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Postcard on the Run giveaway: discounts, free postcard packs and a personal card from Selena Gomez!
Selena Gomez, Postcard on the Run, and TUAW have teamed up for an awesome promotion for all our readers, as well as the chance to win some pretty sweet prizes to boot. Postcard on the Run is an iOS and Android app that allows you to bring a physical touch to your digital memories by letting you turn any image on your iOS device into a physical postcard that can be mailed by the postal service to anyone, anywhere in the world. Besides being a great app, Postcard on the Run has some serious star power behind it with investor and creative advisor Selena Gomez. You can check out my review of Postcard on the Run here and read my interview with Selena here. Then be sure to leave a comment in this post to enter the prize giveaways. Just what are those prizes? A little something for everyone. Everyone reading this post can use the promo code "TUAWSG" when ordering postcards through Postcard on the Run. All you need to do is download the free app, then enter the code after you've customized your postcard and are ready to check out. The promo code is worth 30% off your order. The code is good until January 15th, 2012. 10 First Prizes: We're also giving away codes for 10-postcard packs to ten lucky readers. Each prize gives a single winner a code for ten free postcards they can create and mail for free through the Postcard on the Run app. Grand Prize: One lucky winner will receive a personal postcard from Selena Gomez. The winner will be the envy of her 25 million Facebook fans and 9.1 million Twitter followers. And chances are it will be the coolest postcard you've ever received. So, want to win 10 free Postcard on the Run postcards or a postcard from Selena Gomez herself? Here are the rules: Open to legal US residents of the 50 United States and the District of Columbia and Canada (excluding Quebec) who are 18 and older. To enter simply leave a comment on this post. The comment must be left before Thursday, December 29, 2011, 11:59 PM Eastern Daylight Time. You may enter only once. Ten First Prize winners will be selected in a random drawing. Each winner will receive one Postcard on the Run promo code good for ten free postcards (Total Value: Up to US$19.99 per winner). One Grand Prize winner will be selected in a random drawing. Winner will receive one personal postcard from Selena Gomez. Click Here for complete Official Rules. Winners will be contacted by email after the conclusion of the drawing. Now leave your comment below and good luck!
Archon Genomics X Prize offers up $10 million for sequencing 100 human genomes
Sure, we've come to love the X Prize for all of its crazy futuristic car building and moon racing contests, but the latest competition is decidedly smaller -- at least in one sense. For the Archon Genomics X Prize, the foundation is asking teams to sequence "medical grade" human genomes -- 100 of them, in fact -- using the DNA of 100 centenarians (folks who've made it to the ripe old age of 100), referred to pithily as the "Medco 100 Over 100." The centenarian DNA may contain secrets to overcoming disease -- after all, they made it to 100 for a reason. The competition opens to teams on January 3rd of next year -- once completed, the data gathered will be opened up to researchers. Press info can be unlocked after the break.
Star Supremacy hands out treats to beta testers
As Star Supremacy continues its star trek through beta and toward release, Barbily Games has a few treats (but not tricks) in store for testers. After gathering feedback and bug reports from players in the beta, the dev team has whipped up a few hefty updates that should improve the game end-to-end. These updates include an improved UI, a chat system, alliances, item trading, and a tutorial. And even though the team is mired in beta craziness, there's always time for a little Halloween fun. The Star Supremacy devs have issued a challenge to players to find hidden GM bases. Those that do will be rewarded with special in-game items, such as pumpkin helmets and longevity tokens. Finally, Barbily is giving away gaming headsets to a few lucky fans that have "liked" the game's Facebook page. The drawing will happen when the page reaches 30,000 likes. Star Supremacy will be heading into open beta on November 15th. [Source: Barbily Games press release]
When two chatbots have a conversation, everyone wins (video)
What did one chatbot say to the other chatbot? Quite a lot, actually -- but good luck making any sense out of it. That's what researchers from Cornell's Creative Machines Lab recently discovered, after pitting two bots against one another for a good ol' fashioned talk-off. It's all part of the lab's submission to this year's Loebner Prize Competition in Artificial Intelligence -- an event that awards $100,000 to the team whose computer programs can conduct the most human-like conversations. Unfortunately for Cornell's squad, their chatbots still have a long way to go before achieving conversational coherence, though they could easily get hired as anchors on most cable news networks. Throughout the course of their frenetic (and often snippy) discussion, one bot raised heady questions about God and existence, while the other boldly claimed to be a unicorn. Basically, they had the exact same conversation we used to have in our dorm rooms every night, at around 4 am. Watch it for yourself after the break. It's nothing short of sublime.
Microsoft promises Mango phones in September for Imagine Cup finalists
Another year, another Imagine Cup. The annual competition, sponsored by Microsoft, gives students the opportunity to apply technology to tackle hunger, poverty, and other global problems, thereby making the world a better place (for you and for me, and the entire human race). We'd say the finalists deserve a pretty cool reward for their efforts, right? According to a status update on the Cup's Twitter account -- an update that's conspicuously been pulled -- one of the prizes for finalists is a Windows Phone with Mango pre-loaded, a jackpot they'd receive by September. We're not completely certain if this will be a pre-release version intended for developers or if it's an indication that the final iteration will be ready for public use by this time; we've only heard that Mango's slotted for a fall release, so both are definite possibilities. Since many of these students are developers, however, it's entirely possible they'll receive a prototype device with an early version of the firmware. No phone could replace the warm feelings in their heart for such a great accomplishment, but at least they can share their joy with built-in Twitter integration.
The WoW Insider Show LIVE! on Tuesday, June 28
The WoW Insider Show is going live on Tuesday, June 28, at 1 p.m. Eastern/10 a.m. Pacific time, so server downtime isn't as boring as it could be! Join host Mike Sacco and co-hosts Matt Rossi and Mathew McCurley as they talk about patch 4.2, patch 4.2, and more patch 4.2. The patch is totally happening that day (right?) so spend your downtime with us! Tune in this Tuesday, June 28, at 1 p.m. Eastern/10 a.m. Pacific time to ask questions, participate in the discussion with fellow readers and listeners, and have a lot of fun. The show will be made available later if you cannot make it for the live portions. See you all on Tuesday!
The WoW Insider Show LIVE! on Tuesday, May 31
The WoW Insider Show is going live on Tuesday, May 31, at 11 a.m. Eastern/8 a.m. Pacific time, so server downtime isn't as boring as it could be! Join host Mike Sacco and co-hosts Matt Rossi and Mathew McCurley as they entertain you for an hour of the biggest news of the week in WoW, reader emails, fun discussion, and prize giveaways. Yes, that's right -- prizes. You'll need to listen to the show live to get in on the prize fun, and while all prizes haven't been announced yet, we will be giving away one Razer Anansi MMO keyboard that was recently reviewed. Tune in this Tuesday, May 31, at 11 a.m. Eastern/8 a.m. Pacific time for your chance to win. The show will be made available later if you cannot make it for the live portions. See you all on Tuesday!
We won some Webby Awards, and now you can win a BlackBerry PlayBook!
It's happened again, we've won a Webby. More than one, even! Last year you voted your hearts out and awarded us the People's Voice award for Consumer Electronics. This year you did it again, but you also made us proud by awarding us a People's Voice award in Online Film & Video for, what else, the Engadget Show. We also scored the official Webby in Consumer Electronics (voted on by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences), which we're of course thrilled about, but we're most honored that you voted for us. So, we're going to throw a little love right back at ya. With BlackBerry World going on RIM has graciously given us another PlayBook to give away to you. To win it all you need to do is comment. The full instructions and typical rules can be found after the break, which you should definitely read before you file that comment. Good luck!
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.
Computer learning and computational neuroscience icon Dr. Leslie Valiant wins Turing Award
We've seen recently that computers are more than capable of kicking humanoids to the curb when it comes to winning fame and fortune, but it's still we humans who dole out the prizes, and one very brainy humanoid just won the best prize in computer science. That person is Leslie Valiant, and the prize is the fabled A.M. Turing Award. Dr. Valiant currently teaches at Harvard and over the years developed numerous algorithms and models for parsing and computer learning, including work to understand computational neuroscience. His achievements have helped make those machines smarter and better at thinking like we humans, but he's as of yet been unsuccessful in teaching them the most important thing: how to love.
Google's paying $20,000 to hack Chrome -- any takers?
So far, Chrome is the only browser of the big four -- Safari, Firefox, and Internet Explorer being the other three -- to escape the Pwn2Own hacking competition unscathed the past two years. (Sorry Opera aficionados, looks like there's not enough of you to merit a place in the contest... yet.) Evidently, its past success has Google confident enough to pony up a cool $20,000 and a CR-48 laptop to anyone able to find a bug in its code and execute a clean sandbox escape on day one of Pwn2Own 2011. Should that prove too daunting a task, contest organizer TippingPoint will match El Goog's $10,000 prize (still $20,000 total) for anyone who can exploit Chrome and exit the sandbox through non-Google code on days two and three of the event. For those interested in competing, Pwn2Own takes place March 9th through 11th in Vancouver at the CanSecWest conference. The gauntlet has been thrown -- your move, hackers.
Google hides mathematical puzzle in Cr-48 video, rewards its solver with a laptop
Watching Google destroy Cr-48 laptops for fun can't have been easy for any of you, but it turns out that the wily geeks of Mountain View had a clandestine purpose to their malevolence after all. An equation, scribbled out in old school chalk in the background of one scene, attracted the attention of a Sylvain Zimmer, who, together with a group of like-minded geeks, set about trying to solve it and discover its meaning. A full day's worth of cryptographic work later, Sylvain was left with a set of numbers he was able to convert into letters, which in turned spelled out "speed and destroy." Appending goo.gl, Google's URL shortener, to the front of those words got him to a screen congratulating him for being "first to figure out our MENSA-certified puzzle" and promising to send him a Cr-48 laptop as his prize. Kudos to Sylvain... and to Google for being such irrepressible geeks.
Bacarobo 'stupid robot' contest is back, and it's hilarious (video)
Our love of tech, gadgets, and anything, really, with blinking lights means that while we certainly value usability and quality in our consumer electronics, there will always be a place in our hearts for the utterly useless. And we're definitely not alone here, as the popularity of the annual Bacarobo (stupid robot) contest will tell you. This year's event was held in Budapest, Hungary, and featured a number of the silliest robots you've never seen before -- all designed to get a laugh. The contest is judged in true hackneyed Gong Show-esque fashion with an applause meter, and the winner received a €2,000 ($2,700 USD) prize. And that's nothing to laugh at! But enough chatter: peep the video after the break to see for yourself.
EVE Evolved: Gambling away all your ISK
EVE Online is said to be a game in which you can do literally anything you set your mind to. It doesn't matter whether your ambition is to climb the alliance ranks, become the scourge of low-security space or even just fly around space telling jokes. If you can conceive of an idea that can be carried out in-game, it's probably a perfectly viable way to play the game. Over the years, players have come up with a number of unique and unconventional gameplay styles. Most of them began as ways for the pilots involved to make ISK or gain notoriety, but some were created just to see if it could be done. I've seen everything from player-run graveyards for the victims of piracy to players renting kill-boards for ISK, and yet the EVE community never ceases to amaze me with the new ways people find to play the game. The most recent development to blow me away is SOMER.blink, a website where players can gamble their ISK to win fabulous prizes. Gambling in EVE is nothing particularly new; players have been wagering ISK on everything from lotteries to hands of poker for a long time. What makes SOMER.blink special is its absolutely flawless execution. Almost everything is automated, from the transfer of ISK into your account balance to the prize lotteries themselves. The website itself is even accessible from outside EVE once ISK has been deposited in your wallet. I've spent hours so far blinking away on lotteries and losing quite a bit of ISK, but I'll be damned if it hasn't been fun. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look into the addictive phenomena of Somer.BLINK and try to explain where all my damn ISK went.
Reclusive mathematician says 'thanks, but no thanks' to that million dollar prize
Russian mathematician Grigori Perelman has apparently turned down a one million-dollar prize which he was awarded in March by the Clay Mathematics Institute. Perelman was awarded one of seven million dollar prizes for solving a "millennium" problem -- the Poincaire conjecture -- which had been puzzling mathematicians for about one hundred years. The problem -- which was a theorem about the governing the properties of three-dimensional spheres -- was one of the most important questions in topology before being solved. While this is not the first time he's turned down a prize, Perelman has seemingly rejected this one because he disagrees with the "organized mathematical community."
Michael Grätzel, inventor of the dye-sensitized solar cell, wins 2010 Millennium Technology Prize (video)
In 1991, a pair of scientists published a paper in Nature, detailing a intriguing new discovery: the dye-sensitized solar cell. Today, one of them won €800,000 for his efforts, and the 2010 Millennium Technology Prize. Michael Grätzel accepted the award for the low-cost solar cells that often bear his name, and which make possible the sunglasses, windows and iPhone patents we seem to spot every few days. Hear the good professor speak about his invention in a video after the break.
Massively's EVE Online Tyrannis contest, part 3: Fiction-writing contest
Over the past two weeks we've been running some awesome weekly contests for readers to win EVE Online game time courtesy of CCP Games. In celebration of the upcoming launch of EVE's Tyrannis expansion, we gave away 10 PLEX in our planet screenshot contest two weeks ago. Last week, we ran a caption competition with a 15 PLEX prize total and received a flood of entries. So many in fact that we're still debating which captions should win a prize. The winners of that contest will be posted as an update to the second contest post within the next few days and the winners will all be notified via email. This week marks the last week of our Tyrannis contest trilogy and to end on a high-note we're giving away a whopping 25 PLEX. Ten top prizes of two PLEX are available and a further five runner-up entrants will get one PLEX each. To enter, all you have to do is write a short piece of fiction based on the planets and moons of New Eden and submit it to the comments on this post. Entries are limited to 200 words or less as we're sure to get a huge number of entries and we want to give each one the full attention it deserves. Your entry can take the form of a short story, a poem or any other type of written fiction. Prizes will be awarded based on creativity, writing style and presentation. As with the previous two competitions, this contest is open to readers from any country. UPDATE: Entry is now closed. We are now reading through the submissions and picking winners! UPDATE 2: Winners have been selected! The list of winners has been added to the end of this post. Each winner will be contacted via email to arrange delivery of their prizes. Skip past the cut for the contest rules and full submission guidelines.
Massively's EVE Online Tyrannis contest, part 2: Caption competition
Last week we launched the first of three awesome EVE Online contests in association with CCP Games. To celebrate the upcoming launch of EVE's Tyrannis expansion with its impressive planetary interaction feature, we asked players to submit their best screenshots featuring planets. We expected around 25 entries but with the contest being open to international readers, we received an absolute flood of responses. A total of 114 screenshots were sent in before the deadline last night and we began the difficult process of choosing our favourite shots. Thanks to the generosity of the fellows at CCP, we were able to increase the number of winners from 5 to 10. Congratulations go to EVE players Agara Mnemion, Aurum Pax, Banana Ninja, driv4r, Garnoo, Ice Monster, Lamthara Lachesis, paritybit, SpiroTris and Vladmir Skef. Each of you will soon have a 30 day pilot's license delivered in-game by CCP. For those interested in seeing the winning screenshots, they're the first ten images in the colossal 114 entry gallery below. %Gallery-92556% Skip past the cut for this week's second part of our amazing Tyrannis contest trilogy. Think up a funny caption for our screenshot and you could win two months of EVE game time! UPDATE: Winners announced at the end of the post! All winners will be emailed to arrange delivery of their prizes.
Massively's EVE Online Tyrannis contest, part 1: The planets of EVE
The planets and moons of EVE Online received a major graphical overhaul in the Dominion expansion, with some impressive results. Those previously boring brown-gray blobs in space were transformed into lush paradise worlds, frozen wastelands, hellish volcanic planets and more. When the Tyrannis expansion launches on May 18th, EVE players will finally get to interact with the new and improved planets, exploiting them for their natural resources. With the launch of Tyrannis just around the corner, Massively have teamed up with CCP Games to bring you a series of three exciting contests. Each Saturday from now until May 15th, we'll be running a new competition where readers can win some in-game pilot's licenses. The licenses can be redeemed to add 30 days of game time to your EVE account or sold on the market for a quick 300 million ISK. For details of how to enter the contest and full submission guidelines, read after the break. UPDATE: Due to the popularity of this contest and CCP's generosity, we're expanding the prize total to ten pilot's licenses. Instead of five winners, we'll have ten! UPDATE#2: Entry to the contest is now closed!
Make an in-game BioShock 2 video, win the most dangerous prize ever
2K Games is currently holding a contest to see who can capture the "craziest" occurrences while playing BioShock 2. Mind you, the contest's definition of "crazy" isn't referring to that time you found a hilarious bug, or that time you got a 20-kill streak while playing online. Rather, the contest is looking for "I froze a Big Daddy, levitated him into the air, stuck a rocket on him, and sent him flying into a group of unaware Splicers." For a hint as to what your entries should look like, watch the video posted after the jump. The prize for the craziest video is a crisp, presumably novelty-sized check for $5,000, as well as a life-sized Big Daddy suit. Yes, the suit from this video. Yes, it's probably covered in the blood of 2K Marin's programmers. No, they probably won't clean that off for you.
