera 2
GeckoCords 22
So, as we see, the WiiPod won. I still don’t know what the heck it does but look at that box art, people. Classic! Congratulations, Paul F!
Thanks to Peek and RadioShack AKA DA SHACK for sponsoring this great contest. Look for the next vote-off tonight.
Here are some of the topics from today’s podcast…
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OK. Keep the Gadget Club entries coming.
I’m going to keep the Gadget Club contest going as originally advertised and will change the voting procedure on Wednesday for new entries. Keep your entries coming and hopefully we can avoid gaming the system this time around. There’s no reason we can’t have some fun here, so let’s move towards peace and harmony.
Click through to read full rules and regulations and we’ll run the second round on Wednesday. Good luck!
So I’m putting a hold on the Gadget Club contest for now. I’ve notified a person that he won this week, just to get it out of the way. See, I got this email from an entrant.
Hey, I want to withdraw from the contest. The contest (and me along with it) have gotten a little out of hand.
I submitted something because it seemed like a fun contest. After I found out I was in, I worked my social networks in a get-out-the-vote campaign. I was kind of miffed when I saw the guys scripting the votes and your reset of the votes seemed like your threw out the baby with the bath water.
I decided to not spam my social networks for a second go. When I grumbled to someone yesterday, they suggested I use mechanical turk to put them back. I figured I had 150 legitimate votes thrown out, so I put that up on mechturk. Dirty, yes, but I thought both should have been DQed.
Now the whole thing is grimy, and I just want to forget it happened. If you let the contest go and I end up with the most votes, I don’t want the prizes, or I’ll donate the cash value.
Interesting social experiment.
Essentially two people tried to game the contest, one contestant was disqualified and the voting was reset, and one contestant got angry.
I see his point but please, guys, see mine: we do contests for you. CG doesn’t get any cash for these giveaways. I do them so you guys can get some cool stuff. I like you guys. I really do.
But I’ve found over the years that you guys don’t do creative contests. I could basically say “Comment and you’ll win a robotic goat” and you’ll comment until your fingers bleed. However, when I ask “Just make something cool – doesn’t have to be professional” it’s crickets.
So then I did this contest and added a voting component because the prize was so great – a Peek and $500. I used a voting system that was almost foolproof in that I could watch the IPs that roll in and I saw two huge attempts to game the system. Both of the contestants who gamed the system admitted to it and I appreciate that. The system isn’t, in fact, hackproof and no system is truly hackproof. However, we have a set of tools and we try to use those tools and when people work around them – and they’ll always work around them – I have to make stupid rules to prevent this kind of thing. And I don’t want to make stupid rules. I don’t want to have to police you guys. It’s just not worth it.
I’m basically stuck now. I have to rethink this contest and I’ll tell you how you can enter again on Monday.
To those who did something creative I want you to know that I sincerely appreciate it. I’ve been doing this for quite a while and I feel like we’re just lobbing words into the great unknown. To see feedback and faces and to know you guys are having fun is important to me.
To those who cheated or did whatever they thought was fair: fine. I don’t hold it against you. For all you know this whole thing is fixed and I’m going to pick my brother-in-law, dad, and dentist to win the prizes. But I want you to know that it isn’t worth it. It’s not worth it to me to get angry or upset (I actually am kind of upset because this is frustrating) and it’s not worth it for you to turn a fun contest into something problematic. I would love to get cooler stuff in to give away but I want to get more interaction out of the contests and it’s abundantly clear that the best I can hope for are a bunch of comments after a post. Fine.
I’ll let you know what I’m doing on Monday.
We received about 20 entries in the Gadget Club contest so far – not a huge number but impressive enough to offer some hearty competition. So I present to you, dear readers, the first five contestants in our Gadget Club contest. It was hard to pick just five and the remaining entrants will go back into the pool next week.
Please go through each one and assess it for value, salability, and funitude.
Remember: the contest is running for two more weeks and any entrants not chosen here will be added to the pool next week. Head over to the main post to read the full rules and conditions and good luck!
I’ll count the votes this Friday at noon Eastern.
UPDATE – I just reset the poll. ProProfs has a method to watch the IPs and we had a bit of a run on the PSI gadget. Please avoid this in the future. I’m not your Dad.