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SpaceX hosts competition for the best Hyperloop pod design
While a few private companies are hard at work developing a commercial version of Elon Musk's Hyperloop concept, SpaceX is hosting a pod design competition. Intended for students and independent engineering teams, the challenge is to construct a human-scale pod concept that could be used for the high-speed transportation system. Competing teams will not only build a full-sized version of a people mover, but they'll put the pods through their paces on a one-mile test track at the SpaceX facility in Hawthorne, California next summer. Before the test vehicles are built, the company will host a design weekend at Texas A&M University in January where design teams will have a chance to meet with SpaceX officials before moving forward.
Skype for Mac design competition announced
Designers, start your creative engines! Today, on its official blog, Skype announced a chat styling competition to find the world's best theme for Skype for Mac. "We want you to create the chat style for an upcoming version of Skype for Mac that will be enjoyed by millions of people around the world," states the official website for the competition. "When we first launched our new Mac app, we were delighted to see so many custom styles emerge from the design community, so we thought we'd make it official," Krishna Panicker wrote on Skype's Big Blog. "We're inviting you to design your own chat style for Skype for Mac." Skype officially begins accepting entries for the first stage of its three-stage competition on Friday, April 8. Each stage of the contest will last three weeks and result in a people's choice winner selected by users of the site and a judges' choice winner anointed by Skype's panel of experts. The six winners, two from each stage, will continue to compete for the grand prize: Skype will include the winning design in a future version of Skype for Mac. The grand prize also includes an 11-inch MacBook Air, iPad 2 and a one year subscription to Skype's Unlimited World Extra calling service. In addition, the five runners-up will receive some useful trophies that include an iPad 2, an AppleTV and a copy of CSS3 for Web Designers. Skype's software allows users to connect with other Skype users using instant messaging, voice and video conferencing. The company's telephony services also enable customers to place and receive voice calls between a device or computer running Skype and nearly any traditional landline or mobile phone. According to an SEC filing from 2010, Skype has approximately 560 million total registered users worldwide. Full details about the design contest, including prize lists, judging criteria, key dates and terms and conditions, are available on Skype's official competition page. Good luck to everyone who enters. We can't wait to see the winning design.
Intel announces Core i7 Custom Desktop Challenge winners
Well, you know Intel just wasn't going to let NVIDIA have all the fun with its casemod design contest, and after a few weeks of voting, the chipmaker has now announced the winners of its own Core i7 Custom Desktop Challenge. Not surprisingly, there are a few familiar cases among the winners -- including the lovingly crafted Mission-style PC casemod and the OS Xbox Pro (deserved winner of best video) -- but there's also plenty of designs we haven't seen. That includes the Best in Show winner from modder "Duck," whose fire engine red system pictured above uses dry ice cooling to allow for overclocking up to 5GHz, and the boombox mod from jj_sky5000, which won the award for best creativity. Hit up the link below for a closer look at those, and the rest of the winners. [Thanks, Jeffrey]
Joystiq T-Shirt Design Contest [Update 2]
March is national video game t-shirt month (because we said so). That means it's time we put together a Joystiq T-shirt, with your help, of course. The winner will be amply rewarded with a domestic (not imported) DS Lite plus two games. To win, create a kick-ass T-shirt design using the Joystiq logo. A few rules: The design must be your original work and you must own the rights to it. We don't need the IP Sherriff sniffin' round here for copyright violations. We will be printing the shirts with spot color (if you're not sure what that is, please Google). You may use three Pantone colors total. All colors must be converted to spot colors with correct Pantone numbers. Though you aren't required to use our logo colors, there should be a strong design reason for departure from them. Placement of the design on the shirt is up to you. Front, back, sleeve, whatever your creative heart desires. The design must look good! The design must incorporate our logo (eps here or here). By submitting your design you give us non-exclusive rights to use the image in the design of a Joystiq t-shirt as well as for other Joystiq promotional materials. Submissions: send your design and a short description of it to joystiq.applications at gmail. Format of submission is unimportant. Just make sure the image is large enough and clear enough for us to evaluate it. If we choose your design, we'll need a color-separated EPS version for printing purposes. We reserve the right to select no design at all if none of the submissions thrill us. Residents of the world are invited to enter the contest, provided your local laws allow you to enter such contests. Deadline for entries: March 31. Winner will be decided by a panel of Joystiq judges by mid-April. Submit as many designs as you like. Remember, we're looking for a good design, so we encourage multiple submissions because that gives us more to choose from. You could go front and back with a design, but that'll increase costs of printing. Ideally, we want a shirt that won't cost too much to produce. [Update 1: clarified rules based on questions asked in comments.][Update 2: Rules #2 and #7 have been clarified.]
