Gmail Giveaway

I’ve been given 3 more Gmail invites so I’ve decided to have a contest.

Take a picture that somehow involves an animal or animals. Creativity is a must! Hint: I hate cats, so don’t use them! You may enter as many photos as you want, but are only allowed to win one Gmail invite. I’ll pick what I think are the best 3 2 photos. Only original contributions will be accepted (no copying from somewhere on the Internet). Please do not send me scanned copies of photographs either. I prefer the photos to be taken with a digital camera, but if you really want to use film, have the photos converted to a digital format when you get them developed.

I will showcase all of the entries in the photos section of my site (which will be converted to Pictorialis II in the next few days).

Email your submissions to mtdewvirus [AT] gmail [DOT] com with a subject of Gmail Giveaway. Make sure to include your full name (I need it for the invite) and a website if you have one. If you have any questions, leave a comment.

The deadline to submit photos is Sunday June 20th at 12:00 PM Eastern.

Good Luck!!

Update (6/15/2004 6:10 PM): I’ve decided to give out one of the invites to the person that can break this code first. Follow the instructions above for sending me the answer.

NAEGET IVCETE COOBBA KRLAAM SILSLI FTEKLS

This entry was written by Nick, posted on June 15, 2004 at 11:33 am, filed under Entry and tagged , . Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Comments are closed, but you can leave a trackback: Trackback URL.

17 Comments

  1. Ozh
    Posted June 15, 2004 at 2:59 pm | Permalink

    Jesus. 3 weeks ago you had none, and now you’ve had 6 to give away ? You seem to be indeed extremely contagious :cool:

  2. Nick
    Posted June 15, 2004 at 3:05 pm | Permalink

    Google must be anxious to get Gmail out in the open. Everyone that I gave the invitations to last week already has 3 invites of their own to dish out.

  3. Ozh
    Posted June 15, 2004 at 3:48 pm | Permalink

    Hmm. I see a plan : give me one account, and when I get 3 invitations, I’ll add them to your contest price so you won’t give 3 but 5 accounts !
    :mrgreen:

  4. Nick
    Posted June 15, 2004 at 3:55 pm | Permalink

    :lol: I like your creativity, but that isn’t quite the type I’m looking for. Maybe 3 people won’t even enter, then everyone will win by default…so start snapping those pictures! :wink:

  5. Ozh
    Posted June 15, 2004 at 4:09 pm | Permalink

    I did !

    btw, hope you will receive the mail, I’m not sure there is no problem between me & gmail : I’ve been sending various mail to check for account availability (ozh at gmail, gjskdgjsdklgq at gmail…) and no one bounced back …

  6. Ozh
    Posted June 16, 2004 at 6:39 am | Permalink

    (did you receive my mail ?)

  7. Ozh
    Posted June 16, 2004 at 8:38 am | Permalink

    Replying to announce I’m a winner whooohOOoOooOoooo errrm nevermind :mrgreen:

    I’ve changed my email in the comment form for an alternative one, but GMail seems to hate me tbh :)

    As for the code … Damn. You have to give a hint !

  8. Nick
    Posted June 16, 2004 at 9:56 am | Permalink

    If you’ve read Dan Brown’s books, this type of code is used several times. :wink:

  9. Paul
    Posted June 16, 2004 at 9:57 am | Permalink

    What’s up with the [AT] and [DOT]? I’ve seen some other people doing this lately too.

  10. Nick
    Posted June 16, 2004 at 10:09 am | Permalink

    If you put the actual address in as text spam harvestors (robots) that scan websites for email addresses will recognize it. Just helps to prevent all the nasty SPAM!!

  11. Nick
    Posted June 16, 2004 at 4:07 pm | Permalink

    Jere got the code so he gets the invite. I won’t post the answer in case anyone else is up for the challenge of figuring it out. If Jere gets some invites, the next person to crack the code will get one of those invites.

  12. Ozh
    Posted June 16, 2004 at 4:54 pm | Permalink

    on a side but happy note, I’m not really entering the contest since I have now my gmail account :drool:

    … but I’m curious about the code anyway :?

  13. Nick
    Posted June 17, 2004 at 9:07 pm | Permalink

    I haven’t received very many photo entries. You still have a few days to get camera happy.

  14. Nick
    Posted June 19, 2004 at 10:21 am | Permalink

    With all of the Gmail invites floating around, I now wish that I hadn’t set such a long timeframe on this. Especially since the giveway has only produced a few photo entries. I’d really just like to give the 2 invites to these people and hopefully get some more invites. In the future I’ll simply be giving them away to the first three people that comment on a particular post.

    Another hint for the code if anyone wants it…the code uses a 6×6 Caesar Box.

  15. MaThIbUs
    Posted June 20, 2004 at 8:02 am | Permalink

    I’ve been trying to crack that code for like an hour now, but I still haven’t found it… Here’s some help for those who don’t give up this easy.

  16. Nick
    Posted June 20, 2004 at 10:27 am | Permalink

    Actually the hint I gave should make it very easy to break. Less than 2 hours left…

  17. Nick
    Posted June 20, 2004 at 12:01 pm | Permalink

    Four people sent in photos and two have already received an invite elsewhere in the past few days. Looks like the other two win by default.Thanks for everyone who joined in. There will not be any more contests in the future, I will simply give away invites on a first come, first serve basis when I get more.

    Now, the answer to the code…

    Rearrange the letters to form a 6×6 box like this:

    NAEGET

    IVCETE

    COOBBA

    KRLAAM

    SILSLI

    FTEKLS

    Read from top to bottom, then left to right:

    NICKSFAVORITECOLLEGEBASKETBALLTEAMIS

    Insert spaces:

    NICKS FAVORITE COLLEGE BASKETBALL TEAM IS

    Answer:

    DUKE

    I plan to put up some codes from time to time if you’re up for the challenge!