Let’s face it - people love to win free stuff and hosting a contest on your blog or website is a great way to create excitement and increase your traffic. Large companies understand the value of holding contests and sweepstakes because they know it can introduce products, services, blogs and websites to new readers that don’t already know about them. Pepsi and Coke are prime examples of how using promotions such as “Coke Rewards” with ...

Submissions have come in for the BOSS Mashable Challenge and we’ve rounded them out to the top 10. From now until October 12th, you may vote for your favorite submission. At the end of the voting round, whomever has the most votes will become the Grand Prize winner and will receive $2,000 and an exclusive article on Mashable about their mashup. The runner up will receive $1,000 and Yahoo! and Mashable’s Kudos. The top 10 ...

Mashable is proud to announce The 2nd Annual Open Web Awards. The Mashable Open Web Awards is the only multilingual international online voting competition that covers major innovations in Web technology. Through an online nominating and voting process, the Open Web Awards recognizes and honors the top achievements in 26 categories. The first Open Web Awards achieved over 250,000 votes combined between Mashable and our 50 international blog partners. Winners included Facebook, Digg, Google, Meetup, ...

Earlier this year, we profiled Joffrey’s Coffee & Tea Company, a caffeine supplier that was giving away free brew to 10,000 “beta testers,” a group that included bloggers, programmers, gamers, and otherwise sleep-deprived professionals. This week, the company is debuting “Coffee 2.0,” a new flavor based specifically on the feedback of the beta testers, with “upgraded flavor and taste featuring smooth caramel and smoky overtones” and “increased focus power for less distraction.” You can learn ...

Image courtesy of Teacher Magazine The CBS and Ecozone Green Schools Initiative launched last Wednesday, October 1st in Miami. The initiative features a “Green My School Contest” in which the grand prize is a $250,000 green makeover for the winning school. The money will supply the school with products and services to aid in an environmentally minded overhaul, as conducted by a professional “green schools coach.” Teachers, students, administrators can enter the contest by filling ...

So you've seen Microsoft's "phase 2" ads featuring all sorts of people saying that they are PCs, not this damned dirty John Hodgman stereotype that Apple is tossing around. It's all well and good, but I'd like to see what kinds of people who claim to be PCs we have reading Gizmodo. Sounds like a photo contest to me. For this one, I want you to get a picture of yourself holding a sign that ...

Seriously there is a great contest going on over at CSAHM.com. My friend Heather read this great book and has done a review and is now giving away a copy. Head on over to the contest by clicking HERE. Go ahead run on over and get yourself entered to win.

Can you guess how many flowers are in this jar? Make your best guess and leave us a comment below for a chance at winning a layout with your photos scrapped by Studio Crew member LauraKaye Hint: The flowers scattered at the base of the jar are a representative sampling of some of the flowers in the jar. One guess per person please. If your post doesn’t show up right away, don’t worry, we’ll catch ...

This week we received more than 15 new submissions to the BOSS Mashable Challenge. Today, we highlight 5 of them, in addition to the applications we’ve already covered (see here and here). New submissions are being accepted through October 5th, at which point 10 applications will enter the voting round. To submit yours, follow the instructions posted here for your opportunity to win either the $2,000 grand prize or the $1,000 for runner-up. Today’s coverage ...

Our good friends over at AMC are running a new contest as part of their FearFest lineup. Basically, people will have the chance to win $4,000 by submitting a video detailing their greatest fear. YOUR GREATEST FEAR CONTEST WHAT: Submit a one-minute or less short video showing us your greatest fear. SUBMISSION PERIOD: Oct 1- Oct 31, 2008 Prize: The Winner will have a chance to see their video shown on AMC during a future ...

Ranksense is a “point and click” SEO software suite that offers a variety of easy-to-use tools developed by SEO expert Hamlet Batista. The program easily integrates with your site and guides you through the best practices of each step in an SEO campaign. Now you don’t have to be a search marketing professional to catapult your search engine rankings and traffic. Read my full review here: Ranksense Review With the new release of Ranksense 2.0, ...

Electronic Resources & Libraries 2009 February 10-11, 2009 Pre-Conferences February 9, 2009 UCLA - Covel Commons Los Angeles, CA REGISTRATION Registration is now open for Electronic Resources & Libraries 2009! http://www.electr... Early-bird rates are in effect for registrations by December 14, 2009: Professional: $220 Student: $100 Paraprofessional/Support Staff: $150 GENERAL INFORMATION Travel and Hotel information: http://www.electr... —————————————————————– SCHOLARSHIPS, AWARDS & GRANTS This year the conference scholarship committee has worked with sponsors to provide funding to ...

Escape From Berkeley (By Any Non-Petroleum Means Necessary) is an alternative-fueled road rally that starts October 10th and ends October 13th. The rally begins in Berkeley, California, and finishes in Las Vegas, Nevada at the Sahara. Contestants are required to use any fuel other than petroleum, and using only those fuels scavenged “for free” along the way. Fuel cannot be purchased. Judges will present awards for both artistic and technical achievements. If you want to ...

Sun Code For Freedom 2008 Organised By: Sun Microsystems Key Dates: Deadline for Submission of Project Proposal: December 31, 2008 Contest Ends: April 30, 2009 Winners Announced: June 14, 2009 For Whom: Any resident student (foreign or Indian) of an accredited Indian Educational institution. The free and open source movement is emerging as the new world order in the technology sector across the world. Today, free and open source products such as Apache Web Server, ...

Last summer, Doctor Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog captured our imaginations and, yes, our hearts with the tragic tale of a man, a woman, a hero, and a Freeze Ray. This highly successful internet musical not only added Wonderflonium to our collective vocabulary, it also made it alright to cheer for the bad guys. But what about those among us who want to be the bad guys? Those readers may be interested to know that Bad Horse’s ...

It's time to announce our latest contest!Thanks to the kind sponsorship (and connections) of Reasonably Clever Regular TK-1420 of the 501st, our October challenge is theThere are some incredible prizes, and some amazing celebrity judges...but first, let's let TK-1420 tell us about the competition itself....(Click for full sized view)Now...as to those prizes....how about some rare and out-of-print Star Wars sets?And as to those celebrity judges... Stephen J. Sansweet is the Director of Content Management and ...

I am happy to announce the winners of the PleaseDressMe T-shirt Giveaway. After closing the contest at 12:00pm PST today, I am proud to say that there were 145 total comments! Here are the winners, who were selected randomly. Winners will be emailed individually by PleaseDressMe to arrange shipment. Petey Rave, Green Mike, Vintage zacislost, Bright Morgan, Geek Yams, Panda Chance Clay, Internet Miiitch, Dinosaur Josh Kocurek, Inigo Nikki, We Like it On Top Jordan, ...

For all those Dogsters who are attached to their cell phones, you’re going to love this new service from Purina. Purina.mobi and go2 Pets allow people and their pets to have fun wherever they go by helping them locate pet-friendly businesses, keeping them up-to-date on the latest pet news or providing training tips on demand. If pet lovers are looking for fun and entertainment at their finger tips, all they need to do is visit ...

There is nothing more angelic than the faces of children as they sweetly slumber. Their little snores and mid-dream mumbling can instantly make their parents smile. Now picture your angel sleeping on a brand new South Shore Children’s Bedroom Set from Home & Bedroom Furniture, and your smile is bound to grow wider. My daughter recently received the South Shore Furniture Lily Rose Bedroom Set. Of course the first step with any new furniture, is ...

Mashable and Yahoo! Search have extended the deadline for the BOSS Mashable Challenge. This contest, now running through October 5th, will award prizes to developers who create the best mashups with the Yahoo BOSS API. As many readers will recall from our earlier coverage on BOSS, the BOSS (Build Your Own Search Service) platform lets developers build their own full-blown custom search applications on Yahoo’s index of the Internet, the same infrastructure that underlies Yahoo ...