Skip to content

Content Header

Posts tagged contest

Alternate version of cartoon with @biz

Caption contest winner: congratulations, Abhiroop Basu!

Caption contest winner: congratulations, Abhiroop Basu! published on No Comments on Caption contest winner: congratulations, Abhiroop Basu!

Congratulations to Abhiroop Basu. It was a tough field, but he narrowly edged out Jon Seymour’s “The consequences of failing to switch your device to flight mode prior to take off.”

A few other great entries from Noise to Signal’s readers:

  • Jess Sloss lends a new urgency to rickrolling with “Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down.”
  • Mary Skiba-Lofy’s warning will probably resonate with Amazon S3 customers: “Who knew cloud computing could be so hazardous????!!?”
  • Tim McAlpine has a sinister take on Twitter’s recruitment strategy: “Twitter continues buying spree. This time going beyond apps with the recent acquisition of both @scobleizer and @guykawasaki. Is @ladygaga next?”
  • John Erle Mundle gives us LOTR 2.0 with “Ring destroyed. Mount Doom in ruins. Can’t wait to see the Shire. Strange urge for strawberries and cream. #hobbitsftw”
  • Speaking of literature, Boris Mann evokes the white fail whale with “Call me @Ishmael”.
  • And in a similar vein, Boyd Neil gives us a fervent “Don’t *Fail* me now”.
  • Tris Hussey has a little career advice: “To my friends who thought being a social media consultant was for the birds…”
  • Mike Fitzsimon offers “Mums are right. Who knew? RT @KathysMum: Kathy, you are getting so carried away by this Twitter thing”.

And finally, via email (because he – gasp! – isn’t on Facebook), Eric Andersen submitted four grin-inducing suggestions, including this one:

“Wait,” Bob tweeted, “The Twittersphere is *between* the stratosphere and troposphere?”

Thanks so much, everyone, for the entries! And my thanks to Jordan Behan and Strutta for letting me take their Facebook contest platform for a spin.

Updated: Abhiroop blogs, “perhaps I should have put @biz instead of ‘Biz Stone'”. POOF!

Alternate version of cartoon with @biz

Caption contest!

Caption contest! published on

See that cartoon? Does it seem to be missing a certain something… something your brain is already trying to invent for it? Like a caption?

Excellent. Because it’s time to have some fun… and maybe win a little something for your desk (or cubicle/home office/area of the sewing table that isn’t currently being used for sewing).

The fine folks at Strutta – a Vancouver-based contest platform – called me up to see if I’d like to run a caption contest using their Facebook product. In return, I’ll blog about my experience (warts and all*).

To enter, just suggest a caption (over on the N2S Facebook Page). And if yours tickles me the most, you win:

  • a signed print of this cartoon with your caption on it
  • and a signed print of any cartoon you like from the Noise to Signal oeuvre
  • and a mug of your choice from the Noise to Signal store.

That’s two prints and a mug – easily enough to render the most sterile and unpleasant working space downright livable.

So enter away! The contest runs through May 25th, and I’ll announce the winner soon afterward. Head over here to enter.

* Side effects of Strutta do not include actual warts.

Want.

Want. published on 1 Comment on Want.

Originally posted on ReadWriteWeb.

There’s something about Apple’s consumer design chops that makes their latest product – whatever it happens to be – the definitive object of desire of the moment.

Steve Jobs could announce a new line of refrigerator expansion valves next week, and we’d be lining up at midnight to buy them. (“It’s tiny. It’s revolutionary. It will completely transform the way you lower the temperature of food.”)

And not because we’re slavish Mac fangirls-and-boys. (Okay, not just because of that.) It actuallywill be freakin’ amazing. Sure, you’ll only be able to buy food approved by the App(etizer) Store, but the design! The user experience! the way the mustard swishes out of the way when you swipe!

And before Jobs even leaves the stage, the marketing and promotion industry steps in. The low-end version of the product – whatever the equivalent of an iPod Shuffle is – becomes the giveaway of choice to people signing up for a new service, whether it’s a bank account, cable or a loan-shark arrangement. The high-end version becomes either the first prize for every contest around, or the bait for a multitude of online scams. (Suuuuure people are auctioning iPads off for $2 each.)

Somehow, Apple has found the combination to the Oh God I Have to Have That center of our brains. And if that sounds a little terrifying, it probably is. The only comfort is this: they haven’t quite perfected it yet.

Content Footer